Rise of Allender's White Empress

Former Cradle Of Filth guitarist Paul Allender's new band has signed to Peaceville Records and launched a crowd funding appeal to help with the release of their debut album.

White Empress plan to drop their debut Rise Of The Empress on Monday, September 29. It has been mixed and mastered by Thin Lizzy and Cradle OF Filth producer Kit Woolven.

Allender says, “White Empress is the link the music scene has been so desperately missing. The band started writing together two years ago, and have slowly crafted the sound that is White Empress.

“White Empress has all the best parts of the metal scene rolled up into one band. The music is hard, but emotive. White Empress’ unique style and sound is bringing fresh life to the music scene that it’s been crying out for.”

When Paul relocated to the USA in 2012, in between working with Cradle of Filth, he decided to start work on another project with local musicians in his newly adopted home of Minneapolis.

Allender parted company with Cradle this year, sparking singer Dani Filth to claim the guitarist was more interested in his new project than Cradle Of Filth.

Allender is joined in White Empress by vocalist Mary Zimmer from Luna Mortis, Will Graney, keyboardist from Damnation Angels, Chela Harper, bass player for Coal Chamber, guitarist Jeremy Kohnmann from The Awakening, and drummer Zac Morris, who has played with many bands including Ugly Kid Joe.

The album is also set to be available through Pledge with pledgers able to download a track from Rise of the Empress.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.