NIGHTFALL Taps TRAVIS SMITH For New Album Artwork

Reformed Greek metallers NIGHTFALL — featuring frontman and lyricist Efthimis Karadimas alongside Evan Hensley on guitar, Stathis Kassios on keyboards and Jörg Uken on drums — have tapped Travis Smith to create the artwork for their new album, "Astron Black And The Thirty Tyrants", due in late 2010 via Metal Blade Records.

Commented the group: "The band has already discussed and shared views with Travis and the outcome is expected to be unique and powerful, reflecting the epic tones and the raw anger of music through the deliberating range of elements Mr. Smith uses in his highly artistic works. His style and his perception is unique; promoting art with art is the key point here and makes us all feel great about it!"

"Astron Black And The Thirty Tyrants" is being recorded at various places, including Soundlodge in Germany, where the bulk of the sessions are taking place. It is being produced by Karadimas and Uken (who has previously worked with GOD DETHRONED, DEW-SCENTED and SINISTER). According to a press release, Jörg's "experience behind the recording desk and his soul in recording both as the new drummer of the band is a great plus for the whole production and for everybody truly into metal drumming the… old classic metal way!"

"Astron Black And The Thirty Tyrants" will contain 12 tracks for a running time of 43 minutes.

Regarding the new CD title, the group previously stated, "Tyrants represent the punishment accrued from our own actions, the allegoric way. But what about the first part of the title, Astron Black?

"The Astron refers to the bearer of light, the sun, life itself and phos that allows no secret to remain hidden for ever, the hope, the hunter, the ray slashing the monotony of nothing, the effort to breathe to cry to understand to communicate and ultimately to create, the god, the gods, the man!

"The Black refers to the endless, the eternal warm nest either within us or far above, the mystery, the epitome of arcane that asks to be conquered and the challenge that cannot be regretted, the deep, the soul attractor and fears the force’s being made of, the vessel of creation, the goddess, the womb, the woman!

"Astron Black is a fiction persona in human like body shape. Moving throughout centuries, being inspired and eventually driven by its needs and wills, this beast-cum-beauty and vice versa creature moves violently in harmonious circles known as Time. That Aenaon creature symbolises the opposite natures in universe, the duality that characterises every form of life and action whose motion generates aural waves, inking the pages of collective subconscious chronicles."

NIGHTFALL's seventh full-length album, "Lyssa: Rural Gods and Astonishing Punishments" was released in 2005 through Black Lotus Records.

For more information, visit www.myspace.com/nightfallgr.

Left to right in photo below: Jorg Uken, Stathis Kassios, Efthimis Karadimas, Evan Hensley