Avatar release new single 'In The Airwaves'
- Rock Metal Machine
- Jul 19
- 6 min read
The heavy metal visionaries collectively known as AVATAR — vocalist Johannes Eckerström, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, bassist Henrik Sandelin, and drummer John Alfredsson — have gone from strength to 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’. There have been scores of sold-out headline shows across the globe and an actual fossil named after them. The list goes on and on. And now today (July 18th) the band have released their brand new single ‘In The Airwaves’.
Regarding the single Avatar say, "Avatar is defined by the challenges we put in front of ourselves. We always push for more and look for new angles. In this ever ongoing pursuit for the next great thing, we return to one of the most important aspects of metal: Speed."
The band continues, "This is the fastest song we have done in what seems to be an eternity, and it feels good to push the engine to the max again. In a way, it feels like a return to something. Enjoy our rage."
It follows the recent single ‘CAPTAIN GOAT’. Watch the video here.
Avatar show no signs of pausing to take a breath in their quest for absolute world domination — much less stopping. There is more new music on the way, as well.
Avatar are currently conquering stages across Europe supporting Iron Maiden and have further support dates with Metallica in Europe and the UK to follow. Avatar have just announced a headline North American tour for autumn 2025, which is preceded with their biggest ever headline show in Mexico City. The band’s UK and European headline tour starts in February 2026. Full dates are listed below.
AVATAR ON TOUR
2025 U.S.A. HEADLINE (JUST ANNOUNCED!)
NOVEMBER
5th — Phoenix, AZ — The Van Buren
6th — San Diego, CA — The Observatory San Diego
7th — Riverside, CA — Riverside Municipal Auditorium
8th — Las Vegas, NV — Brooklyn Bowl
10th — Seattle, WA — Moore Theater
11th — Portland, OR — Roseland Theatre
12th — Boise, ID — Revolution
14th — Salt Lake City, UT — The Union
15th — Denver, CO — Fillmore
17th — Minneapolis, MN — Fillmore
18th — Madison, WI — The Sylvee
20th — Detroit, MI — The Fillmore Detroit
21st — Pittsburgh, PA — Stage AE
22nd — Columbus, OH — KEMBA Live!
23rd — Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore Silver Spring
25th — Huntington, NY — Paramount
26th — Boston, MA — House of Blues
28th — Allentown, PA — Archer Music Hall
29th — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte
30th — Louisville, KY — Old Forester’s Paristown Hall
DECEMBER
2nd — Chicago, IL — Riviera Theater
4th — Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works
5th — St. Louis, MO — The Pageant
6th — Tulsa, OK — Tulsa Theater
7th — Dallas, TX — House of Blues
AVATAR ON TOUR
WITH IRON MAIDEN
JULY
19th — Paris, FR — Paris La Défense Arena
20th — Paris, FR — Paris La Défense Arena
23rd — Arnhem, NL — GelreDome
25th — Frankfurt, DE — Deutsche Bank Park
26th — Stuttgart, DE — Cannstatter Wasen
29th — Berlin, DE — Waldbühne Berlin
30th — Berlin, DE —Waldbühne Berlin
AUGUST
2nd — Warsaw, PL — PGE Narodowy
9th — Kortrijk, BE — Alcatraz Festival*
2025 MEXICO HEADLINE
OCTOBER
31st — Mexico City, MX — The Pepsi Center
2026 EUROPEAN HEADLINE TOUR
FEBRUARY
5th — Stockholm, SE — Fållan
7th — Helsinki, FI — Kulttuuritalo
9th — Oslo, NO — Sentrum Scene
10th — Copenhagen, DK — Vega
11th — Osnabrück, DE — Die Botschaft
12th — Brussels, BE — A.B.
14th — London, UK — Exhibition
15th — Manchester, UK — Academy
16th — Glasgow, UK — Barrowland
17th — Nottingham, UK — Rock City
18th — Bristol, UK — O2 Academy
20th — Amsterdam, NL — AFAS Live
21st — Esch-Sur-Alzette, LU — Rockhal
22nd — Zürich, CH — Komplex
24th — Barcelona, ES — Razzmatazz
25th — Madrid, ES — La Riviera
27th — Lisbon, PT — LAV
28th — Bilbao, ES — Santana 27
MARCH
2nd — Lyon, FR — Le Cube
3rd — Milan, IT — Alcatraz
4th — Vienna, AT — Gasometer
5th — Munich, DE — Tonhalle
6th — Cologne, DE — E-Werk
7th — Paris, FR — Le Zenith
9th — Wiesbaden, DE — Schlachthof
10th — Zlin, CZ — Sports Hall Datart
11th — Warsaw, PL — Stodola
12th — Berlin, DE — Columbiahalle
13th — Hamburg, DE — Docks
SUPPORTING METALLICA — SUMMER 2026:
MAY
24th — Frankfurt, DE — Deutsche Bank Park
JUNE
11th — Budapest, HU — Puskas Arena
19th — Dublin, IE — Aviva Stadium
JULY
5th — London, UK — London Stadium
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 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 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.
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