REDEMPTION guitarist / founder Nick van Dyk has issued the following message to the fans following reports that he is battling cancer:

"Hello friends. Thank you very much for all the expressions of concern and well-wishes. It has been a rough year behind me, but I believe I am on the mend. I went for the most aggressive treatment possible with the hopes of killing the disease, and right now there is no trace of the disease left in me. I remain on three kinds of medicine for the next three years, and I will be glad when I don't need to take it -- but in the meantime the hope is it will keep my body toxic enough to kill off any remaining cancer cells. As of now, while it's certainly not a guarantee, there is a pretty good chance that I have been cured, so long as I can tolerate this ongoing treatment.

Thanks again very much for your concern -- I hope to see many of you soon as we play out in support of Snowfall on Judgment Day."

Redemption's live schedule is currently as follows:

February

4 - Los Angeles, CA - The Whiskey
5 - Mesa, AZ - UB’s

For more info visit their official MySpace page .

BW&BK; recently caught up with van Dyk to discuss Snowfall On Judgement Day. An excerpt from the story is available below, with van Dyk comparing the band's self-titled 2003 debut to the new record.

“That was sort of a dream project I had," he says of the debut. "To be able to take music that I’d written and put out a record with famous people involved in it. I’m a vastly different and better songwriter now, and instead of me playing multiple instruments Redemption has real musicians now (laughs). One of the things that we’ve tried to do since then is combine elements that don’t usually fit together and try to make them work. We have very heavy aggressive riffing up but we also have very strong melodies. The aggressive riffing comes from me growing up listening to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands and Bay Area thrash before I got into prog. I was a fan of Forbidden before I was a fan of Genesis (laughs).”

With more metal on the menu over the course of previous record, The Origins Of Ruin, and Snowfall On Judgement Day it’s fair to say the “progressive metal” tag applies less and less to Redemption.

“That’s one of my hopes. Not that we don’t consider ourselves a progressive metal band, but we don’t want to fall into that situation where the music only appeals to a select group of self-identified music snobs. We can cross over into power metal, melodic metal, classic metal, and have the type of fanbase that gets bits and pieces of what they like out of our music.”

Go to this location for the complete story. For information on Redemption click here.