Avatar release new single & video - 'Death And Glitz'

AVATAR RELEASE BRAND NEW SINGLE
‘DEATH AND GLITZ’

DON'T GO IN THE FOREST
NEW ALBUM OUT OCTOBER 31
 
‘IN THE AIRWAVES’ UK & EUROPEAN TOUR
STARTS FEBRUARY 2026 with ALIEN WEAPONRY & WITCH CLUB SATAN
 
TOUR DATES SUPPORTING METALLICA SUMMER 2026 

The heavy metal visionaries collectively known as AVATAR — vocalist Johannes Eckerström, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, bassist Henrik Sandelin, and drummer John Alfredsson — previously announced the thoroughly fitting October 31st release of their latest masterwork Don't Go In The Forest. Pre-save it here.
 
Today, the band share the video for the new single ‘Death And Glitz’. Watch it HERE

Johannes Eckerström states, “Death and Glitz is a song about perversion and detachment. A homeless, young runaway collapses and dies on a dancefloor. The crime scene tape becomes a red velvet rope. The investigator's camera flashes like paparazzi on the red carpet. We love her for dying. Now she's perfect. Obedient. Anything you want. The true crime genre is as sick as the sickest goregrind band you've ever heard. Its popularity and the form in which it's being consumed, as a choice between Mickey Mouse and hospital dramas, reveals a darkness.
 
The best ones are when it's someone young and attractive. A couple goes hiking. Only the man returns. What do we project on this very real person's very real tragedy? Do we see ourselves, with a strange envy for being so desired? Do we see a canvas on which we can paint the perfect future, if we were there to make it right? Do we completely dehumanize the victim and those who lost her, obsessed with the puzzle? No matter the reason, it is clear that no one is more obedient than the dead. People simply like it when death has a nice rack.”

PHOTO: Johan Carlén 

Regarding the album, Eckerström offers, “The secret ingredient is that we still feel like we're just getting started. ‘Don't Go In The Forest’ is an album filled to the brim with stuff we've never done before,” continues Eckerström. “It's all songs and concepts we haven't been close to touch until now. The mind is wild and we have lost ourselves in the darkest woods, filled with memories, and fantasies. Forbidden thoughts that must be spoken.
 
He concludes, “It would have been impossible to make this album at any other time than now. That's all we ever wanted, and I think you'll find it's all you ever wanted too.”
  
Avatar have gone from strength to strength over the past several years. There's the critically acclaimed, 2023-released album Dance Devil Dance, which included rock radio chart topper ‘The Dirt I'm Buried In’. Not to mention the scores of sold-out headline shows across the globe and having an actual fossil named after them. The list goes on and on. But the past is the past and the future is, well, dark in the best possible way and that's JUST how Avatar like it!
 
Avatar show no signs of pausing to take a breath in their quest for absolute world domination — much less stopping. In fact, they Avatar will spend the foreseeable future (if not forever) on the road.

2025 MEXICO  & USA HEADLINE

• Fri, Oct 31, 25 — Mexico City, MX — The Pepsi Center

• Wed, Nov 5, 25 — Phoenix, AZ — The Van Buren

• Thu, Nov 6, 25 — San Diego, CA — The Observatory San Diego

• Fri, Nov 7, 25 — Riverside, CA — Riverside Municipal Auditorium

• Sat, Nov 8, 25 — Las Vegas, NV — Brooklyn Bowl

• Mon, Nov 10, 25 — Seattle, WA — Moore Theater

• Tue, Nov 11, 25 — Portland, OR — Roseland Theatre

• Wed, Nov 12, 25 — Boise, ID — Revolution

• Fri, Nov 14, 25 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Union

• Sat, Nov 15, 25 — Denver, CO — Fillmore

• Mon, Nov 17, 25 — Minneapolis, MN — Fillmore

• Tue, Nov 18, 25 — Madison, WI — The Sylvee

• Thu, Nov 20, 25 — Detroit, MI — The Fillmore Detroit

• Fri, Nov 21, 25 — Pittsburgh, PA — Stage AE

• Sat, Nov 22, 25 — Columbus, OH — KEMBA Live!

• Sun, Nov 23, 25 — Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore Silver Spring

• Tue, Nov 25, 25 — Huntington, NY — Paramount

• Wed, Nov 26, 25 — Boston, MA — House of Blues

• Fri, Nov 28, 25 — Allentown, PA — Archer Music Hall

• Sat, Nov 29, 25 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte

• Sun, Nov 30, 25 — Louisville, KY — Old Forester’s Paristown Hall

• Tue, Dec 2, 25 — Chicago, IL — Riviera Theater

• Thu, Dec 4, 25 — Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works

• Fri, Dec 5, 25 — St. Louis, MO — The Pageant

• Sat, Dec 6, 25 — Tulsa, OK — Tulsa Theater

• Sun, Dec 7, 25 — Dallas, TX — House of Blues

 
2026 EUROPEAN HEADLINE TOUR

• Thu, Feb 5, 26 — Stockholm, SE — Fållan

• Sat, Feb 7, 26 — Helsinki, FI — Kulttuuritalo

• Mon, Feb 9, 26 — Oslo, NO — Sentrum Scene

• Tue, Feb 10, 26 — Copenhagen, DK — Vega

• Wed, Feb 11, 26 — Osnabrück, DE — Die Botschaft

• Thu, Feb 12, 26 — Brussels, BE — A.B.

• Sat, Feb 14, 26 — London, UK — Exhibition

• Sun, Feb 15, 26 — Manchester, UK — Academy

• Mon, Feb 16, 26 — Glasgow, UK — Barrowland

• Tue, Feb 17, 26 — Nottingham, UK — Rock City

• Wed, Feb 18, 26 — Bristol, UK — O2 Academy

• Fri, Feb 20, 26 — Amsterdam, NL — AFAS Live

• Sat, Feb 21, 26 — Esch-Sur-Alzette, LU — Rockhal

• Sun, Feb 22, 26 — Zürich, CH — Komplex

• Tue, Feb 24, 26 — Barcelona, ES — Razzmatazz

• Wed, Feb 25, 26 — Madrid, ES — La Riviera

• Fri, Feb 27, 26 — Lisbon, PT — LAV

• Sat, Feb 28, 26 — Bilbao, ES — Santana 27

• Mon, Mar 2, 26 — Lyon, FR — Le Cube

• Tue, Mar 3, 26 — Milan, IT — Alcatraz

• Wed, Mar 4, 26 — Vienna, AT — Gasometer

• Thu, Mar 5, 26 — Munich, DE — Tonhalle

• Fri, Mar 6, 26 — Cologne, DE — E-Werk

• Sat, Mar 7, 26 — Paris, FR — Le Zenith

• Mon, Mar 9, 26 — Wiesbaden, DE — Schlachthof

• Tue, Mar 10, 26 — Zlin, CZ — Sports Hall Datart

• Wed, Mar 11, 26 — Warsaw, PL — Stodola

• Thu, Mar 12, 26 — Berlin, DE — Columbiahalle

• Fri, Mar 13, 26 — Hamburg, DE — Docks

SUPPORTING METALLICA — SUMMER 2026

• Sun, May 24, 26 — Frankfurt, DE — Deutsche Bank Park

• Thu, Jun 11, 26 — Budapest, HU — Puskas Arena

• Fri, Jun 19, 26 — Dublin, IE — Aviva Stadium

• Sun, Jul 5, 26 — London, UK — London Stadium

ABOUT AVATAR

As a strange light in the sky beckons you towards something forbidden, far away, you see a robed, horned ferryman, rowing across a restless sea at the end of days. Back home, a strange sound rolls through your house. It comes from the basement. The news talks about a beautiful corpse, lauded for her magnificent demise on a dance floor by men who could have fixed her. You catch the last broadcast from an outpost succumbing to flames on a distant moon. Its inhabitants try to outrun their own madness. Outside there is a place you’re not allowed to go, no matter how intoxicating the gaze of the eyes among the trees.
 
You lay awake at night, yet you dream a thousand dreams more real than any waking moment.
 
Strange times call for a strange band. With a life-long commitment to the misfit arts, Avatar delves deep into the collective subconscious. They travel beyond the realms of flesh and far past the spiritual barriers broken in past works. No matter how many times they were warned, they keep treading deeper into the woods. There is sense to be made out of the senseless. They lay a soft gaze upon terrifying, almost shapeless inner landscapes, and they have a damn good time doing it.
 
Don’t go in the forest is a warning said by others, heeded as a challenge for a certain kind of freak who just can’t fight the urge to seek truth and feel alive. It is a collection of strange tunes emerging from a circus tent in a meadow in a faraway valley. You can only ever get there by accident, walking a path impossible to remember and map out. Two eyes closed, one eye open. 
 
Formed by John Alfredsson and Jonas Jarlsby as teenagers, soon joined by Johannes Eckerström, Henrik Sandelin and Simon Andersson, Avatar started an evolution that would see a group always looking to connect what you hear with what you see. Once Andersson left and Tim Öhrström joined, they had all the ingredients to a brew so potent it would forge their names into the souls of millions. More than a band, Avatar has evolved to concept art. In order to keep going with the same drive as they had on day one, they make sure that what is made must be done. Every single time must matter more than ever before. No matter how far they get, they are sworn to remain underdogs. There is so much to do, to try. So many ways to rediscover the simple yet sublime power hidden inside an electric guitar.
 
It’s all about trying new things, on and off stage. Choirs, brass instruments, Moogs, piano, cellos and violas. As long as it all worships at the altar of the riff, the possibilities are as vast as the universe. Don’t Go In The Forest once again stretches, bends and breaks the boundaries of what Avatar is and can be by providing both the most introspective as well as their most explosive moments. It is all done in a way that can only be achieved after a lifetime in servitude to the madness where all your gathered experiences are used to be reborn. In other words, by embracing discovery as the core tenet for what they do, every new release is as fresh and exciting as their very first time in a rehearsal room.
 
While the studio experience is becoming a more and more powerful tool for self expression, it is on the stage where Avatar truly comes alive. Every testimonial makes the same claims in all caps. Avatar is a MUST SEE experience. Every album cycle has provided record breaking milestones. A few of the more recent ones being kicking the door in on Latin America, first with Iron Maiden, and then with sold out shows all throughout Mexico and beyond. They have also become the talk of countless festivals across Europe and the United States, being a surefire stage closer and show stealer everywhere they go, all while setting attendance record after attendance record for their headline shows.
 
From Australia to Brazil. From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Sea. From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South. Everywhere they go, their unique blend of suggestive theatrics and unabashed, unapologetic good heavy metal times, they have proven that there is only one Avatar and everyone else is playing for second place. Their impact is shown with chart toppers such as ‘The Dirt I’m Buried In’ reaching heights that are hard to imagine from a band that has stepped into the craziest era in music history, taking matters into their own hand with their own independent label, Black Waltz Records.
 
For centuries the circus would come to town. Now, for the first time in history, the gravitational pull of Avatar is so strong that the town is coming to the circus. A circus deep in the forest. A forbidden place. A taboo you are destined to break.

AVATAR ARE:
Johannes Eckerström — Vocalist
Jonas Jarlsby — Guitarist
Tim Öhrström — Guitarist
 Henrik Sandelin — Bassist 
John Alfredsson — Drummer

PHOTO: Johan Carlén