NEW SITE CHANGES!

You may have noticed that over the past few months quiet changes have been made to the site. First we gave you new artist pages. Check out your favorite and you'll find widgets, videos, music, and much more. Plus they look great.

A few weeks back we also updated our Artists page. You'll see highlighted artists up top in blue. These change as artists are updated with news, video, and music. This is a great page to make your first port-of-call after the news section!

Today we've relaunched three other pages. Music and Video are all new. You can now embed all of our music and video posted to the site in your blog, web site, or MySpace/Facebook profiles. At the right of these pages you'll see charts driven by what YOU do on our site. You can also leave comments at all songs and videos, rate them, and favorite them in our new profile system (more on that in a sec).







 

The Releases page has gotten a huge makeover. Every album now has its own home page where you can see the available tracks, rate it, leave a review, or comment on others' reviews. Snazzy huh?

Finally, we just launched our new profile pages. If you're a subscriber to our email newsletters, you can log in, add your own picture, keep track of the latest updates on our site (and partner sites), follow your favorite videos and music, and tell us what bands you want to hear about.

Of course, many of these new features require that you be a member of the site to use them, so please join today!

We are, of course, in a beta phase and need your help to make the site work the best for YOU. If you see any problems or want to suggest changes to the new features, please send an email to webmaster@roadrunnerrecords.com with "NEW SITE REPORT" in the subject line. If you receive an error, please be as detailed as possible, including what page you were on, what browser you are using, and copy any error message you receive into the body of the email.

Please feel free to leave comments here below!

Cheers!

Jeremy Rosen

ATTENTION CANADIAN OPETH FANS!

Tonight's Opeth show at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver is sold out so if you are one of the unfortunate souls without a ticket, this is a great opportunity to see the band and get an autograph! First come, first serve!

Scrape Records
323 Broadway East
Vancouver, BC V5T 1W5, Canada
(604) 877-1676

CHECK OUT OPETH ON NONELOUDER.COM

Nonelouder.com interviews Michael Akerfeldt from Opeth CHECK IT OUT HERE.

LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE OPETH CLASSICS!

GUITAR MESSENGER is an online music magazine dedicated to music fans of all styles and genres, delivering in-depth interviews, artist features, interactive lessons, reviews, and an abundance of information about the music business.

GM LOVES OPETH!

Check out this exclusive interview with Mikael Åkerfeldt at the Progressive Nation Tour in Miami.

Next, find out how Mikael Åkerfeldt masters the guitar as he discusses his chord and soloing style and demonstrates how to play a number of Opeth classics here.

Then head over and see Opeth guitar technician Coty Allinson walk us through Mikael's live rig!
Link:

Fans can discuss these Opeth features at the new Guitar Messenger
forum: http://www.guitarmessenger.com/forum

OPETH - THE FIRST WATERSHED HEADLINE TOUR!

Opeth, the Swedish metal titans who've been labeled as a "genre of one," will make their way back to American shores this fall for their first headline trek in support of the recently released Watershed. The tour will commence on September 16 in Buffalo and run for six weeks, with High on Fire serving as main support. Nachtmystium will open the first half of the tour, with Baroness taking over that slot on October 6. The tour makes for an evening of metal tailored for headbangers and tastemakers alike!

Opeth enjoyed the main support slot on the first ever Progressive Nation Tour last spring, opening for labelmates Dream Theater. The band spent the summer on the European tour circuit but is thrilled to be bring its always unique blend of death/folk/prog metal back to American audiences this fall. Meanwhile, Watershed has been lauded as one of the prolific and revered band's best efforts to date, celebrated in the pages of Billboard ("one of the most unique bands straddling the line between progressive music and metal"), The New York Times ("typically engrossing"), Blender ("more spacious and majestic than ever"), Metal Maniacs ("definitively Opeth'ian"), PopMatters ("a major turning point for the band"), and Pitchfork ("Watershed has friction and friction brings heat"), to name a select few.

Opeth are a metal institution, continuing to surprise and enthrall listeners and diehard fans with the musical breadth and dynamic scope of each album they release. Watershed is the band's ninth studio release and it finds them never compromising and boldly going where they've never gone before.

The tour dates are as follows:

Sept. 16 - Town Ballroom - Buffalo, NY

Sept. 17 - The Trocadero - Philadelphia, PA

Sept. 18 - Nokia Theatre - New York, NY

Sept. 19 - The Palladium - Worcester, MA

Sept. 20 - Imperial - Quebec City, QUE Canada

Sept. 21 - Centennial Hall - London, ONT Canada

Sept. 23 - House of Blues - Cleveland, OH

Sept. 24 - House of Blues - Chicago, IL

Sept. 25 - The Orbit Room - Grand Rapids, MI

Sept. 26 - The Rave - Milwaukee, WI

Sept. 27 - Myth - Maplewood, MN

Sept. 29 - Garrick Center - Winnipeg, MB Canada

Sept. 30 - The Odeon - Saskatoon, SAS Canada

Oct. 1 - Edmonton Events Centre - Edmonton, ALB Canada

Oct. 3 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC Canada

Oct. 4 - Showbox - Seattle, WA

Oct. 6 - Regency Center @ The Grand Ballroom - San Francisco, CA

Oct. 7 - Wiltern Theatre - Los Angeles, CA

Oct. 8 - House of Blues - Las Vegas, NV

Oct. 9 - Marquee Theatre - Tempe, AZ

Oct. 10 - Sunshine Theatre - Albuquerque, NM

Oct. 11 - Odgen Theatre - Denver, CO

Oct. 13 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO

Oct. 14 - The Beaumont - Kansas City, MO

Oct. 15 - House of Blues - Dallas, TX

Oct. 16 - The Monarch - Austin, TX

Oct. 17 - Warehouse Live - Houston, TX

Oct. 18 - House of Blues - New Orleans, LA

Oct. 20 - Revolution - Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Oct. 21 - House of Blues - Lake Buena Vista, FL

