Apocalyptica and Perez go for band atmosphere

Apocalyptica say their decision to bring Franky Perez onboard as singer for their next album was taken to help generate a "band feeling".

The Finnish cello metallers have worked with various singers on previous albums but this time they wanted to stick with one voice and roped in Perez, who has worked with Slash, The Doors and Scars On Broadway.

They will drop their eighth album and follow-up to 2010’s 7th Symphony in 2015.

Drummer Mikko Siren tells Thorium: “We figured out how we can develop and we can squeeze more out of ourselves and we wanted to make more of a band album. We’ve done work with orchestras and different types of things, and in the past, we worked with many, many different singers all the time and it’s been great and it has developed us as musicians.

“But now we wanted to make a band album, and we thought how to create it in the best possible way, so we decided that we’re gonna have one singer throughout the whole album, and to create it together with him and that’s a new challenge for us.

“Franky has been around and he’s a super good singer. He has a quite unique voice, which we fell in love with, and we are excited to go out with him.”

The band insist the relationship won’t spell the end for future collaborations with other vocalists. The new album will be followed by an extensive live tour with Perez.

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.