"Raise Your Fist", the new album from German metal queen Doro Pesch, sold 585 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The CD landed at position No. 65 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.

In a recent interview with Lords Of Metal, Doro stated about the the switch from her previous label home (AFM Records) to Nuclear Blast, "The record deal with AFM was up and I decided to check if some other options were available. My current guitar player, Bas Maas, who was in AFTER FOREVER, told me that he had good experiences with Nuclear Blast and that it was a great label to be on. Furthermore, there were several people that I've worked with in the past that moved from AFM to Nuclear Blast, like Sandra Eichner and Markus Wosgien, and they also told me that it would be a good label for me. Of course, Nuclear Blast is bigger than AFM and has worldwide distribution, which is also very important for us, as we play shows across the globe. I'm still very good friends with the people from AFM and I was also very much involved in the release of the compilation album 'Under My Skin' that was released by them a couple of weeks ago, as I wrote liner notes for all the songs that are on that album."

Regarding the departure of guitarist Joe Taylor and addition of Bas Maas, Doro said, "I don't think that it made a very big difference on the songwriting process, but Bas is a person that's full of life and very energetic. You can hear that on 'Revenge', which is a song that he wrote the riff for, which is a very high-energy and fast type of song. Furthermore, he's great as a live guitarist as well, as he really knows how to rock on stage and that's very important for a show. I'm still very good friends with Joe, who's been in the band for about sixteen years, and he joined us on stage during the show we did last October in New York. But the non-stop touring that we do is a hard lifestyle and he really wanted to take some time off from that."

On the topic of her expectations for "Raise Your Fist", Doro said, "I will be very happy when the fans say they love the record; that's the most important for me. I really don't keep up with numbers, which are, in my opinion, great to talk about afterwards. It's nice if we will be able to make the charts again, but to me, those kind of things don't really matter. Much more important is that the fans dig the songs in a live situation and, since we already played 'Raise Your Fist' several times live, the first signs are very positive."

"Raise Your Fist In The Air" video:



"Raise Your Fist" album cover: