LORDI To Release New Studio Album Next Spring

Finnish hard rock monsters LORDI have inked a deal with Atomic Fire Records. The band recently completed recording a new album that will see the light of day in the spring of 2023.

LORDI comments: "We are damn proud to announce that LORDI are joining the impressive ranks of Atomic Fire Records! We're quite psyched up to stir the pots with Markus Wosgien, Flori Milz and their fantastic team.

"Leaving AFM Records (thanks a million, Jochen) was not an easy decision for us since the support there was always great!

"Stay tuned monster maniacs, the next era is all set and ready and awaiting just right around the corner..."

Atomic Fire Records label founder/A&R Markus Wosgien adds: "With LORDI, we are happy to welcome another heavyweight of the heavy metal scene to Atomic Fire Records. 20 years ago, their fantastic debut, 'Get Heavy', was released and you simply had to love them! The combination of their monster image with traditional '80s metal was a real joy on every single one of their albums and is always a guarantee for a true metal inferno live on stage.

"What Mr. Lordi and his monster clan recently created on the seven-CD package 'Lordiversity' still leaves me speechless and will probably never be seen again in this form.

"We are looking forward to the next chapter with some new monster anthems par excellence!"

Last year, LORDI released no less than seven new studio albums. The LPs marked the first new music from LORDI since the arrival of 2020's "Killection", a fictional compilation album which contained songs that LORDI would have written had the band existed between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s. Each album in the "Lordiversity" box featured a different genre approach: hard rock, disco, progressive rock, heavy metal, AOR, thrash/speed metal and industrial metal.

This past June, LORDI recruited Kone as the replacement for its departed founding guitarist Amen-Ra (a.k.a. Amen). Kone made his live debut with LORDI at the Rock In The City festival in Kuopio, Finland.

LORDI caused a sensation by winning the 2006 Eurovision with "Hard Rock Hallelujah", which in turn made the band's third release, "The Arockalypse", a hit throughout Europe. On the back of their Eurovision win, they scored a lucrative series of promotions including LORDI-branded cola, boiled sweets and credit cards; and played live at the MTV European Music Awards. A square was renamed in LORDI's honor in the Lapland city of Rovaniemi; a LORDI-themed postage stamp was issued in Finland and the group starred in its first film, called "Dark Floors".

With their monster-movie stage persona, LORDI seemed a most unlikely choice to represent their country in the Eurovision Song Contest. So you can imagine how many people were shocked when the group not only claimed top honors, but also earned the most points in the venerable event's history.

In a 2017 interview with MariskalRock, LORDI leader Mr. Lordi stated about the band's connection to Eurovision: "There was a time a couple of years ago — well, more than a couple — when I really, really, really hated that everybody's always asking about the goddamn Eurovision; there was a time. Nowadays I have come to terms with it. It's, like, okay, I'm actually proud that we are part of Eurovision history and I am proud that Eurovision is part of this band's history. I mean, it is a big part of our awareness. Because the awareness of the band would be so different, it would be so much smaller, without that one TV show ten years ago."

He continued: "I absolutely don't regret that — absolutely not. Because I have nothing bad to say about Eurovision itself, but the problem that we have had in the years is the people who actually don't know anything else except for the fact that we were on Eurovision. And that is a big stamp to get out of — it's like a fucking tattoo, you have a fucking tattoo on your forehead that says 'Eurovision.' And that is something that really, really, really drove me nuts some years ago; I was really struggling with that.

"I have come to terms with it — it's all right; I mean, it's cool," he said. "I am proud of it. And every May, when there's a new Eurovision, I know that my phone will start ringing and people will ask my opinions and then we get requests: 'Do you wanna come to this country's semifinals? Do you wanna come here?' And for years we said, 'No, we don't wanna. We don't want to.' But now, we're, like, 'Fuck it! Let's do it. What the hell?' I mean, c'mon, it's all fun, and it's part of our history, and the Eurovision, they really want us to come there, because, let's face it, we are one of those winners that people still remember."