BLOODBATH: No Shows This Year

Swedish death metal "supergroup" BLOODBATH has issued the following update:

"Unfortunately, we've to announce that BLOODBATH must pass this summer's festival season. Mike [Mikael Åkerfeldt] and Axe [Martin 'Axe' Axenrot] have both confirmed they're too occupied with OPETH and cannot commit to any live shows with BLOODBATH until 2010, the earliest. Recruiting live replacements for Mike and Axe has been considered, but is right now not going to be possible for technical aspects and neither appropriate for obvious reasons. So for now, we simply have to hope for more luck and better timing next year if BLOODBATH shall return to the stage. With that said, we would like to thank all promoters who's shown a great interest in BLOODBATH performing at their shows and we'd also like to send our apologies to our fans for not meeting your expectations this time."

BLOODBATH recently shot a video for the song "Hades Rising"
with director Owe Lingwall of Village Road Film. The band's performance footage was shot on location in Vallentuna outside Stockholm and "can be summoned up as some serious headbanging with lots of blood, real messy and death metal dandy!" according to the group. "The rest of the plot/storyline [was] filmed in Umeå where the footage [is also being edited]."

"The Fathomless Mastery", the new studio album from BLOODBATH, sold around 1,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The CD debuted at No. 45 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.

"The Fathomless Mastery" was previously described by the band as representing "nothing but hateful brutality." Promising its "most crushing production yet," the group's lineup on "The Fathomless Mastery" is the same as that on BLOODBATH's "Unblessing the Purity" mini-CD, which came out in March 2008:

Mikael Åkerfeldt (OPETH) - Vocals
Martin "Axe" Axenrot (OPETH) - Drums
Anders "Blakkheim" Nyström (KATATONIA) - Guitar
Jonas Renkse (KATATONIA) - Bass
Per "Sodomizer" Eriksson (ex-21 LUCIFERS, GENOCRUSH FEROX) – Guitar

BLOODBATH released a live CD/DVD digipack entitled "The Wacken Carnage" on June 2, 2008 in Europe and June 24 in the U.S. via Peaceville. The package contains footage of the band's appearance at the 2005 edition of the Wacken Open Air festival.

Fan-filmed video footage of BLOODBATH's performance at the Party.San Open Air festival, which took place August 7-9, 2008 in Bad Berka, Germany, can be viewed below (clip uploaded by YouTube user "sparkdee").