This is a press release from Benevolent managment.
Benevolent are in the recording process for their upcoming debut full length album, the band is adding drum-icon Andols Herrick (ex-Chimaira) as a featured musician on the album to record one track on the record. Hadi Sarieddine, the band co-founder and lead guitarist states “It is pretty crazy thinking that Andols Herrick is going to be drumming on one of our songs; if I go back in time and tell past-me that this was happening I’d probably get a pretty sarcastic reaction.” He added “The last couple of years since we started the band have been absolutely insanely great for us; getting such great reviews for the debut record, getting signed to Spellbind Records, and now this? I can’t think that things could be any better for the band, I’m really proud of how things are coming together”.
Andols Herrick commented on his work with Benevolent and how this all came together and stated “I was approached by Hadi Sarieddine a while back about the possibility of tracking drums for Benevolent. I was quite impressed with the quality of the music and vocals.”
“I love having the opportunity to work with a great band, who happens to represent the Middle East Metal scene very well. I do know it is very vibrant having had the pleasure of performing with Chimaira at the Desert Rock Festival in Dubai back in 2009.”
The band hit the Middle East scene with strong waves with the release of their debut EP titled Divided in the year 2010, placing the band as the top names in the Metal scene on regional levels garnering fans across the world as well in Europe, USA, Japan and Asia, and Oceania. Benevolent was signed to Spellbind Records in September of 2011 (alongside label mates and Middle East metal icons Nervecell).
The band has provided previous information to the press about the direction of the next album as being a technical, dark, and progressive album that picks up where Divided left off whilst expanding the band’s sound identity. Hadi commented on the material further saying “It’s definitely a lot more technical than Divided; the songs have a lot going on and while it preserves that sound that we’ve created in our debut EP this is a step forward on many levels and it tells a story about lots of dark themes with the lyrical and instrumental direction on the album.”
As for the specific song that Andols Herrick is recording, Andols commented stating “This song presented numerous rhythmic challenges as I was learning it. If you were a drummer with limited music theory experience, I’d just say “Good luck trying to learn it!” The song is loaded with “over the bar line” guitar riffs, and I found myself, on occasion, discovering some of my transcriptions would be a sixteenth note off here or there!”
The band is set out to release the debut full length through Spellbind Records in the spring of 2012, and will be performing across the Middle East and beyond to promote the new release.
On a final note, the band’s frontman and co-founder, Fadi Sarieddine, stated “We all can’t wait to share this album with the world; I believe we have a very strong set of new songs and it’s going to be great to share the new stuff with the world. Once the album is done, it will be the begin of the next phase of this observation’s life cycle, and that is to get it all out there to as many listeners as possible worldwide; we’re excited and we absolutely cannot wait!”
To keep up with the band’s news and updates be sure to check out their official pages on the links below: (be sure to download the band’s debut EP which is available on free downloadHERE)
