News : Big changes for LORD

Sydney based heavy metal band LORD (not to be confused with the New Zealand based singer songwriter, Lorde) have announced the departure of drummer, Damo Costas.

If you have been following the band via their official blogs, you would have read that Damo got engaged and is hard at work on the next chapter in his life with his bride to be. Due to those reasons, Damo has taken an indefinite break away from LORD.

If you’ve followed along with our blogs on the LORD site you might have read that Damo got engaged (congrats again, guys!), got a great new day job and is saving up for a house and a future for himself and his bride to be. The stark reality of being in an underground band is it requires a lot of sacrifices of time, priorities and money. Pretty much all of us have lost a job or a relationship because we’ve put the band first. Damo has reached a point where as much as he loved being in the band, losing that job he worked so hard to get will put a lot of what he’s aiming for in the future at risk, and if it comes down to choosing between sleeping in a cheap hotel in Hamburg or making sure you’re doing the right thing by your family… well, it’s a no-brainer.

So we’d like to announce that Damo has taken an indefinite break away from LORD. Like all past LORD members, no doubt he’ll end up on a recording somewhere down the track (Mav and TY appeared on ‘Return Of The Tyrant’ and TY has probably done more work with LT since he left the band, in fact) but for all intents and purposes, Damo is no longer a touring or recording member of LORD.

Now, we loved to give Damo a hard time whenever we could, but the truth is this green kid that joined the band four years ago ended up being one of the tightest metal drummers in the country, full stop. Just listen to anything from “Digital Lies” and you’ll see what we mean. In honour of his time in the band, we’ve cut together a new clip featuring footage from the road, backstage, recording and behind-the-scenes stuff from the last four years.

Metal Obsession wishes Damo all the best for the future.

LORD launch the new single “Final Seconds” (featuring Damo Costas), taken from the band’s brand new album, ‘Digital Lies’.

For the short term Simon Batley, drummer of Sydney folk metal band Troldhaugen will fill in for some upcoming shows and TY will play special guest on a special release happening this year. Check out Simon Batley in action on LORD’s new mini documentary covering the LORD tour of Asia and Japan last year.

This will obviously leave LORD without a permanent drummer in the long term, so keep an eye out for “drummer wanted” advertisements from the band soon.

LORD are also working on a massive recording and restoration project to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Dungeon. Dungeon released six full-length albums, and toured heavily across Australia and the world.

This year, we’re embarking of a huge recording / restoration project that both celebrates the 25th anniversary of Dungeon (for which we consider LORD an extension of Dungeon – same band, different name, basically) and seeks to tie both LORD and Dungeon eras of the band together. We can’t say too much more about that at this point but we think it’s going be something everyone will be very excited about – we definitely are – and we can’t wait to tell you more when we’re able to.

This project will be one of the most expensive things we’ve ever done, however (getting an idea of the scale of it yet?) A lot of our friends and peers have turned to sites like Kickstarter or Indigogo to raise money for their projects, something we’ve considered in the past and we’ll likely take advantage of in the future, but we’ve decided to go old-school and literally Sing for our Supper by going out and raising money by performing.

Very soon we’ll be announcing a run of tour dates around Australia where we’re aiming to sell as much merch and raise as much money as we can to fund this huge recording project. You get to see us play, we get much needed money, that goes towards a cool release – everyone wins! Being Dungeon’s 25th anniversary, expect some cool old-school additions into the live set as well.

Back in 2005, Dungeon supported Megadeth on the “Blackmail the Universe” world tour in Australia and Europe. Lead vocalist and overseer Lord Tim, states that LORD is an extension of Dungeon. Basically the same band, but with a different name.

For more information go to: www.lord.net.au

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