Opeth are releasing their tenth full length Heritage September 20 via Roadrunner Records. Check out the sweet cover art above. In support of the album, the band will tour North America with Katatonia (whose past albums have featured vocals from Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt). Though all dates are not yet announced, it looks like the tour will begin around the time of the album release with shows at NYC's Webster Hall on September 21 and 22. Tickets for both NYC shows go on sale Wednesday (6/8) at noon. All known dates are listed below.

Opeth keyboardist Per Wiberg will unfortunately not be with the band at these shows. As mentioned on Opeth's website:

Keyboardist Per Wiberg has been relieved of his duties in Opeth as part of a mutual decision with the band. Keyboard duties on upcoming tours will be handled by a musician who is already rehearsing with the band. Said musician's identity will be released at a later date.

Vocalist/guitarist MikaelAkerfeldt released the following statement about the matter: "Well, it's been somewhat of a revolving door of members during the last couple of years, and now, Per is no longer a member. Mendez, Axe and Fredrik and I came to the decision that we should find a replacement for Per right after the recordings of the new album, and this came as no surprise to Per. He had, in turn, been thinking about leaving, so you could say it was a mutual decision. There's no bad blood, just a relationship that came to an end, and that's that. We wish Per the best, and he did a splendid job recording keyboards for the last record, which stands as his final recording with Opeth."

Heritage was produced by Akerfeldt and mixed along with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson. The album will be released as a standard version, double LP, special edition with extras, and a box set exclusive to the Roadrunner and Opeth's merch webstore. The track "The Devil's Orchard" will be released as the first single and the band will possibly film a video for the song. Check out the tracklisting for the album along with more dates below...

Continue reading "Opeth releasing 'Heritage', touring w/ Katatonia (and a new keyboard player) --- 2011 dates include 2 NYC shows"

As previously reported, Amanda Palmer is hard at work preparing her own high-school musical...

I am going to be performing in an original play with music titled "WITH THE NEEDLE THAT SINGS IN HER HEART" at lexington high school. the show is inspired by the album "in the aeroplane over the sea" by neutral milk hotel and is being written (and we're almost done!) by me, the cast and my former drama director and mentor, steven bogart.

performances are May 7, 8 and 9 at the LHS theater. doors at 7:30. show at 8. $5 for students. $10 for the general public. come. come come come.

Tickets for With the Needle That Sings in her Heart are on sale now. Palmer has been posting frequent updates on her blog and Twitter account about the production of the show and other tidbits, such as this description:

using "in the aeroplane over the sea" by neutral milk hotel as an inspiration, the kids (a cast of 20) have been putting together a play through improvisation. the process started about a month ago and i've been in the last two weeks of rehearsals helping shape the plot and characters and create the musical accompaniment, mostly songs from the record played live. often with me playing the instruments, but the whole cast and some extra musicians will be presenting the music....

Palmer's next live show is at Coachella on April 18th. She also has a show scheduled at NYC's Highline Ballroom on Friday, June 5th (tickets on sale April 17th).

As Pitchfork recently reported. Amanda is also making a public effort to get dropped from her Roadrunner Records contract. She even sings a song about it to the tune of "Moon River". Check out the video below. In a letter to Bob Lefsetz she wrote:

my label-dropping game has become very fun. please pray for me.

it's a lesson in how the future of music is working - fans are literally (and i mean that....literally) lining up at the signing table after shows and HANDING me cash, saying "thank you".

i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called "head of digital media" of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that "it hasn't caught on here yet" was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans - who couldn't attend the show - showed up to get their records signed.

no manager knew! i didn't even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park!
life is becoming awesome.

Cellist Zoe Keating, who toured Australia with Palmer in early March, will be performing with Palmer at Coachella. The pair recently covered Muse's "Time Is Running Out" live (video below).

Palmer is also releasing a Who Killed Amanda Palmer book -- "a fine art hardback book of "photographic evidence" with contributions from celebrated blogger and photographer Kyle Cassidy, Beth Hommel, Tegan Rain (of Tegan and Sara) and many others. Fictional stories to accompany the photographs have been penned by best-selling author Neil Gaiman." That book will be available for pre-order on Palmer's website starting Monday, April 20th at noon (cover art above).

Full With the Needle That Sings in her Heart press release, plus Palmer singing an impromptu song with John Wesley Harding at SXSW and other videos, and all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Amanda Palmer - wants out of Roadrunner, playing NYC, writing a play, releasing a book, likes Twitter & other news"

if you hadn't noticed, all of the dresden dolls and amanda palmer official videos have been taken off youtube.

yes, folks...girl anachronism, coin-operated boy, shores of california, almost everything from who killed amanda palmer....pretty much the whole deal.
all gone. go look for yourself.
and you ask...wtf?

this is why:

basically:
"Unable to reach new licensing terms, the Warner Music Group has demanded that thousands of its videos be removed from YouTube, which is owned by Google. Warner Music's videos, the source of a billion views on YouTube, gradually began disappearing from the site on Saturday, although many remained online Sunday evening."

in other words, roadrunner is a subsidiary of warner and i'm stuck in hell with madonna and the other poor bastards, because warner wants more money. even worse, warner has almost no bargaining power...they're not even in the top ten of labels who have huge artists with material streaming on youtube. they're just starving for cash right now and they're doing anything they can think of to come up with cash. it's abSURD. they are looking for money in a totally backwards way.

money that, i should point out, i would NEVER see as an artist. if they got their way and youtube decided to give them a larger revenue share of the videos, it;s very unlikely it would ever make it's way into the artists' bank accounts.

damn, man. this shit is fucked UP.

i'll obviously let you know what happens, but i'm slowly planning some sort of tribute-a-thon of dolls and amanda videos in lieu of our actual clips.

maybe a "everybody re-enact your favorite dolls video in one take on a shitty camera, with hand puppets, for under $5" contest. maybe it will yield a masterpiece.

i loved my videos.

now they are gone.

why is life so hard?

did i mention that being on a major label is starting to seem like.....not such a grand idea?

meanwhile.

i hate the cold. elaine sent me a nice vest, with a hood.

maybe i won't take it off until my videos are back up, in protest.

shovel shovel shovel shovel shovel shovel shovel shovel

x
afp...

Amanda Palmer plays Bowery Ballroom at 2:00 AM tonight (thx joly).

PREVIOUSLY: Warner music vs. YouTube

The video and more comments like that @ Youtube.

It looks like De Novo Dahl got themselves some fancy new outfits - must be all that Roadrunner money (just kidding). De Novo Dahl are playing Pianos in NYC tonight AND tomorrow AND the next day, and they have a show at Sound Fix in Brooklyn, and they're playing SXSW (again). Yes they're signed to Roadrunner, but don't expect any metal. All dates and a video introduction, below...

Continue reading "De Novo Dahl - 4 NYC shows, SXSW, 2008 Tour Dates"