Italian metallers ELVENKING have posted the cover art for their forthcoming new album, The Pagan Manifesto. The band also recently announced that Amanda Somerville (AVANTASIA, KISKE/SOMERVILLE) has contributed guest vocals to a 13-minute track that will be featured on the album. The band will be touring with GAMMA RAY and RHAPSODY OF FIRE in March/April.
ELVENKING vocalist Davide “Damna” Moras comments: “It is always very easy to talk about ‘the last album.’ To say how cool it is, how the band has improved and created better music, better lyrics and so on.
“This new ELVENKING album is something completely different, though. We are not talking about a simple new album with a bunch of new songs. We are talking about something bigger. It is a piece of life… of our life, but also our fans’ life. It is the ELVEN dream come true. It is our ultimate manifesto where music, lyrics and spirit unite. It’s not just about music… there’s a whole concept behind this album… It’s like when stars align, you know? And this time we are ready! But we’ll talk about it more specifically very soon.”
Guitarist Aydan adds: “I consider this album to be the closest to the original conceptual idea of the band. When we founded ELVENKING, our idea was to mix up strong epic and intense music with influences from folklore and with lyrics based on our personal idea of life and what we consider as a personal sort of paganism. Through the years, we moved steps away from our original path in search of new stimuli and way to express ourselves as songwriters, but now we want to carve the word ELVENKING in our music and idea where the origins of our band are.”