Oct. 22 - Center Stage - Atlanta, GA

Oct. 23 - Bogart's - Cincinnati, OH

Oct. 24 - Lincoln Theatre - Raleigh, NC

Oct. 25 - NorVa - Norfolk, VA

Oct. 26 - Rams Head Live - Baltimore, MD

BEFORE YOU FORGET: SLIPKNOT ON HBB

So you've downloaded "All Hope Is Gone" from Slipknot, you're taking an aural break, and you want something to do? Tell us what you think of tonight's Headbangers Ball playlist. I'm all for tonight's Soilent Green entry.

JUDAS PRIEST - WAR (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)
ORIGIN - FINITE
OPETH - PORCELAIN HEART
SAVIOURS - NARCOTIC SEA
DISTURBED - INSIDE THE FIRE
BLACK DAHLIA MURDER - EVERYTHING WENT BLACK (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)
MACHINE HEAD - HALO
*CRADLE OF FILTH - FROM CRADLE TO ENSLAVE
CHILDREN OF BODOM - BLOODDRUNK
*SLIPKNOT - BEFORE I FORGET
DEVILDRIVER - CLOUDS OVER CALIFORNIA
EMMURE - SOUND WAVE SUPERIOR (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)
SOILENT GREEN - ANTIOXIDANT
HATEBREED - NEVER LET IT DIE
*ARTIMUS PYLEDRIVER - SWAMP DEVIL
CRYPTOPSY - WORSHIP YOUR DEMONS
DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN - BLACK BUBBLEGUM (Headbangers Ball debut)
*METALLICA - THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE
DEAD CHILD - SWEET CHARIOT
KATAKLYSM - TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES ON HBB

Looks like another premiere week on Headbangers Ball. Catch the new DevilDriver and Opeth videos, the video from Cavalera Conspiracy, and a bunch of your other favorite bands.

ARCH ENEMY - I WILL LIVE AGAIN

OPETH - PORCELAIN HEART (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)

BEHEMOTH - AT THE LEFT HAND OV GOD

**MASTODON - SLEEPING GIANT

CAVALERA CONSPIRACY - SANCTUARY

JOB FOR A COWBOY - ALTERED FROM CATECHIZATION

OBITUARY - EVIL WAYS (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)

IN FLAMES - THE MIRROR'S TRUTH

FIREWIND - MERCENARY MAN

STRAIGHT LINE STITCH - REMISSION

WARBRINGER - COMBAT SHOCK

*THERAPY - GIVE ME BACK MY BRAIN

DEATH ANGEL - DETHRONED

THE MARS VOLTA - WAX SIMULACRA

UNEARTH - MARCH OF THE MUTES (live) (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)

GWEN STACY - THE FEAR IN YOUR EYES

**DISTURBED - STUPIFY

DEVILDRIVER - CLOUDS OVER CALIFORNIA (Headbangers Ball premiere)

SOILENT GREEN - ANTIOXIDANT

THE SWORD - MAIDEN, MOTHER & CRONE

HAVE WE GOT A HEADBANGERS BALL FOR YOU

Headbangers Ball is running at a new time now: Saturdays on MTV2 from 12AM to 1 AM. If you're old and creaky like me you'll probably want to shoot a Red Bull around 11:30 so you can stay awake. Pleased to see a Judas Priest vid on this week's edition. Let us know what you think.


THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER - EVERYTHING WENT BLACK
STRAIGHT LINE STITCH - BLACK VEIL (Headbangers Ball EXCLUSIVE premiere)
CRYPTOPSY - WORSHIP YOUR DEMONS
JUDAS PRIEST - WAR
DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN - BLACK BUBBLEGUM
OPETH - PORCELAIN HEART
DISTURBED - INSIDE THE FIRE
*MORBID ANGEL - GOD OF EMPTINESS
PELICAN - DEAD BETWEEN THE WALLS
*MELVINS - HOOCH
BEHEMOTH - AT THE LEFT HAND OV GOD
EMMURE - SOUND WAVE SUPERIOR
CHILDREN OF BODOM - HELLHOUNDS ON MY TRAIL
BORIS - STATEMENT (Headbangers Ball debut)
*LAMB OF GOD - BLACK LABEL
MACHINE HEAD - HALO
SHAI HULUD - MISANTHROPY PURE
*BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME - ALASKA
DEAD CHILD - SWEET CHARIOT
KINGDOM OF SORROW - LEAD INTO DEMISE

OPETH - NEW TRACK UP NOW!

Always one to defy the rules, Opeth posits sung vocals over artillery-like blast beats on "The Lotus Eater," cementing their reputation as innovators and redefiners.

Take a listen to this track now and prepare yourself for the haunting, epic masterpiece, Watershed which comes out on June 3rd, 2008.