rocking the summit

Hey peeps,

Been pretty busy lately, so I haven't had much time to post on here, but I guess I should, since the album release is just around the corner.

First of all, I want to thank all of our Chilean fans for making our last tour such a memorable experience!

It started off with our appearance at the Cumbre del Rock Chileno festival (Summit of Chilean Rock), but I almost didn't make it in time! On the day I was supposed to travel the Madrid Airport was closed down due to snow and all flights were cancelled. I was traveling from San Sebastián in Northern Spain, so I just had to go back home and wait for the next day. I flew into Madrid on Saturday and it was utter chaos there. Hour-long queues for the customer service desks, pissed-off travelers everywhere, and riot police wandering around just so no one would get any crazy ideas. A pretty tense situation, I tell you. In the evening, around the time my flight was due to depart, I still didn't know if I actually had a seat or not. Meanwhile, the other guys, who had traveled from London and were already in Santiago, were deliberating on what to do. There was even talk of playing the gig with several guest singers, which I would have paid to see myself! Anyway, we didn't reach that point as I was allowed to embark and arrived in Santiago on the day of the show.


The gig itself was awesome, despite some minor glitches which I attribute to the heat and the jetlag (and the beer!). People had been standing in the sun for the whole day, but we were able to raise their energy level again and it was a fucking blast. We should be able to post some video footage of the show pretty soon.

Kudos also to the organization, as it all ran really smoothly. Nice atmosphere, loads of old and new friends, couldn't have been better.

The rest of the tour was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair, as always in Chile when you tour secondary markets, but the fans more than made up for it with their crazy behavior during the shows. We even premiered a track off the new album, “21st Century Paranoia”, and while the moshing stopped as people tried to actually listen to it, I feel it went down really well and is probably bound to be in our setlist for a long, long time.

So now we're back in Europe, gearing up for the album release. Our new friend Fran has already finished the artwork and it looks awesome. We didn't really have to tell him what to do, he just kept coming up with cool stuff, so it was quite a relaxed process, despite the tight deadline we were on. He truly is a master of the Photoshop!

Promos have already gone out to the press, and the comments on the album have been great so far. Not many reviews have come in yet, but we were already told “White Hell” landed on #5 of the monthly writer's chart in the German Rock Hard magazine, which is amazing! We're really looking forward to all of you being able to hear it, as we think it is our best piece of work ever. And I know everybody says this, but, the more I listen to the album, the more I like it!

Leading up to the release date we want to ask you, our fans, to give us a hand supporting the release and making this our biggest album yet. We want to make the week prior to the release “Criminal Week”, and we ask you to add us to your favorites on MySpace, add the new songs to your profiles, email your friends about the album, post banners, and whatever else you can think of!

The track “21st Century Paranoia” is well over the 10,000 plays mark on MySpace, so I guess we're on the right track!

Last but not least, everyone out there with a Facebook profile can now become a fan of CRIMINAL here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Criminal/53291982115

Horns up!

Anton

white hell starts now!

Hi again,

The recording of our new album is progressing very nicely, so I thought I'd just give you a quick update...

Two weeks ago, Zac recorded all of his drum tracks in only two days. That's 14 songs in two days! We were just sitting there with our jaws dropped, completely in awe of what Zac was doing on his kit. We got some of it on video, so we will hopefully post a clip on YouTube soon for all you drum freaks. Let me just tell you, this album will contain the sickest drumming ever heard on any CRIMINAL album!

During the following week we recorded all rhythm guitars and guitar overdubs, and it's sounding pretty fucking phat! Even though he was just doing overdubs, Rod did some serious shredding, so I can't wait until we get to record his actual solos.

I also started doing some vocals, and I think I've found a very comfortable, somewhat deeper tone. I think the vox sound most similar to what I did on “Cancer”. The other guys loved it, so I must be doing something right.

It's going to be really tough to decide on which songs to include on the album, as we all agree that 14 would be just too much. It's probably going to be between 10 and 12, and I expect some heated discussions, but it's hopefully all going to be for the best.

One thing we've been able to decide already is the album title – it's going to be called “White Hell”. Some of our older fans might recall that one of our early songs, that never made it onto an album, was called “White Hell”. The song itself won't be included on this album either, but we liked the sound of the title and the way it is open for interpretation.

“White Hell” could be many things, a hell of cocaine abuse, or a hell of racism and intolerance, or driving through Europe in the middle of winter in a van with no heating – which we actually did on the Six Feet Under tour! The concept of the original song was someone waking up in an emergency room, not knowing how or why they got there – which is actually based on a real-life experience – and this is what we are going to try and depict on the album cover in a very nightmarish way. Our long-time cover designer Claudio Bergamin has already gone to work on the cover, and I expect it to be killer as always!

We will spend the next couple of weeks tracking the bass, lead guitar and vocals, and will begin mixing in early December. Massacre have already set a release date for February 27th, and I think having this deadline hanging above us like the Sword of Damocles will help us focus to get this fucker done once and for all!

