THIS DAY HAS TAKEN A TURN FOR THE WORSE

Just when we were feeling unusually upbeat about Valentine’s Day, what with a new Amon Amarth track and yet another new track from Scale the Summit‘s next album (which is called “Gallows” and is streaming here), we got an e-mail from Andy Synn with nothing but “I am in mourning” in the subject line, and a link. A fucking depressing link . . .

. . . to a news item reporting that one of our favorite metal bands on the planet, God Dethroned, is disbanding. Unfortunately, it’s official, and confirmed in a statement by the band’s guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/mastermind/World War I historian, Henri Sattler.

This is particularly surprising since Sattler has been quoted as saying the band’s next album would be the completion of a trilogy about World War I that began with Passiondale and 2010’s amazingly good Under the Sign of the Iron Cross.  (more after the jump, including Sattler’s statement . . . and a song)

Perplexing or not, this seems to be an accomplished fact — or it will be accomplished by the end of 2011. Fucking depressing news for me, and since I’m basically as selfish as a starving jackal, I decided to share the depressing news because . . . well . . . misery really does love company.

Here’s Henri Sattler’s statement:

“We could have spent another year in a tour bus because the amount of offers was endless, but I just don’t feel like touring anymore. People told me to take a break for a year or maybe two, but as I’m an ‘all-or-nothing-at-all’ type of person, I decided to call it quits. Not immediately, but in December of this year we will definitely play our last show. That’s gonna be at the Eindhoven Metal Meeting in Holland.

I’m very proud of what we achieved with the band, but the time has come for new challenges. I would like to thank all of our fans for their support for all these years.”

I can’t imagine someone as musically talented and as intellectually restless as Sattler will simply exit the world of metal. So I’m going to interpret that reference to “new challenges” as a sign that the future will bring us something new, something different, but something just as powerfully good as what God Dethroned has consistently given us for many years. Makes me somewhat less miserable to believe that.

It will also make me somewhat less miserable, though maybe somewhat more melancholy, to listen to this (from the last album):

God Dethroned: Storm of Steel