GREAT NEWS EVERYBODY: AXEL RUDI PELL’S NEW ALBUM IS ALMOST READY FOR RELEASE

A source close to the guitarist told me that Axel Rudi Pell was devastated when Loutallica’s Lulu came along and dethroned ARP’s The Ballads IV as the worst album of 2011. Axel had worked so very, very hard to take great songs like “Holy Diver” and turn them into unlistenable, maudlin mush — but who could have possibly foreseen the genius of Loutallica, who revolutionized the art of drek and took agony to a whole new level?

It was a heartbreaking loss, sure, but Axel Rudi Pell never lies down, never says die. And so, according to Metal Underground, ARP ” has announced that all the recordings for the new LP Circle of the Oath are finished and the mixing and mastering will be done this week.” He’ll have some stiff competition, sure — Emmure are back in the studio, and Limp Bizkit are threatening to release a new album which will make Gold Cobra sound like the first Ramones record — but ARP is confident that, yes, he can put out something an infuriating as Morbid Angel’s remix release. He’s even unveiled the cover art, so we can begin to anticipate the record’s shittiness now. He’s a giver, that Axel Rudi Pell.

Wow. So that looks like a terrible demo some kid would slip me outside of a power metal show I didn’t even wanna go to in the first place. Great work, ARP!!!

Circle of the Oath comes out March 27 on SPV/Steamhammer. I absolutely cannot wait to hear it.

-AR