Former ACCEPT and current U.D.O. frontman Udo Dirkschneider has recorded a Christmas song for the biggest European music and merchandise mailorder company EMP. Laid down at DocMaKlang studio in Osnabrück, Germany, the track "Jingle Balls" was written by various staff members of EMP and is a new interpretation of the Christmas song "Jingle Bells" and the ACCEPT anthem "Balls To The Wall".

"Jingle Balls" will be released in the middle of December under the band name EVIL DISPOSITION.

U.D.O. will partner with EMP for a special promotion surrounding the release of the band's next album, "Rev-Raptor", which is tentatively due in May 2011. This special collaboration will consist of a countdown on EMP's web site an entire week before the CD's release, including a message from Udo and advance snippets of each of the songs from the new album.

The release date of "Rev-Raptor" was pushed back by a few months as a result of back problems experienced by guitarist Stefan Kaufmann, the same issue that forced him to quit playing drums for ACCEPT back in the day. Stefan recently received medical treatment for this condition and had recovered enough to have played with the band on November 6 at the Rock Antenne festival at Schwabenhalle in Augsburg.

As previously reported, 17 new songs were written for "Rev-Raptor", with 11 of them set to appear on the final product.

NEGURA BUNGET — the Romanian band that incorporates elements of black metal, progressive metal, folk metal and dark ambient — is putting the finishing touches on a new mini-CD, "Poarta De Dincolo" (English translation: "A Gate From The Above" or "Carrying From The Other Side"). The effort is being recorded once again at Negura Music studio and, as the title suggests, focuses on exploring the relation between worlds, either from above, under or beyond.

"Poarta De Dincolo" will mark NEGURA BUNGET's final release for Code666 Records, putting an end to a collaboration that began almost 10 years ago.

LEAVES' EYES — the German/Norwegian band formed by ex-THEATRE OF TRAGEDY singer Liv Kristine Espenaes Krull and members of ATROCITY — has issued the following update:

"The production of the new [LEAVES' EYES] album will be finished soon.

"We are proud to announce our cooperation with the Lingua Mortis Orchestra and Victor Smolski (RAGE) as well as the choir 'Al Dente,' who also worked with us on previous releases.

"The classical recordings will take place next week in Minsk, Belarus. Moreover, we are happy to announce that we have more special guests on the upcoming album, for duets and special historic instruments.

"The album is planned to be released in April 2011."

"Got Monsters", the new video from LIFE OF AGONY vocalist Keith Caputo, can be viewed below. The song comes off Caputo's latest solo album "A Fondness For Hometown Scars", which was released in Europe in April 2008 via Suburban Records. The CD was produced by Martyn Lenoble (JANE'S ADDICTION, DAVE GAHAN, PORNO FOR PYROS, THE CULT) and features the following band lineup:

Keith Caputo - Vocals
Jochem Van Rooijen - Drums
Marcel Signor - Guitars
Michiel Rietveld - Bass/Acoustic Guitar

Guest musicians include:

Zac Rae (PEDESTRIAN) - Keyboards
Gerry Leonard (DAVID BOWIE) - Guitars
Craig Ross (LENNY KRAVITZ, SHERYL CROW) - Electric Guitars/Acoustic
Flea (RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS) - Trumpet

Video footage of METAL MILITIA — the new Norwegian METALLICA tribute band featuring members of DEAD TROOPER, PANTHEON I and DEN SAAKALDTE — playing its first-ever concert on November 18, 2010 at Rock In in Oslo, Norway can be viewed below.

METAL MILITIA is:

* Morten Müller (DEAD TROOPER) - Vocals and Guitar
* Jørn Folkedal (DEN SAAKALDTE, KOLDBRANN, SARKOM) - Drums
* John-Espen Sagstad (PANTHEON I, TROLLFEST, SARKOM) - Lead Guitar
* Birger Larsen (DEAD TROOPER, GROTESQUE HYSTERECOMTY) - Bass

Upcoming METAL MILITIA shows:

Jan. 28 - Hard Rock Café - Oslo, Norway
Feb. 05 - Byscenen - Haugesund, Norway

Livia Zita, the 26-yer-old wife of legendary Danish heavy metal singer King Diamond (MERCYFUL FATE, KING DIAMOND), has issued the following update:

"Let me catch you all up on the past couple of weeks' happenings, because it affects many things.

"On Monday the 29th of November, King had to be transported to the nearby hospital by ambulance. After several different tests were done and the EKG machine showing abnormalities, the doctors recommended that he get a cardiac catheterization.

"Cardiac catheterization is a procedure where the doctors lead a very thin tube up from the leg and into the heart, where it injects dye into the bloodstream. Then a camera at the end of the tube takes many pictures of the heart's arteries, looking for blockages.

"After this was done, they determined that King had several heart attacks, and three of his heart's arteries were the cause: one was completely blocked, the second was 90% blocked, and the third was 65% blocked. The only solution to this was an open-heart triple-bypass surgery.

"If you are interested in the details of how this surgery is performed, please look it up online. I will only touch on the basics. The sternum (breastbone) is cut in half and pulled apart, to expose the heart. Veins are harvested from other places of the body, in King's case it was his left leg and chest wall. The person is then hooked up to a machine that practically does the job of the heart, circulating and oxygenating the blood. The heart is then stopped, and the lungs collapse (the lungs stop working since the blood is being oxygenated by the machine). The surgeon then sews the harvested veins in place, bypassing the found blockages. Once the surgery is done, the surgeon moves the ribs and breastbone back into place and wires it together. The chest is closed as well. They use an electric pulse to start the heart and a breathing machine is lead into the lungs to restart breathing.

"King's surgery took approximately seven hours. Everything went well, and King was taken to ICU for recovery. He was walking and eating solid food already two days after the operation, and he was the first one in the history of the hospital who walked on his own power from the ICU to normal care.

"10 days after the ambulance took him to the emergency room, he is at home and is recovering well. It will be a few months before he feels completely normal and is without pain.

"He would like to mention here that he's eternally grateful for the wonderful staff at Centennial Medical Center who took care of him. Dr. Kourlis, Dr. Kamili, Dr. Alang, Nurse Christie and Nurse Thomas among many others made sure that he got the best care and attention he could ever have hoped for. They were always very nice to me, too, letting me stay overnight in the ICU after visiting hours were over.

"In light of this, he will be taking a break from music and the music business altogether until further notice. He very much wants to write new music, finish the DVDs, and go on tour, but for now, all those things are in the distant future and he's not thinking about them.

"Please understand that the KING DIAMOND band is not stopping, disbanding or anything of the sort. King's health is first priority, and when everything is going good with him, the music will resume.

"Thank you all very much for reading this and STAY HEAVY."

AC/DC and METALLICA have made Billboard magazine's "Top 25 Tours Of 2010" list, which is compiled from Boxscore data reported for the Nov. 28, 2009 issue through the Nov. 20, 2010 issue.

AC/DC's grossed an impressive $122.6 million and logged more than 1 million in attendance to just 28 shows. METALLICA, on the other hand, grossed $62 million from mostly international dates, for the most part wrapping a 200-plus-show tour in support of the band's latest album, "Death Magnetic". With just 33 shows reported, METALLICA drew attendance of more than 700,000.

"Top 25 Tours Of 2010", according to Billboard magazine:

01. BON JOVI: $146,507,388
02. U2: $131,502,369
03. AC/DC: $122,633,027
04. LADY GAGA: $116,227,987
05. BLACK EYED PEAS: $81,579,114
06. JAMES TAYLOR & CAROLE KING: $62,326,410
07. EAGLES: $62,166,344
08. METALLICA: $61,947,556
09. DAVE MATTHEWS BAND: $61,247,906
10. PAUL MCCARTNEY: $55,760,403
11. MICHAEL BUBLE: $52,887,642
12. TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA: $47,395,108
13. TIM MCGRAW: $44,782,598
14. TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS: $44,696,605
15. TAYLOR SWIFT: $40,312,810
16. ANDRÉ RIEU: $39,992,285
17. BRAD PAISLEY: $38,638,839
18. GEORGE STRAIT & REBA MCENTIRE: $36,666,304
19. JUSTIN BIEBER: $35,600,276
20. NICKELBACK: $35,035,196
21. PHISH: $33,240,962
22. MILEY CYRUS: $33,126,226
23. RASCAL FLATTS: $31,465,481
24. CARRIE UNDERWOOD: $29,743,522
25. TIËSTO: $28,626,366

