GAMMA RAY

GAMMA RAY Inks Deal With Steamhammer/SPV For Release Of New Album







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 – II, is scheduled for release on November 19 (Germany: November 16, North America: 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 – II, the current album release by the group surrounding guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen, consciously refers to their 1995 classic Land Of The Free I. “Majestic presented Gamma Ray’s dark side, while its predecessor, No World Order, was more of an eighties-inspired record. This time we wanted to turn our attention to a side of the band that has always been our greatest strength: positive power.” Gamma Ray produced their new album themselves. All four musicians, Kai Hansen, Henjo Richter (guitar), Dirk Schlächter (bass) and Daniel Zimmermann (drums), are experienced enough to translate their ideas at the studio. But for the first time in ages, the band allowed themselves the luxury of enlisting outside support for certain stages of the recording process. “We wanted to have a clear head in some areas to be able to concentrate on the important things,” Hansen explains the enlistment of Tommy Newton (HELLOWEEN, UFO
, etc.) and his Area 51 studio in Celle, where the new material was mixed. Newton also took care of the drum parts as a sound engineer at Gamma Ray’s own studio.

Starting at the end of November, the band will embark on the Hellish Rock 2007/08 tour, alongside Helloween. “The idea for the tour matured during a number of major festivals, where Gamma Ray and Helloween both played. As both bands’ schedules are running parallel for the first time in years, we decided to put this idea into practice at last.“ The fans can look forward to a full Gamma Ray show, plus a nightly session together with Helloween, likely to feature a number of classics from Kai Hansen’s own Helloween era.

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