Out May 28th Via AFM Records

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When Swedish power metal band BLOODBOUND surfaced in 2005 with their debut album, Nosferatu, it was an album that celebrated the band's admiration for metal icons like IRON MAIDEN, HELLOWEEN and JUDAS PRIEST, recorded on a small budget with no visions of grandeur behind it. With eight studio albums, a live record and an EP under their belts since then, BLOODBOUND have returned in 2021 with album #9, Creatures Of The Dark Realm, and a renewed drive to take the band even further.

Creatures Of The Dark Realm descends with scarcely two years gone since Rise Of The Dragon Empire was unleashed. The three-headed songwriting team of keyboardist Fredrik Bergh, guitarist Tomas Olsson and vocalist Patrik Selleby started from scratch, compiling song ideas they collected individually and finally ending up with 11 solid in-your-face tracks kicked off by a deceptive acoustic intro. On paper, Creatures Of The Dark Realm satisfies all the requirements of what makes a power metal band, but the listening experience is one of epic proportions. Not a single ballad in sight, the new album is an-up-tempo assault through the songs "Eyes Come Alive", "The Gargoyles Gate", "Ever Burning Flame", "The Wicked And The Weak" and the title track. BLOODBOUND is not afraid to change things up, however, offering up a heavy groove anthem with "Kill Or Be Killed" and straight-ahead commercial metal on first single, "When Fate Is Calling", always keeping things fresh from one song to the next.

Bergh: "We have a few songs that didn't make it onto the album because we want to have songs that really stick out, that have some qualities that make it interesting and fresh. But, we are in a specific genre of metal so we can't make a completely new style of music and call it BLOODBOUND. It can be tricky trying to not to repeat ourselves but I think we succeeded in doing that on the new album."

BLOODBOUND has one simple goal going into making Creatures Of The Dark Realm: make it better than the album before it. The call was to make sure it had more hooks and stronger melodies, and the results speak for themselves. Creatures Of The Dark Realm is a very melodic and an ultimately catchy album, sharing airspace with the likes of SABATON and POWERWOLF, going so far as to recall the days of classic HELLOWEEN. In that respect, BLOODBOUND have remained true to the metal that inspired them in the first place.

"If you compare this new album to Nosferatu, it's totally different because of how we evolved over the years," says Bergh, "but we always aim to come up with the best melodies we can. We take influences from all kinds of music genres of music because a good melody is a good melody. Look at bands like THE BEATLES and ABBA. Their songs are timeless because of those melodies and that is what we were aiming for. Not to sound like those bands, of course (laughs), but to write songs that capture you immediately and stay in your head for days."

Tracklist:

• "The Creatures Preludium"
• "Creatures Of The Dark Realm"
• "When Fate is Calling"
• "Ever Burning Flame"
• "Eyes Come Alive"
• "Death Will Lead The Way"
• "Gathering Of Souls"
• "Kill Or Be Killed"
• "The Gargoyles Gate"
• "March Into War"
• "Face Of Evil"
• "The Wicked And The Weak"