Finland's WINTERSUN have issued the following update from drummer Kai Hahto:

"It's been over a year since our last update. We are very sorry for that, but there's also a good reason. We have been struggling with the new album more than enough and the main reason in the last year has been with lots of computer problems.

We had to do this album in a way, that Jari finishes the album at his home studio, when the drums, bass and rhythm guitars were done at Sonic Pump Studios. We didn't predict how much problems this would bring us more.

This is the first time when we work like this and were very too "green" understanding, what it takes from the computer to handle hundreds of audio and midi tracks. For fast and efficient composing of the orchestrations you need lots of horsepower from the computer. It's a must have to get as many VST instruments running realtime as possible. And for this you need lots of RAM, but there's a 4GB limit in 32bit apps, so this has been really painful for Jari.

So we are hoping that the change to 64bit era will happen soon, which will put an end to this RAM limit misery. And also with more powerful processors give us the freedom to write and record albums much faster for you!

Thank god we got Nuclear Blast to help us! We have now a new powerful computer and things seem to work much better now. Also we have to thank a lot our manager Stefan Hattinger from Rock The Nation for being so patient with us and helping all the time! Also we want to thank you fans for being so patient and understanding!

Last year hasn't really been easy for us, but now there's some light at the end of the tunnel. We will get back to you all as soon as we know more about how things are evolving.

We really don't want to disappoint everybody again by promising a release date, because we've seen how it has gone before. But we promise to do our best and get this album done as soon as the conditions let us. We will play at Metalcamp in July anyway, but that's the only show we do this summer. We will concentrate finishing the album and then go back on the road.

Have a great summer everybody!

Cheers! Kai."