GRAVE DIGGER Announces Release Date For New Album

Long-running German metallers GRAVE DIGGER have set a January 13, 2017 release date for their new album via Napalm Records.

The band will support fellow Germans BLIND GUARDIAN on a North American tour this fall.

Said GRAVE DIGGER frontman Chris Boltendahl: “New album, new tour! We're currently in the recording studio and we are so much looking forward to be touring again! We'll present a huge and intensive metal package live on tour together with MYSTIC PROPHECY, as well as on our album! 36 years of GRAVE DIGGER — metal is alive. Forever!"

GRAVE DIGGER's last CD was "Exhumation - The Early Years", a 35th-anniversary album containing re-recorded versions of the band's "absolute classics with a dynamic and powerful sound of 2015," according to a press release.

In a 2014 interview with Metal Blast, Boltendahl stated about GRAVE DIGGER's longevity: "This is the kind of music that I wanted to do when I was 12. When I was 18, I wanted to be a metal star. I worked hard for that, and I've always believed in the music I make. We've always gone our own way through the metal scene, and that's what has allowed us to be here. We are here, stronger than ever!"

Boltendahl also credited GRAVE DIGGER's strong work ethic for giving the band the inspiration to keep going, even in the hardest of times.

"We are Germans; we are very hard-working guys," he said. "We have a very straight kind of thinking, so if we start with something, we really want to carry on with it until the end. That's the magic of GRAVE DIGGER; we're always working hard. Our career goes up and down, we have good times and bad times, but we never think about stopping. We always want to give people the best we can do."

GRAVE DIGGER's last collection of all-new material, "Return Of The Reaper", was released in July 2014 via Napalm Records. The CD was recorded at Principal Studios (KREATOR, IN EXTREMO, GRAVE DIGGER) in Senden, Germany.