Dragonland

Not to be confused with the place where the series, Dragon Tales, takes place in.

Dragonland is a power metal band from Sweden. The group is most notable for basing their first two and fifth albums upon the self-produced The Dragonland Chronicles fantasy saga and for the original symphonic/electronic parts by Elias Holmlid.

The band was founded in September/October 1999 by guitarist Nicklas Magnusson and Jonas Heidgert. Soon after Daniel Kvist, Magnus Olin and Christer Pederson joined in. Their first demo was recorded on January 2000. Only 3 months before the recording of their debut album, The Battle of the Ivory Plains started, Kvist decided to leave the band and was soon replaced by Olof Mörck.^[1] The album was released on April 30, 2001, and the second album, Holy War, was released on February 8, 2002. Both featured singer Jonas Heidgert on drums.

In 2003, Dragonland invited Japanese power metal band Galneryus to play with throughout the Japan tour. That was also the first time Dragonland performed the song, "to the End of the World", which was included a year later in their third album, Starfall, which was released on October 27, 2004, featuring Jesse Lindskog on drums. Johanna Andersson, Tom S. Englund and Henrik Danhage (Tom and Henrik from Evergrey) provided guest performances on the album, including vocals and guitar solos.
Their fourth album, Astronomy, was released on November 11, 2006. Nightrage's Marios Iliopoulos, Amaranthe's Elize Ryd and Jake E and Dead by April's Jimmie Strimell provided guest appearances on this album.

Work on a fifth Dragonland album was announced via Blabbermouth on the 27th of April, 2008. In September 2009, Dragonland launched their re-designed Myspace site, together with a high-quality preproduction of "The Shadow of The Mithril Mountains", a song from the fifth album. It took some time before the album was completely ready. Five years after "Astronomy" the band finally released the new album, Under the Grey Banner, on November 11, 2011. Where "Starfall" and "Astronomy" are two separate albums "Under the Grey Banner" continues the story of their first two albums.

After their live performance in Metalfest 2009, Dragonland went on hiatus from performing live, but they will return with the two ProgPower Festivals; the first one in Belgium in 2014 and the second in the USA in 2015. Johan Nunez (from Nightrage and Firewind) will be their substitute drummer during the performances. ^[2]

On October 25, 2014, it was announced that there will be two new albums, which are a reissue of the first album, the Battle of the Ivory Plains, and a remastered version of the second album, Holy War. Both albums will have brand new cover artwork, and they will be released on December 5th this year.^[3] In the first album, there will also be a new song, "a New Dawn", as its bonus track. That song does not resemble Evergrey's new song, "a New Dawn" (Evergrey is the progressive metal band whose guitarists Tom S. Englund (who is also the lead singer) and Henrik Danhage contributed to Dragonland's third album, Starfall, as mentioned above).

Discography

Studio albums

• The Battle of the Ivory Plains (2001)
• Holy War (2002)
• Starfall (2004)
• Astronomy (2006)
• Under the Grey Banner (2011)

Demo's

• Storming Across Heaven (2000)

Band members

Current line-up

• Jonas Heidgert - vocals (1999-present), drums (2000–2002)
• Olof Mörck - lead guitar (2000–present)
• Jesse Lindskog - rhythm guitar (2009–present), drums (2003–2009)
• Elias Holmlid - keyboard, synthesizer, piano (2000–present)
• Morten Lowe Sorensen - drums (2009–present)
• Anders Hammer - bass (2007–present)

Previous members

• Daniel Kvist - lead guitar (1999–2000)
• Magnus Olin - drums (1999-2000)
• Robert Willstedt - drums (2002-2003)
• Christer Pederson - bass (1999–2007)
• Nicklas Magnusson - rhythm guitar (1999–2009)

Live members

• Johan Nunez - drums (2014-present)

References

External links

• Dragonland's Official Teaser Website
• Dragonland's Facebook profile
• Dragonland's MySpace profile
• Century Media's Dragonland page
• King Record's Dragonland page (Japanese)