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 finally unleashed their latest masterwork Don’t Go in the Forest. Listen and get the album HERE.
They have also released the brilliant video for the album’s title track today which can be watched HERE.
DON’T GO IN THE FOREST TRACK LISTING:
‘Tonight We Must Be Warriors‘
‘In The Airwaves‘
‘Captain Goat‘
‘Don’t Go In The Forest’
‘Death And Glitz‘
‘Abduction Song’
‘Howling At The Waves’
‘Dead And Gone And Back Again’
‘Take This Heart And Burn’
‘Magic Lantern’
Regarding the album, Eckerström has explained, “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. 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.
“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.”
In celebration of today’s Halloween album release, Avatar will be celebrating with their fans by sending them on a scavenger hunt around selected indie stores across the UK to find giant red balloons. Fans lucky enough to find them will burst them to win tickets to their 2026 In The Airwaves tour hidden inside.
Avatar’s growth and momentum has only accelerated in recent years. There’s the critically acclaimed, 2023-released album Dance Devil Dance, which included their first #1 at Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay, “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.
Avatar will spend the foreseeable future (if not forever) on the road and show no signs of pausing to take a breath in their quest for absolute world domination — much less stopping. They kick off their world tour TONIGHT in Mexico City, before crossing North America on a major series of headline shows until early December.
In February they launch their European tour with a show in Stockholm on February 5th, before rolling into the UK on February 14th, to play their biggest ever UK headline show that night in London. Further shows in Manchester, Glasgow, Nottingham and Bristol ahead of a substantial run of mainland Europe dates.
Alien Weaponry appear as special guests on all dates with additional support from Norwegian Feminist Black Metal group Witch Club Satan, as well as Norwegian Death Jazz band Agabas for select dates.
2026 EUROPEAN HEADLINE TOUR
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
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
