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In case you needed it, we have the official confirmation that there will be no Hammer World Stage at Sziget Festival 2009. This article in Hammer World magazine (it’s in Hungarian) confirms this. The article says that they have been notified by the Sziget organizers that there will be no no Hammer World Stage. There is also some good news. The organizers said that, according to the festival’s new structure, the metal bands, Hungarian as well as foreign, will play at some of the other stages.

The article also says that the decision is somewhat understandable, as much less people showed up at the afternoon and early evening Hammer World Stage performances in the last two years. The whole article can be read here.

The French Sziget Festival official site’s stages page only confirms something we all heard in the last few weeks. There will be no metal, or Hammer stage, as it was called, at this year’s Sziget Festival. The stage where Avantasia performed in 2008 and bands like Within Temptation, Napalm Death or Hammerfall made their fans happy two years ago will be no more.

What do you guys think about this? Is it a good decision? Will it make some people pass on this year’s Sziget Festival?

Another day, another official artist confirmation for this year’s Sziget Festival. French metallers Dagoba will play Sziget Festival 2009 on August 12, probably at the Hammerworld Stage. The information is confirmed on Base Productions‘ (their booking agency) website.

Gary Holt, songwriter and lead guitarist of EXODUS: “After many years in the planning and discussion stage, we have finally completed the re-recording of “Bonded By Blood.” We have decided to call it “Let There Be Blood” and it is our way of paying homage to Paul Baloff by showing how relevant these songs we had written together still are. We aren’t trying to replace the original, that’s impossible anyway. We are just giving these songs the benefit of modern production. It’s something we talked about before Paul’s death and it’s always been important to us to do. We were super excited about entering the studio once again to record these classics, and now it’s back to writing the next studio record!”

The album is a tribute to Paul Ballott, the band’s original vocalist, who died in 2002.

American thrash legends Exodus will play Sziget on August 17th, starting at 20:00 hours, at the Hammerworld Stage.

Amanda Somerville, Epica’s replacement vocalist, has posted a new video blog from the Avantasia world tour, that you can watch below.

Avantasia will rock Sziget on August 13, starting at 21:30 hours, at the Hammerworld Stage.

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For all of you metalheads going to Sziget this year to see Meshuggah, here’s some live footage of the band playing at Hellfest, three days ago.

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More good news for metal fans. British Death Metal legends Carcass will play this year’s Sziget Festival. Carcass will play the Hammerworld Stage, on August 17th, starting at 21:00 hours.

As you all know, Tobias Sammet of Edguy has a new solo project, Avantasia, that will be playing Sziget this year. Sammet has just revealed  the touring line-up for this summer, a very interesting one. It will feature, according to Sammet “Jorn Lande (ex-MASTERPLAN), André Matos (ex-ANGRA), Amanda Somerville, Olli Hartmann, Bob Catley (MAGNUM — not all shows), Sascha Paeth, Miro, Robert Hunecke, Claudy Yang and Frank Lindenthal who is gonna replace Eric Singer who’ll be playing with KISS. Despite all rumors Michael Kiske will not be there, as he didn’t wanna do it and I respect that!”. Sammet promises a huge epic show on the tour, so it’s gonna be well worth checking out their performance at the Hammerworld stage this year.

More good news for metal fans, this time. German thrash-metallers Dew Scented will be playing this year’s Sziget, on August 15th. The news is also confirmed on their official site.