All hail ye brethren of the Hammer,

It has been an exciting time for the Road lately. Where to start? Well first of all there are going to be some new additions to the merchandise page soon that you will want to check out. New reissue stuff coming out and more shirts will be coming also. Our travels took us to the Warriors of Metal festival just outside of Columbus Ohio and wouldn’t you know it 10 minutes after we arrived at the festival the place was rocked by a huge storm that left the festival grounds looking like a battle zone. It was sort of like a tornado so all us felt right at home haha. That is all of us except for Neudi. They just don’t have storms like that in Germany. It was quite the experience for him. Welcome to America mate. They finally made enough repairs to the area that the show went on later that night. It was only Exxplorer and us that ended up playing after about 5 hours or so. But we did get to play for about an hour and we just went ahead and ripped it up. It was an honor to play for all of those fans that had come from far away to see us and for everyone that braved the elements and still held their hammers high. It actually turned out to be a pretty good show and definitely an experience that will not be soon forgotten. After the festival we flew back to Wichita Kansas to 100 plus degree weather with Neudi wondering why anyone would want to live in the states I think hahaha. He got used to it and I do believe eventually he had a great time with us. We worked in the studio for a few days and laid down all the drum tracks for the new Manilla Road album. I think everyone is really going to like this one. We are now just finishing up on a few guitar and bass tracks and cleaning up the vocal tracks as well. It should only be a few weeks and we will have all the recording finished. Then it will be onto the mix. After we finished with the drum tracks we showed Neudi how Americans celebrate our Independence Day by taking him out to a place where lots of people go to blow up stuff. And blow up stuff we did. It was like WWIII out there and I’m not sure Neudi knew what to think of that either. Introduced him to Chicken Fried Steak and we both decided it’s a lot like schnitzel. We played a show at the Port Of Wichita in our hometown that was a rip roaring night. Thanks to all of you that came out and made that night the cool party that it was. We did a BBQ Kansas style courtesy of Rick Fisher and his family out on his farm so Neudi got to see first hand what a hay bale and cows looked like haha. It was a great time and the food was great. We also met up with Randy Foxe for a brunch and it was great to see him and talk with him again. We should have done that years ago. Anyway it turned out to be such a great time for all of us. Mark Anderson was around also so it was like a Manilla Road reunion sort of. Man it was good to hang out with those guys again. We did a bunch of photos and filming of interviews and the likes. Neudi and I did an interview at Bacon Rock Radio Studios which was just as fun as it gets when it comes to being on the radio. We finally took the chains off of Neudi and let him return to the Fatherland. But we will be hitting the road with him again soon at the Noctis Festival in Calgary Alberta Canada in late September and then it will be on to Athens Greece and the Up The Hammers festival. The new Hellwell album Beyond the Boundaries of Sin is in my greedy little paws as we speak and the packaging is remarkable. It looks good and sounds good also. It will be officially released in Europe August 17th on High Roller Records and in mid September on Shadow Kingdom Records in the States. Check it out there are a couple of songs that you can hear from the project on the sidebar of this page. Thanks to all of you who have been attending our shows and for making this little tour really cool for us. A lot of good things are happening and it appears that we will have an even bigger announcement to make very soon so don’t change that channel and stay tuned for more information on how to rid your cellar of zombies.

Up The Hammers & Down The Nails

Shark