Ladies and Gentlemen, we are currently in the middle of the songwriting process for the new album and it´s going very well, we couldn´t be happier with the new songs so far. We will hit the Megaphon Tonstudios (Donots, Phillip Boa and the Voodoo Club, Henrik Freischlader etc.) in Arnsberg, Germany in September. Be prepared for some surprises and exciting guest appearances. We will also play some selected shows in the upcoming weeks – here are the dates:

04.08.2012 (CH) Graenichen Oberdorf – Open Air Gränichen
08.09.2012 (D) Dortmund – Century Media Yardsale
05.10.2012 (D) Cologne – Stollwerck (+ The Intersphere)
06.10. 2012 (D) Muenster – Sputnikhalle (+The Intersphere)

Video footage of CORROSION OF CONFORMITY's June 22 performance at Les Foufounes Électriques in Montreal, Quebec, Canada can be seen below.

The new self-titled album from CORROSION OF CONFORMITY sold 3,800 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 157 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD landed at position No. 5 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of The Billboard 200.

"Corrosion Of Conformity" was recorded at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Northridge, California and was produced by the band in cooperation with longtime collaborator John Custer. It was mixed by John Lousteau (FOO FIGHTERS) and features artwork by Seldon Hunt (MELVINS, HIGH ON FIRE).

The effort is available on standard CD, deluxe digipak, and two exclusive vinyl formats.

Featuring the esteemed "Animosity" lineup of vocalist/bassist Mike Dean, guitarist Woody Weatherman, and drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin, CORROSION OF CONFORMITY's album closes a six-year recording gap and completes over a year of concentrated writing and recording for the band.

Mullin co-founded CORROSION OF CONFORMITY in 1982 as a hardcore punk act alongside Weatherman and Dean before leaving the band in 2001 amidst health concerns.

Forty years of hard rock and heavy metal to page and click through: with "History Of Metal", the music magazine Metal Hammer explores the roots and development of hard rock music and presents the history of heavy metal to music fans as an interactive iPad app in two languages.

"History Of Metal" provides an extensive outline on the individual decades, told by icons, luminaries, and trailblazing bands, presents the most important and influential genres, and puts the most important albums to the test.

The iPad app also gives users many additional multimedia elements such as original videos, reviews of the best albums including iTunes audio samples, interactive timelines, a metal quiz, and a memory game.

"In 'History Of Metal' we travel from the beginnings of primeval noisemaking to the new hard sound and shine a light on the world of metal from all conceivable angles. Our new app is proof that history doesn't have to be dry. We're making it available as an interactive reference work to music fans all over the world," says Thorsten Zahn, publisher and chief editor of Metal Hammer.

"History Of Metal" is available now as a German-language edition for 4.99 euros in the German, Austrian, and Swiss App Store, or as an English-language edition through iTunes in more than a hundred other countries.

A DEATH fan named Kyle Messick proposed to his girlfriend Valeskandrea "Crystal" Bunkelman during the June 26 "Death To All" concert at the House Of Blues in Chicago, Illinois. Video footage of the happy occasion can be seen below.

"So I've been with this lovely lady for four years now," Kyle said from the stage. "She's pretty great. We may disagree on the little things, like what the best DEATH album is. But I love her very much and I don't wanna stop at four years. So right now I'm gonna ask you, Crystal, if you'll marry me."

The "Death To All" trek, which features a majority of DEATH's amazing musicians, celebrates the life and music of Chuck Schuldiner, as well as raises awareness of Sweet Relief Musicians Fund — a charity that provides financial assistance to career musicians faced with illness, disability or age-related problems.

The drums on the "Death To All Tour 2012" are being handled by Gene Hoglan ("Individual Thought Patterns", "Symbolic"), Danny Walker (INTRONAUT, BEREFT) and Sean Reinert ("Human"). On bass is Steve DiGiorgio ("Human", "Individual Thought Patterns") and Scott Clendenin ("The Sound Of Perseverance"). Guitar duties are being shared by Paul Masvidal ("Human"), Shannon Hamm ("The Sound of Perseverance") and Bobby Koelble ("Symbolic"). The vocals are being taken care of by EXHUMED's Matt Harvey and Charles Elliott of ABYSMAL DAWN and BEREFT.

Harvey replaced OBSCURA vocalist Steffen Kummerer due to visa issues and had only nine days to learn his entire set.

For more information, go to this location.

Chuck died on December 13, 2001 after a battle with pontine glioma, a rare type of brain tumor.

Bassist Peter Iwers and guitarist Niclas Engelin of Swedish metallers IN FLAMES were interviewed by Gilles Lartigot of "Heavy Metal Food", the Radio Metal column associating metal music with cooking. Check out the question-and-answer session below.

Iwers and IN FLAMES guitarist Björn Gelotte are partners in a restaurant in their hometown of Gothenburg with a focus on "quality and service." Named 2112 as a tribute to RUSH's "2112" album, the establishment had its grand opening in April 2011.

2112 was recently nominated for the "Best Restaurant" award (Göteborgspriset) by the Swedish magazine Nöjesguiden Göteborg.

"We decided to open a place that was part restaurant with fine dining and part pub with a great selection and a good bar menu," Iwers and Gelotte told GAFFA. "Both of us love to go out and drink and eat and that is exactly what you can do here. You can start in the restaurant and continue in the pub, or vice versa."

2112 is located at Magasingatan 5 in Gothenburg.

For more information, visit www.restaurant2112.com.

Fan-filmed video footage of IRON MAIDEN's June 27 concert at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York can be seen below.

The band's setlist was as follows:

01. Moonchild
02. Can I Play With Madness
03. The Prisoner
04. 2 Minutes To Midnight
05. Afraid To Shoot Strangers
06. The Trooper
07. The Number Of The Beast
08. Phantom Of The Opera
09. Run To The Hills
10. Wasted Years
11. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
12. The Clairvoyant
13. Fear Of The Dark
14. Iron Maiden

Encore:

15. Aces High
16. The Evil That Men Do
17. Running Free

The 34-date "Maiden England" tour is IRON MAIDEN's most extensive visit to North America for many years and includes a number of other cities the band have not played in a very long time such as Atlanta, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Sacramento, and places like Sarnia (Ontario, Canada) and Cadott, Wisconsin where they have never visited before. The tour is based on the band's "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son Tour", with a setlist almost exclusively from the 1980s featuring all the classic songs and hits. The same spectacular stage set as was used on the original 1988 tour has been recreated, complete with a magnificent light show, pyro and a newly reincarnated Eddie!

When asked by The Aquarian Weekly what the reason was behind choosing a setlist like that of the famous 1988 excursion, 7th Tour Of A 7th Tour, IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith said, "Well, we just thought it'd be fun to revisit that period in time — there were some good songs there. It's just great revisiting some of the songs we haven't played for a long while. It keeps us fresh and it's just, you know, we got a lot of new fans coming on board now, a lot of younger fans who probably never saw or were around when we did that tour. That's one factor of it for us revisiting that time and I think there's some good songs from that period, so it's fun to do."

On the topic of how this tour differs from those in the recent years, Adrian said, "Well, this is a new set; we haven't taken the stage set out, for example, so it's a new stage set. We got new effects. I think it's going to be actually more spectacular than the original tour and probably, technically, you got more stuff now to put into a live show in terms of lighting and that, which will make it quite spectacular, so I think this is going to be pretty special, this tour. What with the songs, we love playing these songs, and with the stage set and effects and of course we got Eddie, he's back, so it should be fun."

The extraordinary and legendary ALICE COOPER is IRON MAIDEN's very special guest on all shows up to July 21. After that date, special guest will be COHEED AND CAMBRIA, the inspiring, cutting-edge band from New York.

For a complete list of "Maiden England" 2012 tour dates, visit IronMaiden.com.

"Periphery II: This Time It's Personal", the highly anticipated sophomore album from Maryland-based experimental, progressive metallers PERIPHERY, can be streamed in its entirety in the YouTube clip below. Due in North America on July 3 via Sumerian Records and in Europe on July 16 through Century Media Records, the CD will feature guest appearances by John Petrucci (DREAM THEATER), Guthrie Govan (THE ARISTOCRATS) and Wes Hauch (THE FACELESS).

In a recent interview with Metal Assault, PERIPHERY guitarist Misha Mansoor stated about the band's musical progression since its debut record, "Our first album was pretty diverse, and with that we created a framework so that we could kind of experiment and push in any one of those directions, and not have it be something weird or something that sounds forced, you know. There's always been an aspect of that sound and we're just expanding on it further. And I think very true to that, that's what we did on this album. We're still kind of going in all of those directions, but a little bit further, and with a little bit more experience, you know."

He added, "This album is PERIPHERY the band as opposed to my project with a bunch of dudes. This is really the first time we've been able to work together as a band and write an album together. I think that's really cool because it's not just me. You're hearing so much more, you're hearing something that's greater than the sum of its parts."

When asked about the bonus material that will be included with special editions of "Periphery II: This Time It's Personal", Misha said, "That's going for the European release only, and it's something we'll release in other territories a little bit later. We did this track, it was Spencer's [Sotelo, vocals] idea. He really likes SLIPKNOT, and we were so tired in the studio that we wanted to break the pace and do something different. Spencer wanted to do this cover of 'The Heretic Anthem' by SLIPKNOT, and I actually played drums on it. I wanted to do it so differently that the engineer played guitar, and it was just a fun little thing. But we decided to put it up as a bonus track and I think it actually came out really cool. I'm really happy with the way it came out. And the other one is this instrumental track that I had to put together at the last minute. It's a track we've been wanting to put out for a while now, and it worked out well. This is a good way to put it out. It's an instrumental that we used to play live, called 'Far Out'. So that's how we compiled the bonus material for some of the territories."

"Periphery II: This Time It's Personal" track listing:

01. Muramasa
02. Have A Blast (feat. Guthrie Govan)
03. Facepalm Mute
04. Ji
05. Scarlet
06. Luck As A Constant
07. Ragnarok
08. The Gods Must Be Crazy!
09. Make Total Destroy
10. Erised (feat. John Petrucci)
11. Epoch
12. Froggin' Bullfish
13. Mile Zero (feat. Wes Hauch)
14. Masamune

SEVENDUST will enter the studio on September 5 to begin working on its new album for an early 2013 release.

SEVENDUST's latest CD, "Cold Day Memory", sold around 27,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 12 on the Billboard 200 chart.

The band's previous effort, "Chapter VII: Hope and Sorrow", opened with 25,000 units back in April 2008 to land at position No. 19.

"Cold Day Memory" was released on April 20, 2010 on the band's own 7Bros. Records, through Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group. The CD — produced by Grammy Award winner Johnny K (DISTURBED, STAIND, 3 DOORS DOWN, PLAIN WHITE T'S) — was the group's first new album with its original lineup back together with Lowery's return after his departure in 2003.

CALL ME NO ONE — the new project featuring Lowery and SEVENDUST drummer Morgan Rose — released its debut album, "Last Parade", on June 5. The CD's first single, "Biggest Fan", was made available to purchase on iTunes on April 24.

SEVENDUST guitarist John Connolly and bassist Vince Hornsby also recently launched a new project, joining forces with CREED/ALTER BRIDGE drummer Scott Phillips in a new outfit called PROJECTED.

PROJECTED has already completed recording its debut disc, to be made available later in the year.