Guitarist Jarmo Puolakanaho from Finland's ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW checks in with the following update:

"It's been a long time since we've been writing a blog entry here, so I suppose it's time to summarize what we've been doing during the past 12 months.

We started our Finnish / European tour a year ago with several gigs here in Finland. You know, between 2001 and 2008, we only played four gigs (!) of which only one took place outside Oulu, our hometown (!!). There were a lot of reasons for not playing live shows during that time, and the most important reason was that between late 2001 and late 2004, we were in an inactive state - in short, this band didn't even exist at that time.

But during the last 12 months, we've been doing more gigs than ever (excluding the year 2000 that was an exception in many ways). So, thanks to all who came to see us in Finland, Romania and Russia! We still have one more gig this year - Hamburg in a couple of weeks. There may be a gig or two next year, but we want to work on our next album in 2011.

Currently, we're writing new songs. We already got a lot of 'em but you know, there's always room for new great songs. We have several ideas on how the next album should sound like. I can't tell you guys much about the ideas but let's just say we (once again) want to be versatile and try to to something new. We also want to make the album heavier, more extreme, more beautiful, more atmospheric than ever before.. Well, not in one song but as a whole.

The schedule is a bit tentative at the moment. You see, if there's something we learned from the 'crazy years' between 1997 and 2001, it's this: we don't want to wear ourselves out anymore. We did that ten years ago and that's what caused us break up. We want to keep our schedules a bit loose. Ten years ago, we would have gone to the studio right after the last gig of the tour. Now, we need a bit more time.

So, we're trying to get the next album out in early 2012. We're going to have our first studio session sometimes in April and May 2011 and the second session sometimes during the autumn or early winter."

ETOS's last album was 2009's Children Of The Dark Waters.