APOCALYPTICA's Eicca Toppinen is featured in a new interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com. An excerpt is available below.

Q: In another interview, you explained how you composed the vocal tracks for 7th Symphony with vocals in mind, and that the instrumentals were originally composed as instrumentals. You described that as "a big difference this time around."

Eicca: "Yeah. When we wrote songs for our previous albums, it wasn't very clear whether the songs were going to be vocal tracks or instrumental tracks, so in the end we had all instrumentals and some would end up with vocals as well. Therefore, maybe sometimes some people get the feeling that when they listen to the instrumental tracks, they sound great but they would sound even better with vocals. This time, we wanted to avoid that kind of feeling, and wanted to have instrumental music which is exciting by itself and stands on its own. We had a lot of leftover vocal tracks from the pre-production, and even when we had a lack of instrumentals, we decided we weren't going to transfer those leftover vocal tracks into instrumental tracks. We'd rather write something totally new and exciting, so therefore, I think the instrumental tracks on 7th Symphony have a better variety of styles. I think there's more of a classical flavour to this album, but it's very aggressive stuff and very classical stuff which I think is more exciting."

Q: Considering 7th Symphony's vocal tracks were written with vocals in mind, are they more comfortable?

Eicca: "The song structure of the vocal tracks pretty much have this verse-chorus-verse-chorus kind of thinking, and with the instrumental tracks, we thought that they could go just further and further and further and without repeating too much of the same stuff. Of course, when you have a song which you feel is great and could actually be a single, that also starts to lead the production towards some direction. If you have a great song though which you feel could be played on the radio even, you want to make the production in such a way that you can use it as a tool to promote the record."

Damian Wilson, singer with STAR ONE and AYREON, and frontman with the likes of THRESHOLD, HEADSPACE, RICK WAKEMAN and MAIDEN UNITED, is just about to release his exciting debut solo DVD. This two-disc set, titled "Cheers Lads! 20 Years Of Avoiding A Job", contains a superb recording of the DAMIAN WILSON BAND (DWB) live show from Zoetermeer in the Netherlands, (played at Boerderij in 2009) and so much more — including a one-hour tour documentary, a truly in-depth interview with Damian and tour collages. There is also a three-disc version which explores Damian's past. You can join Damian on a journey from his first band (BUTTON FACTORY) through various incarnations of DWB, stopping off on the way with THRESHOLD, LANDMARQ and more.

The DWB lineup from Zoetermeer features a host of great names — Damian Wilson on vocals, Ruud Jolie on guitars (MAIDEN UNITED), Kristoffer Gildenlöw (PAIN OF SALVATION, DIAL) on bass, Chris Mars on keyboards, Dirk Bruinenberg (ELEGY, PATRICK RONDAT) on drums and special guests Nic Slack on keyboards and Paul Jude Wilson on vocals.

NEW YORK DOLLS release their fifth full-length album, "Dancing Backward in High Heels", on March 15 via 429 Records. The follow-up to 2009's "Cause I Sez So" was recorded in Newcastle, England with producer Jason Hill (LOUIS XIV) and features original members David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain.

"Dancing Backward in High Heels" track listing:

01. Fool For You Baby
02. Streetcake
03. I'm So Fabulous
04. Talk to Me Baby
05. Kids Like You
06. Round and Round She Goes
07. You Don't Have to Cry
08. I Sold My Heart to The Junkman
09. Baby Tell Me What I'm On
10. Funky But Chic
11. End of the Summer

Veteran British female hard rockers GIRLSCHOOL are currently in the studio re-recording their classic 1981 album "Hit And Run". The new version of the LP will be released in 2011 to celebrate the album's 30th anniversary.