Take care and see you all soon,

Anton

high infidelity

Heyho, let's go!

So here it is, I finally got around to posting a demo track to our MySpace, hope you like it! It is not very compressed, so you might have to turn it up (which you should do anyways when it comes to Criminal!). We had a bit of an argument about this with our bass player Danny, who engineered and mixed the demo, and he was completely against over-compressing it just to make it as loud as possible, a pretty common controversy nowadays (“Death Magnetic” anyone?).

The song in question is “The Infidel”, and it's about – you probably guessed it – religious dogmas and intolerance, and the right to stand up for the fact that THERE IS NO GOD. Musically speaking, it's pretty straight-forward thrash/death with some obvious Slayer influences, but I feel it has enough of our own ideas to make it really original and 100% Criminal!

Anyways, this is just one little appetizer, as the material for the record is incredibly varied, ranging from really technical stuff with odd time signatures, to crushing groove monsters, to all-out death metal and everything in between, so be prepared for one hell of a rollercoaster ride! We might post another demo track within the coming weeks or months just to give you a broader idea of what the new album is going to sound like, but we don't want to give too much away either.

After doing some pre-production over the last couple months, we will officially start tracking the album this weekend, beginning with the drums as usual. Since we're not doing it in a commercial studio, but at Danny's home studio instead, we're going to take a bit more time for the recording than we spent on the last couple albums, which will hopefully allow us to be more creative and put some more color and fresh ideas in there.

The album should be released around March 2009 through Massacre Records, and it will come with a bonus DVD, the contents of which we're going to announce once they're 100% confirmed. We'll keep posting updates about the progress in the studio and other details about the album, so stay tuned!

On a different front, I was up in Sheffield recently working with one of the best drummers in extreme metal on a project which should also hopefully surface in 2009, but I'm afraid I can't give away more at the moment. Speaking of side projects, Rod is busy putting together ideas for his first solo album (which I think he should have done ages ago!), Zac is involved in a prog/death metal band called The Agonist, and Dan is always working on his wonderful melodic rock band Takoma Star.

So that's it for now, see you soon!

Metal fucking metal!

Anton

megamuerte

Hi friends,

I know this update is long overdue, but by now you've probably noticed that the clocks tick differently in Criminal land, haha.


Anyway, the show with Megadeth was awesome and I want to thank everyone who went and showed us their support. There were some comments about the sound not being the best, but that is something that escapes our control, especially if you're opening for a mega-band like megadeth. But at the end of the day I think everyone involved had a good time and the 20+ hour trip was well worth it. We hope to be able to post some videos from the show in the near future, but in the meantime here's some pictures.


We are continuing work on the new album and there's loads of material already, so much so that this will probably be the first time we'll have to leave stuff out. Even Dan contributed a super brutal, straight-ahead metal song, so it looks like it's going to be quite a varied record. We hope to begin tracking in September, but unfortunately the album won't be released until early 2009, the reason being that we're in the process of switching labels. More about that once it's official.

So I ask you to have just a little more patience, and rest assured it's going to be worth the wait.


In other news, about a month ago I started doing a show for Santiago's Radio Futuro. It's called Disco Duro (Hard Disc) and airs every Sunday from 21:00 to 23:00 (Chilean time). You will probably guess what it's about... pure fucking metal of course! You can listen to it online at www.futuro.cl.


Soon (and this time I mean it) we will post one of the new songs in demo version, so watch out for that!

Aaaarrrrgh...

Anton

annihilation complete

Hey hey hey hey...

Antes que nada, ya sé que está bien avanzado el año, pero igual nunca es tarde para desearles a todos un excelente 2008.

La gira por Chile estuvo chacal! Muchas gracias a toda la gente que vino a los shows, a las bandas con que compartimos escenarios, los medios que nos apoyaron, auspiciadores y organizadores. Estuvo bien aperrado, viajamos miles de kilómetros, pero después de todo hay que decir que valió la pena. El público chileno sigue siendo el más fiel y brutal de todos. Pronto publicaremos el álbum de fotos privado (bueno, no tanto) de la gira para que se hagan una idea.

Esperamos poder volver lo antes posible, a más tardar cuando saquemos el disco nuevo, si es que no antes. Por ahí hay una posibilidad de que resulte algo que sería espectacular, pero aún no puedo decir nada.

Hablando del disco nuevo, como siempre nos persigue la maldición de Criminal y las cosas se demoran más de lo debido. Aún no hemos podido terminar el demo, ya que Dan se está cambiando de casa y todos están ocupados en una u otra cosa, pero esperamos hacerlo dentro de las próximas semanas, y definitivamente les ofreceremos un preview en nuestra página de MySpace. Y luego esperamos poder definir los detalles del nuevo álbum.

Manténganse atentos y hasta pronto!

