Grammy-nominated alternative outfit, Skillet, have now released their eight album "Awake", the follow up to their 2006 breakthrough project, Comatose. The band, John Cooper (singer/bassist), Korey Cooper (keyboardist/vocalist), Ben Kasica (guitarist), and Jen Ledger (drummer/vocalist) teamed up with all-star producer Howard Benson (Daughtry, My Chemical Romance, The All-American Rejects), to deliver an album that is sure to have plenty of anthems, smash singles, and concert sing-a-longs. This album is quite different from their last LP "Comatose". New drummer Jen Ledger really stepped up and provides a different style of drumming, and sings backup vocals on some tracks which really add a different sound to the album. “Monster,” the first single off the album, is loaded with towering riffs and unbridled rock n’ roll abandon. The band will be on this year’s Alive & Awake Tour which will kick off in late September and run through November.

Finnish Goth Metal band To/Die/For have decided to disband, citing years of battles with promoters for their decision to disband.

Singer Jape Peratalo tells fans the last four years have been "stressful" and he felt he had to take a break to save his sanity. In a post to fans, he writes, "Since 2005, we have been through so many s**tty things. We have been unlucky to meet so many s**tty promoters etc... Those so-called promoters ruined some of our tours, and are also one of To/Die/For's killers... A few a**holes really can kill you! "The Italy visit a couple of years ago and U.S. tour (of) 2007 really sucked a huge part of my/our energy and motivation. It was a miracle that I continued after U.S tour until these days. The cancellation of a South American tour was the last straw for Peratalo, who adds, "One booking agency tried to handle our first South American tour and... this did not work.

The past three years for Canadian rock band Nickelback has been one hit single after another, based off of All The Right Reasons. The album has gone 7x Platinum in the United States alone and the band has reached a level of success that most can only dream of. So how can a band top their biggest selling album? If you’re Nickelback, it’s by recruiting producer Mutt Lange, of Def Leppard and AC/DC fame, and cranking everything up a couple notches. The ballads are more emotional and the rockers have a clean sheen to them, helping to mask the male chauvinist viewpoints of Kroeger and company in the lyrics. Dark Horse is the sound of a band taking their success and showing it off for the world to see, whether they want to take a gander or not. It’s hard to take the band seriously with titles like “S.E.X” and “Something In Your Mouth,” yet Kroeger spends the entire album trying to make the listener believe every word out of his mouth. It’s laughable at times; you can’t take a band seriously with choruses like “tease them all by sucking on your thumb; it’s so much cooler when you don’t pull it out, you look so much cuter with something in your mouth.”