James Rivera's Metal Wave will release their debut album, New Wave Gone Metal, on July 28 via Massacre Records. Pre-order the album here, and watch a video for a cover of Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration" below.

James Rivera sunk his teeth into selected songs by some of the greatest bands of the new wave/dark wave era, and turned them into something more metal.

Rivera's love for metal is undeniable, but his heart is also beating for the darker side of music, especially for new as well as dark wave and goth music - and James Rivera's Metal Wave's debut album, New Wave Gone Metal, perfectly combines the best of those genres.

The band puts its own mark on selected classics and thereby invents a new genre: Metal Wave.

James Rivera comments: "Make no mistake that to this day I still love each of these songs in the original forms but I have to admit now that we did them in our own metal way, it's hard for me to listen to them as they were and I know once these new wave classics sink their teeth into you metal wave style, you'll never listen to them the same either!"

"As for 'Black Celebration' it is a kind of a funny story as well as very memorable and the beginning for my passion of Dark Wave," James reveals.  

"Back in the late summer of 1985 when we had just finished recording Remnants of War with Helstar, we had an amusement park here in Houston called Astroworld/ Six Flags and they had free concerts. So if you bought a ticket to the park you could go to the concert afterwards.

"Back then it was taboo, if you were a metal head, to listen to that kind of music and vice versa. You practically got your ass kicked by your gang of metal heads. So our whole point even more so now was go and terrorize the nerdy New Wavers, wearing our denim vests with the metal patches with the big one on the back being the Venom one “Welcome to Hell”!"

He continues: "We enter the concert grounds and Larry Barragan turns to me and says "Wow dude! These people look more dead than we do!" And as I'm looking around, yep! Everyone is in black from head to toe and dead pale white!! If that wasn't enough now, Depeche Mode is getting ready to the hit the stage. The stage is completely black, their intro starts, the fog is massive and there is this huge white sheet in front of the entire stage. (which now years later I found it's called a kabuki drop and we use one when we can for our Metal Wave shows for the beginning). Then the red lights come on and all you see is 4 black silhouettes while they are playing the eerie beginning of 'Black Celebration'. When the beat hits, the kabuki drops and then there is the band!! We were floored!!! It was like seeing a King Diamond show but a Dark Wave version of it! We ran up to the front as close as we could and flashed the metal horns to the band and I've been in love with this band ever since and the rest is history.

"On top of it being the very first song we rearranged and recorded for Metal Wave, that is why it had to be our first more official video for the record and opening track for it!"

Tracklisting:

"Black Celebration" (Depeche Mode)
"Love My Way" (The Psychedelic Furs)
"Lovesong" (The Cure)
"Shock The Monkey" (Peter Gabriel)
"Black Planet" (The Sisters Of Mercy)
"Everybody Wants To Rule The World" (Tears For Fears)
"Bela Lugosi’s Dead" (Bauhaus)
"The Killing Moon" (Echo & The Bunnymen)
"Pet Sematary" (Ramones)
"Rain" (The Cult)

"Black Celebration" video:

"Love My Way" video: