Dear Friends,
...it's been a while since you've had some news from the band and since there's been a lot of questions asked by many, we thought the time is right to give you an update from the Gammaray Camp.
About the DVD: The current status is that everything is ready so far, except for the 'Home Video' part of the Bonus section. We have made our way through quite a bit of tapes, CD's, DVD's etc. filmed by ourselves, friends, fans, crew and so on and there's a lot of material that had to be converted, cut and edited. Yesterday I spoke to the Videocompany and they told me that it was layed on ice for two weeks because they had two other shootings to do, but we should get a viewing copy by the end of the week.... let's see. This thing seems to be turning into a never ending story... sh*t, we just want to say 'done' now and announce a release date... which hopefully is going to be before summer
Gamma Ray's official South America fanclub, the FangFace-Clan, has founded a Gamma Ray community on orkut with already more than 8.000 members, news, discussions, polls and a lot more. Join them now!
As already rumoured during the last couple of weeks, it is now confirmed that GAMMA RAY will team up with HELLOWEEN on their upcoming European tour! The tour will kick off mid of November this year, and the line up will be completed by 1-2 additional acts.
Apart from very few festival appearances, this will be the first time ever both bands touring together and bears the possibility of Kai Hansen -GAMMA RAY leader and ex- HELLOWEEN member- entering the stage to jam one or the other classic Helloween-song with his former band mates!
"This is going to be a historical event for all Helloween fans, we are looking forward to have Kai and his band on our tour with us", states Helloween guitarist Michael Weikath.
Tourdates will be announced soon...
An italian Gamma Ray community was founded and can be joined @
gamma-ray.forumcommunity.netThe spanish dates of the upcoming European tour have been confirmed.
The upcoming Gamma Ray album "Land Of The Free Pt. II" will contain the following tracks with a total running time of around 65 minutes. The order of the songs might not be the final one.
1. RISING AGAIN 0:28
2. TO MOTHER EARTH 5:09
3. EMPRESS 6:22
4. RAIN 5:20
5. INTO THE STORM 3:45
6. WHEN THE WORLD 5:43
7. FROM THE ASHES 5:30
8. LEAVING HELL 4:20
9. REAL WORLD 5:44
10. HEAR ME CALLING 6:45
11. OPPORTUNITY 7:15
12. INSURRECTION 11:30
The rumour pot had been stirred only for a short while, now it's already official: Gamma Ray from Hamburg have signed with Steamhammer / SPV. Their latest album, Land Of The Free Pt. II, is scheduled for release on 19 November 2007 (Germany: 16 November 2007, US: January 2008). Band founder Kai Hansen expressed his delight at the signing: "Following our previous record company's well-documented restructuring process, we increasingly felt that it would be better to embark on a new course business-wise. The preparations for our joint tour with Helloween spawned the idea to follow Helloween's example and work with Steamhammer/SPV in future. We feel certain that this cooperation will give an extra boost to our career."
"Land Of The Free Pt. II" is scheduled for release on
19 November 2007 in Europe,
16 November 2007 in Germany,
21 November 2007 in Japan and
January 2008 in the US.
The japanese dates of the upcoming tour have been confirmed.
Dirk managed to convince his italian friend Alessio Gori who is, by the way, the leadsinger and keyboarder of the band Flashback of Anger to join Gamma Ray as keyboarder on their upcoming tour in Japan and Europe.
The show in Athens, Greece has been moved to Cultural Center Hellinikos Kosmos. Unfortunately, the show in Bukarest on November, 19th had to be cancelled.
Two weeks ago, Gamma Ray shot a promo video for the new album Land Of The Free II. Click
here to check this clip for the song Into The Storm.
There is also a little update in the tour schedule: the show in Belgrad was moved to the venue SKC and there is a new confirmed show for Spain on 17.01.2008 in Lugo.
Gamma Ray's new record company SPV Records has created the first official myspace site of the band so that the steadily growing myspace Online-Community finally can add the band to their personal friendlist. You can find this new page here. Please note that all other Gamma Ray pages which can be found in the myspace network are only private Fan Pages and
gammaraymyspace is the only official one.
Gamma Ray's latest album "Land Of The Free II" entered the charts in
Germany on position 54,
in Sweden on position 57 and
in Norway on position 98.
Thanx a lot to everybody for the big support!
The latest issues of the german heavy rock magazines Breakout (6/07) and Heavy (12/07) are featuring Gamma Ray in form of a split title story together with Helloween.
