Helsinki, Finland-based hard rockers Amoral entered the studio today to begin recording their sixth album, due later this year via The End Records. The drums for the Cd — which will feature an all-star cast of Finnish music industry people — are being recorded at Sound Supreme studios in Hämeenlinna with Janne Saksa. Then the sessions will move to Helsinki and finally to Kuopio where Marco Hietala of Tarot and Nightwish fame will produce the vocals for the new album.

"Working with Janne has always been a lucrative proposition, but after four albums together, we felt like it would be healthy to try new approaches to making an album," says Amoral guitarist Ben Varon, who is also producing the new Cd. "Spending a weekend with Janne recording the drums gives us a welcome illusion of familiarity and security, before we take the plunge for ourselves. As for working with Marco, it's something we have discussed since Ari [Koivunen, vocals] joined the band, but due to conflicting schedules this is the first time we get to test out this working combo"

The as-yet-unnamed album will contain eight songs wth a running time of almost an hour. In addition, the songs and lyrics form a whole, so it is possible to view the album as a thematic one.

"We're kind of in the prog-phase that we started exploring on the opening and closing songs from [2011's] 'Beneath'," says Varon. "We felt like those were the pieces that the band enjoyed playing and listening to the most, and much to our surprise, it seemed to be what the audience responded to as well. When the first new songs started coming along, they where leaning in this direction, so I asked the band what they would think if for the first time in the history of Amoral, we would actually concentrate on putting the music in a somewhat defined framework instead of featuring all sorts of musical idioms from song to song. The idea of a more progressive and metal album sounded good to every one. Not that we could write an genre specific album this time either! There's a lot of side paths taken on this one too, but not to the extent as on the previous two records."

The album will be mixed by Mikko Karmila, who is no stranger to dealing with large conceptual pieces.

"We thought long and hard about the mixing engineer for this album and we feel that Karmila is the guy who will make this music play in the best possible way," says Varon.

The band will try some of the new material on stage before hitting Asia for some shows. The one-off concert in Finland will take place at On The Rocks and tickets are now on sale at Tiketti.

In addition to the Pulp Summer Slam festival in the Philippines, Amoral will be doing assorted performances in Asia during April and May. More information on these will be released soon.