Anton

new disorder

El último fin de semana lo pasamos grabando maquetas de cuatro temas nuevos. Tenemos la suerte que nuestro nuevo bajista, Dan, tiene toda la infra necesaria para grabar en ProTools, así que llevamos los equipos a la sala de ensayo y grabamos allí.

El proceso no estuvo exento de problemas técnicos, por lo que no alcanzamos a terminar todo, pero lo que suena hasta ahora está más que brutal.

Los temas en cuestión (algunos son títulos de trabajo):

"Invasion" - una intro épica da paso a un típico tema de Criminal, pero con muchos cambios de ritmo y algunas interesantes armonías de guitarra.

"Temptation" - tema muy metalero en cifra de 6/8, con algunas influencias de Pentagram (ya saben cuál Pentagram).

"Sons of Cain" - este me recuerda un poco a Nevermore, de nuevo con muchos cambios de ritmo y partes ultra pesadas.

"The Infidel" - 100% thrash/death de la vieja escuela, con un poco de Slayer y otro poco de Pentagram, y una sección media que en vivo dejará la zorra.

Este último tema pensamos subirlo a nuestro MySpace dentro de los próximos días, cuando esté mezclado. Puede ser que incluso lo toquemos en la gira chilena, quién sabe.

Aparte de grabar y prepararnos para la gira, hicimos una sesión de fotos con el extraordinario Sr. Claudio Bergamin. Actualmente Claudio está residiendo en Londres, lo que obviamente hace más fácil este tipo de colaboración. Bandas interesadas en trabajar con él deben contactarlo a través de su página de MySpace. Arriba pueden ver una de las fotos de la sesión.

Los mantendremos informados acerca del progreso del nuevo material y, por supuesto, cuando haya algo más concreto sobre el disco nuevo.

Metal!

Anton

the final countdown

La cuenta regresiva está en marcha... y estamos impacientes por tocar para todos ustedes.

La información completa de la gira es la siguiente:

Viernes 30 de Noviembre
El Huevo, Valparaíso (Blanco 1386)
+ NECROSIS, KAIOWAS, EXECRATOR
Preventa: $6.000,-
Día evento: $8.000,-

Sábado 1 de Diciembre
Sociedad de Artesanos, La Serena (Colón 552)
+ DISORDER, THRASH ATTACK
Preventa: $8.000,-
Día evento: $10.000,-

Domingo 2 de Diciembre
La Papa di Prato, Copiapó (Atacama 472)
+ ENGENDRO
Preventa: $8.000,-
Día evento: $10.000,-

Miércoles 5 de Diciembre
Disco La Habana, Concepción (Barros Arana 1356)
+ UDK, SOULBURNER
Preventa: $6.000,-
Día evento: $8.000,-

Jueves 6 de Diciembre
Disco New York (Camino a Niebla, Km 24)
+ GRAMMATON, BOCK
Preventa: $6.000,-
Día evento: $8.000,-

Viernes 7 de Diciembre
Teatro Novedades, Santiago (Cueto 257, Esq. Huérfanos)
+ NECROSIS, POEMA ARCANUS, NUCLEAR, MASSIVE POWER
Preventa: $10.000,-
Día evento: $12.000,-

Algunos de ustedes se han quejado por los precios de las entradas; al respecto, lo siguiente:

En primer lugar, nosotros no fijamos los precios de las entradas. El organizador de la gira nos contrata, nosotros vamos y tocamos. Estamos concientes de que, en algunos casos, el precio puede ser algo elevado, pero repito: NOSOTROS NO TENEMOS INGERENCIA EN EL PRECIO DE LAS ENTRADAS. La vez pasada alguna gente nos criticó por las bandas que telonearon, pero era exactamente lo mismo. Las decisiones de ese tipo las toma el organizador de la gira, no la banda.

Por otra parte, nos han informado que los costos para eventos de este tipo han aumentado notablemente, en especial debido a exigencias (justificadas o no) de las autoridades. Así el organizador tiene que hacer un estudio de prevención de riesgos, tener una ambulancia en "stand-by" durante todo el evento, contratar una cierta cantidad de guardias privados de seguridad, etc.

Además obviamente está el costo de los pasajes para traer la banda de Europa a Chile, que no es poco. Esperamos que comprendan estas razones, y solo me queda prometerles que haremos lo imposible para que sus lucas duramente ganadas estén más que bien gastadas. Los shows serán de cerca de una hora y media, tocaremos todos los "clásicos" y algunas sorpresas.

Nos vemos en Chile!

VAMOS DEMENTES...

Anton

north of hell

Hola todos,

Sólo un breve update para decir que nuestra gira or Chile para fin de año está confirmada! Vean las fechas en el flyer da abajo y reposteenlo donde quieran.


Los locales, teloneros, horas de inicio, etc. están siendo confirmados ahora mismo, así que les avisaremos apenas tengamos la info.

Se viene...

Anton