AVATAR Announce New Album 'Don't Go In The Forest'

Consider this your fair warning, but whether you heed it or not will make all the difference!

The heavy metal visionaries collectively known as AVATAR — vocalist Johannes Eckerström, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, bassist Henrik Sandelin, and drummer John Alfredsson — are thrilled to announce the thoroughly fitting October 31st release of their latest masterwork Don't Go In The Forest. 

The band also shared the video for ‘Tonight We Must Be Warriors’.

Watch it HERE / Pre-save the album HERE

“It has become a necessity to me over the years to be able to answer one question: Why is this important? It can't be just another album. We need to discover something, try something else. It has to come from the heart. What is being said matters,” says vocalist Eckerström regarding the release of single, ‘Tonight We Must Be Warriors’.

PHOTO CREDIT: JOHAN CARLÉN

“In days of isolation and despair, maybe we need to be reminded that we are not alone? We are one of many. Maybe we also need a reminder that the burden is on our shoulders? To get it done, we need to do the fighting ourselves. In our shared pain, we find solidarity.”

“The secret ingredient is that we still feel like we're just getting started. ‘Don't Go In The Forest’ is an album filled to the brim with stuff we've never done before,” continues Eckerström. “It's all songs and concepts we haven't been close to touch until now. The mind is wild and we have lost ourselves in the darkest woods, filled with memories, and fantasies. Forbidden thoughts that must be spoken.

“It would have been impossible to make this album at any other time than now. That's all we ever wanted, and I think you'll find it's all you ever wanted too.”

The track listing for Don't Go In The Forest will be revealed in due course. The band has previously shared ‘CAPTAIN GOAT’ and ‘In the Airwaves’. Will you enter the forest via the new track?

Avatar have gone from strength to strength over the past several years. There's the critically acclaimed, 2023-released album Dance Devil Dance, which included rock radio chart topper ‘The Dirt I'm Buried In’. Not to mention the scores of sold-out headline shows across the globe and having an actual fossil named after them. The list goes on and on. But the past is the past and the future is, well, dark in the best possible way and that's JUST how Avatar like it!

So in true ‘Tonight We Must Be Warriors’ style, Avatar will spend the foreseeable future (if not forever) on the road starting with the band's biggest show EVER in Mexico City, followed by a huge headline tour in 2025/26 and then a summer tour supporting Metallica.

Back in April the band announced their A Night To Be Torn Apart headline tour, with Alien Weaponry as special guests, but have now rebranded the tour as In the Airwaves along with announcing additional support from Norwegian Feminist Black Metal group Witch Club Satan, as well as Norwegian Death Jazz band Agabas for select dates.