Swedish metallers AVATAR have released a new song called "God Of Sick Dreams", which serves as the second single from their eighth full-length, "Hunter Gatherer", due out August 7 via Entertainment One (eOne).
From the very first riff of the explosive lead single "Silence In The Age Of Apes", listeners will find a darker, futuristic, and entirely new version of AVATAR. Their bold manifesto, "Hunter Gatherer", is an unflinchingly ruthless study of a clueless humankind’s ever-increasing velocity into an uncertain future, furthering the reach of the band’s always expanding dark roots. The forthcoming album is the darkest, most sinister version of the band yet, with deep studies of cruelty, technology, disdain, and deprivation.
In 2019, AVATAR reunited with producer Jay Ruston (STONE SOUR, SLIPKNOT, ANTHRAX) at Sphere Studios in Los Angeles, California, where the foundation for each song on "Hunter Gatherer" was laid with the band performing altogether, as they'd done only once before, on "Hail The Apocalypse" (2014). The old-school method of playing as one in the studio, more akin to how they are on stage, captured the essence of AVATAR. Recorded entirely to two-inch tape, "Hunter Gatherer" exhibits everything that makes AVATAR standouts in the vast, rich landscape of heavy metal's past and present.
Track listing:
01. Silence In The Age Of Apes
02. Colossus
03. A Secret Door
04. God Of Sick Dreams
05. Scream Until You Wake
06. Child
07. Justice
08. Gun
09. When All But Force Has Failed
10. Wormhole
Late last year, AVATAR singer Johannes Eckerström told Loudwire about the lyrical themes covered on the upcoming album: "I'm trying to put across certain emotions that maybe, myself as a lyricist, maybe I wasn’t comfortable with in the past. Saying there’s something wrong over there is different than turning a finger and pointing it at yourself. It takes some maturity to start to do that and maybe revisit places I was at in the past and shine a more honest light upon it. It's full of those things that I have never done before, we have never done before, and thus it's completely different again."
He added: "There is no joking around with this, and it pulls us back into reality. It deals more with darkness, sadness, detachment, alienation and the anxiety of thinking of the world at large. It's all these things that don't necessarily fit into the 'let's write this love letter to heavy metal and share our inside joke that we call Jonas The King.'"
AVATAR's live album, "The King Live In Paris" , was released in May 2019 via eOne. The 11-track set was recorded at the 2018 Download Festival in Paris, France.
The group's most recent studio album, "Avatar Country" , came out in January 2018.
Last fall, AVATAR completed a North American tour as the support act for BABYMETAL.
