CB HEADLINES:
- CB wins Tuska competition!
UPCOMING SHOWS:
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Hello dear friends and fans!
As you may have noticed, things have been pretty quiet with the band lately and the reason for this is that, as a band and as individuals, we have been during the last couple of months going through a highly introvertical process of analyzing and discussing what we really want of our band, our music and - even at the risk of sounding metaphysical here - our lives as well. As a result of this process, we have come to the conclusion that, at the moment, there are such discrepancies between our aims that for now, striving towards a mutual goal as a band would probably yeild to conflicts rather than to the good and fair working spirit we have now and therefore we have come to the conclusion that under these circumstances, the right thing to do is to put Crystal Blaze on hold for now and move on pursuing our musical goals in other projects.
We can assure you that this decision was made in the best of spirit within the whole band and that there is absolutely no bad blood whatsoever involved in the decision. We simply feel that taking a break of non-predetermined length from all this is the best way to go and we want to do it now while we are still having a blast doing all this before any bad blood has a chance to boil up. Maybe we will be back after some while or maybe not, not even we can tell you, but we do not want close any doors behind us and that is the reason why we do not want to split up the band as it is now for good. Just for now, we will go our separate ways and the future shows what it holds for Crystal Blaze.
We would like to thank each and everyone of you who has listened to our music, showed up in our concerts, shared the stage with us or supported us in any way along this road! Maybe we will catch up with you again one day!
Mikael, Max, Lari, Lauri, Eerik & Juhana
As for the fans of our music, we can tell you that there is no need to sink into despair yet! The plans of a band featuring many familiar faces from Crystal Blaze are already well afoot and you can be sure that the project will carry on the Crystal Blaze -legacy with a strong sense of pride of its roots! The name, final line-up and exact genre of the group are still under discussion. More info on this project coming to this same website in the nearest future so stay tuned, folks!
We're extremely happy to announce that Crystal Blaze has won the TUSKA 2008 competition! This means that we will be performing at the official Tuska afterparty at club Virgin Oil Co. on Thursday 26:th of June. Other bands performing will be Godsplague and Silentrain.
We would like to thank everybody who voted for us and supported us through the competition. This really means a lot to us. We couldn't have done this without you! Thank you!!
Tickets for the show can be bought from Tiketti.
Update May 23rd: Thanks to everyone who has voted sofar, we really appreciate it! We're doing pretty good but still need your support the last couple of days of the voting. Remember to vote!
Crystal Blaze has been chosen to the final stage of the METAL NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2008 -competition hosted by Tuska Open Air, Stay Heavy Records and MySpace Finland. Five bands are taking part in the finals and the winner will be decided in an online voting competition. The voting takes place between Monday 19:th and Sunday 25:th of May, so in other words, this very week! The winner of the competition will play at the TUSKA OPEN AIR 2008 afterparty.
To be eligible to vote, you need to be a registered user at MySpace. MySpace users are allowed to vote once a day for their favourite artist. Now we need your support! If you already have a MySpace account, casting your vote will be really quick. And for those of you who don't, registering only takes a couple of minutes. You must be logged in to vote. Thank you for your support!
We are extremely proud to officially announce the new tighter-than-ever lineup of Crystal Blaze along with the
release of our latest recording, Beneath the sands!
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We have found the perfectly fitting personality, skill and groove to match our requirements for the new ruler of
the drummer's throne in Crystal Blaze. So, to cut a long story short, we are honoured to welcome Juhana "Juffi"
Karlsson (Amoral) as the new pulse, beat and time of CB! As said before, he did an excellent job on the new EP and seemed to
enjoy it! After seeing him in real studio action there was no question about who we would like to see playing drums in CB
and as we discussed the matter with him a few weeks later, it came obvious that he would become the 6th member of the CB family!
Once again, thank you Juffi and welcome aboard!
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In addition we have now finished mixing and mastering the four new tracks which together sum up the new style of
CB. The title track, 'Beneath the Sands', opens the demo up with raunchy riffs, a catchy chorus and extremely intense
doublebass & guitar action. The second song, 'Paradise of Lies' will bring you closer to the older Crystal Blaze with
its soaring guitar leads and groovy keyboard melodies, but beware of the thrashy part in the middle!
In 'Storm Arising' you'll find yourself in a newer wave of CB, the wall of sound in the intro turns slowly into a smooth chorus with its astral and industrial keyboards. The gentle vocal melodies, will take you away to a place, where CB has never taken you before. And finally 'My Last Scream' rushes through your mind with ridiculously fast pace and riffs that force you to bang your head along with the song.