"Hit And Run" was originally made available in March 1981, followed a short time later by a single featuring the title track. Both releases were very successful in the U.K., with the album reaching position No. 5 and the single No. 32 on their respective charts. The LP also charted in New Zealand and in Canada, where it went gold.

The U.S. version of "Hit And Run", which came out in 1982, featured a different track listing, including songs from GIRLSCHOOL's first album, "Demolition".

01. C'mon Let's Go
02. The Hunter
03. (I'm Your) Victim
04. Kick It Down
05. Following the Crowd
06. Tush (ZZ TOP cover)
07. Hit And Run
08. Watch Your Step
09. Back To Start
10. Yeah Right
11. Future Flash

Polish extreme-metal veterans VADER will enter Hertz Studio in Bialystok, Poland in March 2011 to begin recording their new album, tentatively titled "Return To The Morbid Reich". According to guitarist/vocalist Piotr "Peter" Wiwczarek, "some music, words [and] also designs are already initiated." The CD will be released in August/September 2011 via Nuclear Blast Records.

In other news, Wiwczarek was recently honored by the mayor of the Warmia and Mazury region of Poland for Piotr's promotion and support of the area — which is called the land of one thousand lakes — throughout the world for more than 25 years.

According to Billboard.biz, DEEP PURPLE singer Ian Gillan's new solo album is currently being mixed by engineer Nick Blagona at Jukasa Studios, a $4 million resort facility on the Six Nations of the Grand River in the village of Ohsweken, Ontario, an hour from downtown Toronto, Canada.

Gillan's last solo album, "One Eye To Morocco", entered the German Media Control chart at position No. 97. The CD was released on March 31, 2009 in North America via Eagle Rock Entertainment.

In Europe, "One Eye To Morocco" was made available in the following formats: standard CD, limited-edition CD, 2CD (standard CD + CD single) and 2LP set.

Produced and recorded in Canada with Nick Blagona, the music was written by Ian Gillan together with longtime collaborator Steve Morris, as well as Michael Lee Jackson and Rodney Appleby — who both performed on the "Gillan's Inn" U.S. tour, as featured on the double album/DVD "Live in Anaheim" (released through Edel Entertainment).

Video footage of members of the New England metal band ALL THAT REMAINS playing their song "Hold On" on the "Rock Band" music video game can be viewed below.

"Hold On" is the first single from ALL THAT REMAINS' new album, "For We Are Many", which debuted at No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart, while also coming in at No. 1 on the Hard Music Albums chart.

"For We Are Many" sold 29,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The band's previous CD, "Overcome", opened with just under 29,000 units in September 2008 to enter The Billboard 200 chart at No. 16.

"For We Are Many" was released through a joint venture between Prosthetic Records and Razor & Tie. The CD hit the same day the band headed out on a month-long U.S. headlining tour with support from ASKING ALEXANDRIA, UNEARTH, BORN OF OSIRIS and AND SHE WHISPERED.

"For We Are Many" was recorded this spring at Zing Studios in Massachusetts and produced by KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, who also helmed ALL THAT REMAINS' "This Darkened Heart" and "The Fall of Ideals". Decibel magazine called the album, "Proof that neck-snapping tempos, thoughtful soloing and a catchy chorus or three can co-exist," while Outburn magazine remarked, "If there was ever any question as to whether ALL THAT REMAINS deserved to be considered among the melodic metalcore elite, 'For We Are Many' will dispel any lingering doubts once and for all."

The "Hold On" video, helmed by Ramon Boutviseth (TRIVIUM, DREAM THEATER, INCUBUS), features a narrative involving a variety of characters dealing with internal struggles and their inability to change their fate as their world crumbles down around them, both figuratively and literally. The force behind the destruction is the manifestation of their dark emotions, which ALL THAT REMAINS embodies as they unleash an epic performance in a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland.