German thrashers HATRED are the first of two lucky bands chosen from the United We Rock Band Contest currently running across the globe, to open the 6th edition of the Desert Rock Festival set to be held at Dubai Festival City on Friday, March 6th.

The lineup for this year’s Desert Rock Festival will feature: MOTÖRHEAD, ARCH ENEMY, OPETH, CHIMAIRA, AUGUST BURNS RED, NERVECELL, HATRED and one more act.

Center Stage Management (CSM) turned to the most creatively recognized agency TBWA-RAAD to contribute their expertise to Desert Rock Festival’s image revamp for its sixth and heaviest edition.

TBWA-RAAD immediately thought of contacting Christian Lorenz Scheurer, the concept artist/director behind The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Final Fantasy, Titanic and video game Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King to name a few, who was very enthusiastic about the project.

About Metal Lives...

“Approaching TBWA-RAAD was a crucial element of the strategy to revamp Desert Rock Festival’s image, reflecting the uniqueness of this heavy metal festival” explains Mathilde Montel, PR & Marketing Manager of CSM.

“This year Desert Rock will be a one-day festival; CSM has chosen to dedicate the festival to heavy metal, rewarding its loyal fans by celebrating the genre. Over the years, we noticed the strong influence of heavy metal in the region and 2009 will focus on what the majority wants to come and see perform live. Christian came on board because he felt the theme of the campaign Metal Lives was “really cool and worthy of international work”. His artwork shows the heart of a living metal monster representing Desert Rock Festival, with the line-up printed on top: MOTÖRHEAD, ARCH ENEMY, OPETH, CHIMAIRA, AUGUST BURNS RED, NERVECELL and two unsigned bands from various competitions (to be announced end of January). Another design will be downloadable as a desktop wallpaper only.

About Christian Lorenz Scheurer...

Christian began his career working on several movies in Europe as well as a number of award-winning commercials and graphic novels, for which he received the prestigious Philip Morris award.

Shortly after, Christian was hit by lightning and after a successful recovery, he realized that life is too short and that he needed to quickly pursue his dream of going to work for movies in Hollywood. Armed with his portfolio of sketches, he knocked on the door of Digital Domain where he was employed as a concept artist in the New Media Department. Before long, he was hired on his first Hollywood film, The Fifth Element.

For the next two years, Christian L. Scheurer worked as a freelance designer on a number of commercials, theme parks and feature films such as Titanic, Dark City, What Dreams May Come and The Matrix.

Christian was one of the first Hollywood designers to join Square One in Honolulu, Hawaii to work on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

After spending 2 years as a concept artist on the film, he switched to the Games division, where he involved in designing the video game Final Fantasy IX.

He also did digital concept and matte art for Squares contribution to the Animatrix project.

He is currently visual consultant to industry leaders such as Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of Final Fantasy), whose games are forthcoming for Microsoft, David Perry (Shiny, Inc.), creator of The Matrix games, and Will Wright (creator of the Sims), whose latest project «Spore» has garnered worldwide attention.

Visit www.desertrockfestival.com on Sunday , February 1st 2009 to watch the exclusive interview of Christian L. Scheurer, the concept artist behind Desert Rock’s revamp.