Listening through the tracks you'll find an evolved version of the band you have either come to like or dislike,
to love or hate. We have increased the amount of ground pounding and crunchy riffs to the new material without sacrificing
any of the catchy melodies and singalong choruses typically found in CB's songs - we have even added a taste of
industrial elements to some of the songs. This new demo is absolutely the most diverse and intriguing recording
we have ever done so far, and in our opinion, it contains without question the best songs ever written by CB.
So, enjoy and please, feel free to comment the songs by writing on the guestbook or by sending us e-mail!
As mentioned before we entered Noisecamp studios on the 29th of January and started recording the next day.
Filled with high hopes and expectations we anxiously anticipated for Juhana "Juffi" Karlsson to blow our minds
away with his groovy style of playing, and as soon as he started to jam, we knew that we hadn't been
wrong in asking Juffi to record the drums on the demo! All the drums were recorded in one day, and we couldn't be
happier with the result!
Since our bass player Eerik was on tour with his other band Omnium Gatherum, we couldn't record our instruments
in the same order as before, leaving us to record all the guitars and some keyboards, even though there were no
ass kicking bass lines for us to jam with.
The last of the keyboards and all of the vocals were recorded in the last few days. Be prepared for an extremely diverse
use of Max's vocal range! He did an awesome job. We finished the first part of the recordings on the 2nd of February and now
Eerik will record the bass within the next few weeks and the mixing will be handled by Mr. McSpain, within the month or so.
We look forward to releasing the demo in a few months for the whole public, please keep patient - you won't regret it!
And finally, we have a huge surprise for all of you regarding the band's status at the moment.
We will announce it in the next update along with the publishing of the long-awaited demo!
To begin with, Crystal Blaze would like to wish everyone a happy new year. The last couple of weeks we've been laying down the finishing touches to our new songs. In December we announced that we would enter the studios to record our next release in January. All the details have now been confirmed and the start date of our recordings have been set to January 30th.
We've four brand new songs to be recorded and the whole band is really excited. The new songs are really complex. They have the trademark Crystal Blaze sound, but with a new interesting approach. It's actually pretty hard to describe, you'll just have to wait and hear them yourself. As usual, we'll provide the songs for download here on our site when the release is completed.
The drumming for our upcoming release will be handeled by drummaster Juhana "Juffi" Karlsson from Amoral. The whole band would once again like to thank him for helping us out!
The last couple of months we've been writing a lot of new material. We're very satisfied with the outcome and have decided it's time for us to enter the studios. Crystal Blaze will enter the studios in late January of 2008 to record the next promotional release. We'll keep you updated!
Even though we haven't posted many updates of the band's status lately, we've really been busy with a lot of stuff. We've been writing quite a bit of new material and we really like how it sounds! Actually, we're planning on entering the studios for a new official release sometime in the future. The exact time hasn't been determined yet, but we'll let you know when everything is confirmed.
Besides Crystal Blaze, our members have kept themselves busy with other bands aswell. Our bassplayer Eerik Purdon has joined Omnium Gatherum as a permanent member. Eerik already toured with OG as a stand-in earlier this year. Furthermore, Lauri Koskenniemi has hooked up with Elenium.
Our very own Lauri Koskenniemi also found the time to answer some questions for an interview. Read the interview in the most recent issue of Miasma magazine.
After about three years we decided that our site needed a facelift. The content of the site is pretty much the same as the old page, but with minor updates. The improved design should also make navigation on the site easier than before. Hope you like it!
...Or more like a quick revision of what has happened with the band during the last couple of months to keep all of you out there up-to-date. A lot of stuff took place during the summer so we thought a little revision would do no harm.
First of all, because this has not been officially stated anywhere, we would like to announce that the band has parted ways with our long time drummer Gustaf Standertskjöld. There is no bad blood whatsoever between the parties involved. We would like to thank Gude from all our hearts for the years he spent in the band and for his contribution to the band and its music. We would also like to wish him all the best for his future musical efforts! This also means that we are currently actively looking for a new drummer, so in case you feel like you would be up for the job, feel free to contact us at band@crystal-blaze.com.
Secondly, as you might have noticed, we won the Finnish finals of Wacken Metal Battle 2007 at Qstock festival and Oulu and performed at Wacken. We would like to thank the guys at Vertigo for giving us this unique opportunity and we would also like to congratulate the guys from Torture Squad for winning the Metal Battle! Though we did not win the whole competition at Wacken, we had one hell of a time there and we got some very encouraging feedback of our performance. There will be some kind of report coming from our Wacken trip with pictures and such soon.
Finally, once again huge thanks to Juffi from Amoral for helping us with the gigs in Qstock and Wacken - we had blast both on stage and off stage! In other Amoral - Crystal Blaze -related news, Eerik will be returning the favour to Juffi and the guys from Amoral by doing Amoral´s this Autumns Finnish gigs so in case you want to see Crystal Blaze -powered Amoral rhythm section, go and check one the gigs !
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