Carnival Is Forever

DECAPITATED formed in the town of Krosno in south-eastern Poland when the members were only in their mid-teens, and shortly after they released two demos - 1997’s ' Cemeteral Gardens' and ' The Eye of Horus ' in 1998, before signing a contract with Earache Records. Witold ' Vitek ' Kieltyka and his older brother Waclaw ' Vogg ' Kiełtyka founded what would become one of the metal’s most improbable success stories at the tender ages of 12 and 15 respectively. There haven't been many death metal bands as dedicated to the genre as DECAPITATED. All four of the band’s original members had a good couple of years of music school under their belts. In fact Vogg was in one of Poland’s best music academies, studying, of all instruments, the accordion. DECAPITATED have taken their music school lessons and applied into their own stunningly intense framework.

From the recording of their debut album ' Winds of Creation ', released to a largely unsuspecting public on May 22, 2000 when
Wojciech ' Sauron ' Wasowicz (vocals) and Vogg (guitar) were about 18, Marcin ' Martin ' Rygiel (bassist) 16 and Vitek (drummer) 15, DECAPITATED were hailed as one of death metal's most promising bands. By the time the band released their second album ' Nihility ' (2002), the metal press woke up to their self-evident brilliance and the glowing reviews began to pour in. However, some people still did not seem to take the band seriously due to their very young age. The second album ' Nihility ' (2002) had a great response and had become a classic to most of the metal maniacs. What was interesting then: a lot of American bands of that newer death metal scene really noted DECAPITATED as their band of choice. Some critics even claim that the album's classic song ' Spheres of Madness ', the videoclip of which was commissioned by MTV2 station, is one of death metal's greatest anthems and it helped to some degree inspire the creation of modern sub-genres of metal such as deathcore, etc.

DECAPITATED have always been identified with what is fresh and exhilirating about the genre that suddenly reached the point where it seemed to be running out of its creative force and losing its momentum. DECAPITATED ruthlessly kept on pushing the boundaries of extreme music. The band's constant evolution away from their highly traditional influences helped to establish DECAPITATED as the avant-garde of modern death metal. The precision and passion-bursting albums that followed, ' The Negation' ( 2004 ) and ' Organic Hallucinosis ' ( 2006 ), attracted and inspired a new generation of kids who started discovering the genre, while still gaining the respect of the ' old school ' fans. At that time DECAPITATED were simply unstoppable, hungry for success and playing more and more prestigious tours with the likes of: FEAR FACTORY, HYPOCRISY, ENSLAVED, SUFFOCATION, NILE; sharing stage with OZZY, TOOL and SLAYER at Ozzfest, or co-headlining the first edition of The Summer Slaughter Tour in North America, to name but a few of their accomplishments back then.

Their march towards the imminent world's domination tragically drew to a close in 2007 with a bus accident on a tour in Russia in the aftermath of which the drummer Witold ' Vitek ' Kieltyka, one of the best in the genre, sadly passed away and the vocalist Adrian ' Covan ' Kowanek, who replaced the band's first singer Wojciech ' Sauron ' Wasowicz in 2005, is still bedridden and fighting to get back to normal life. Suddenly the band's future became uncertain. The only remaining original member, apart from Marcin ' Martin ' Rygiel who had left the band shortly before the Russian tour, was Vitek's brother Waclaw ' Vogg ' Kieltyka, the man behind the band's creative side.

After over two years of pain, fighting the demons of the past and doubts whether he should play again without Vitek and Covan, Vogg decided to start over and continue the legacy of the band in honour of his brother's life and to rekindle the passion and energy they once shared. Luckily enough, he managed to find the new talented musicians in the persons of Kerimh ' Krimh 'Lechner (drums), Rafal Piotrowski (vocal) and Filip ' Heinrich ' Halucha (bass). The new line-up have already played together at over 100 shows since January 2010, including the headlining tours in the UK, Australia, the US and Poland; the European tour with BEHEMOTH and EXODUS, and a series of major European summer festivals. And especially worth touching upon is the mammoth trek they headlined in North America - The Summer Slaughter Tour, which showed what a tremendous inspiration the band had been over the years for the whole new generation of death metal bands, the majority of which openly confirm the fact they have been influenced or even grown up listening to DECAPITATED's albums.

The year 2011 begins the whole new chapter in the history of the band. They recorded their opus “Carnival Is Forever” in the studio of Radio Gdansk. DECAPITATED’s fifth studio album was produced by Waclaw ' Vogg ' Kiełtyka and sound engineered by Arkadiusz ' Malta ' Malczewski. Drums were recorded with Daniel Bergstrand (BEHEMOTH, MESHUGGAH, DIMMU BORGIR, KEEP OF KALESSIN, DEFLESHED), who also handled mixing duties. The album was released in July 2011 via the band's new label Nuclear Blast. To demonstrate the level of excitement accompanying the release, it is worth mentioning that the album appeared on ' The Top 25 Most Anticipated Albums of 2011 ' list in Decibel when it did not even have a name yet.