Vocalist Amanda Somerville (TRILLIUM, AVANTASIA) has posted a new video blog from the ROCK MEETS CLASSIC 2012 European tour, along with the following update:

"Full speed ahead and we blast through Sursee (barely scraping by on Friday the 13th) and Zurich in Switzerland, and then make our way back to Kempten in Germany for the good ol' cowbell award ceremony! We slip & fall, party, impersonate Hitler and Udo Lindenberg, request rodeo clowns and keep on truckin'."

The tour wrapped up on January 28th in Halle, Germany

Rock Meets Classic 2012 was an evening with Ian Gillan (DEEP PURPLE), Steve Lukather (TOTO), Jimi Jamison (SURVIVOR), Chris Thompson (MANFRED MAN'S EARTH BAND), Robin Beck, THE MAT SINNER BAND & The Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Prague.

The line-up also featured Jimmy Kresic (keyboards), Alex Beyrodt (PRIMAL FEAR, VOODOO CIRCLE/guitars), Oliver Hartmann (AVANTASIA/guitars, vocals), Martin Schmidt (drums), Amanda Somerville (TRILLIUM, AVANTASIA/vocals), Tiffany Krikland (vocals), Verena Schock (vocals), Ralf Scheepers (PRIMAL FEAR/vocals), Sascha Krebs (vocals), Bernhard Fabuljan (conductor) and Mat Sinner (bass, vocals).

Check out fan-filmed footage of the final song of the night at the Munich show below.

An excerpt from a recent interview with Somerville conducted by BW&BK;'s Carl Begai is available below:

Folks that are expecting Somerville to follow a similar path to the work she’s done for EPICA and AVANTASIA on Alloy are in for a shock. Some tracks are attitude-laden cousins to melodic rock, others are heavy-edged and bordering-on-Black Sabbath dark. The album is almost completely devoid of orchestral arrangements and features no neo-classical bombast whatsoever, carried through numerous twists and turns instead by the vocals and some almighty riffs. Bottom line: Alloy is loaded with plenty WTF moments.

“Which is a good thing (laughs). Nothing about what I do is contrived; it all comes out the way that it comes out, and sometimes it needs to be a little more conformed, I guess. Literally, as cheesy as it sounds, the music pours out of me the way that I feel it. I don’t like following formulas. My songs have a typical song structure – verse / pre-chorus / chorus – and that’s just in me, but in terms of trying to fit a certain formula, that’s not a conscious thing for me. It’s not something I want to do, either. That’s why there are no Latin choirs on the album (laughs).”
“I’ve actually gotten comparisons to Epica and After Forever. In fact, one guy made the After Forever comparison before he knew that Sander was one of the songwriters on Alloy. That kind of surprised me, but Sander does have a signature sound, but I don’t hear the similarities.”

Click here for more, including Somerville discussing working with Sascha Paeth and Avantasia bandmate Jorn Lande (MASTERPLAN) on the song 'Scream It'.

Alloy was released on November 4th in Europe and November 1st in North America. The tracklist is as follows:

'Machine Gun'

'Coward'

'Purge'

'Utter Descension'

'Bow To The Ego'

'Mistaken'

'Scream It'

'Justifiable Casualty'

'Path Of Least Resistance'

'Into The Dissonance'

'Slow It Down'

'Love Is An Illusion' (bonus track)

The first video from the album is for the track 'Coward' which can be viewed below: