LORD have released a new video for the track “Final Seconds” and have parted ways with their drummer Damian Costas.
Read what the band stated:
“First up, we hope you all had a great break over the new year period. As usual, things never stopped behind the scenes for us.
For those who didn’t see it, we released a tour documentary from our quick mini tour of South East Asia and Japan late last year, promoting our latest album “Digital Lies” (which is officially our best selling, most well-received album ever – and that includes all of the official Dungeon releases too). Here’s the documentary just in case you missed it. (Watch it below)
That was a lot of fun, and some important business deals were put in place that we’ll tell you all about really soon that we’ve extremely excited about.
In that video, you’ll notice a different face behind the kit; Simon Batley from rising folk metal stars Troldhaugen (have you heard their new ABBA cover? It’s fantastic!). Simon sat in for Damo on our tour of New Zealand and did such a great job that we asked him back again for the Asian tour when Damo was unavailable once again. And where was Damo? That brings us to our next bit of news.
If you’ve followed along with our blogs on the LORD site you might have read that Damo got engaged (congrats again, guys!), got a great new day job and is saving up for a house and a future for himself and his bride to be. The stark reality of being in an underground band is it requires a lot of sacrifices of time, priorities and money. Pretty much all of us have lost a job or a relationship because we’ve put the band first. Damo has reached a point where as much as he loved being in the band, losing that job he worked so hard to get will put a lot of what he’s aiming for in the future at risk, and if it comes down to choosing between sleeping in a cheap hotel in Hamburg or making sure you’re doing the right thing by your family… well, it’s a no-brainer.
So we’d like to announce that Damo has taken an indefinite break away from LORD. Like all past LORD members, no doubt he’ll end up on a recording somewhere down the track (Mav and TY appeared on "Return of the Tyrant" and TY has probably done more work with LT since he left the band, in fact) but for all intents and purposes, Damo is no longer a touring or recording member of LORD.
Now, we loved to give Damo a hard time whenever we could, but the truth is this green kid that joined the band four years ago ended up being one of the tightest metal drummers in the country, full stop. Just listen to anything from “Digital Lies” and you’ll see what we mean. In honour of his time in the band, we’ve cut together a new clip featuring footage from the road, backstage, recording and behind-the-scenes stuff from the last four years. Some great footage and some great memories. Check it out. (below)
Cheers to Damo, and (this will be the last time we say something nice, we promise) all the best, man! 
Obviously that leaves us without a permanent drummer so keep an eye out for our “drummer wanted” advertisements/requirements that we’ll post up soon. (You, too, could get to sleep in a cheap hotel in Hamburg! Glamour awaits!)
In the short-term, Simon will be joining us again for our upcoming tour dates and TY will be guesting on a special release we have happening this year. Tour dates? Release? Indeed!
This year, we’re embarking of a huge recording / restoration project that both celebrates the 25th anniversary of Dungeon (for which we consider LORD an extension of Dungeon – same band, different name, basically) and seeks to tie both LORD and Dungeon eras of the band together. We can’t say too much more about that at this point but we think it’s going be something everyone will be very excited about – we definitely are – and we can’t wait to tell you more when we’re able to.
This project will be one of the most expensive things we’ve ever done, however (getting an idea of the scale of it yet?). A lot of our friends and peers have turned to sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo to raise money for their projects, something we’ve considered in the past and we’ll likely take advantage of in the future, but we’ve decided to go old-school and literally Sing for our Supper by going out and raising money by performing.
Very soon we’ll be announcing a run of tour dates around Australia where we’re aiming to sell as much merch and raise as much money as we can to fund this huge recording project. You get to see us play, we get much needed money, that goes towards a cool release – everyone wins! Being Dungeon’s 25th anniversary, expect some cool old-school additions into the live set as well.
That’s about it for now. LOTS of exciting things coming up this year, more news coming really soon”!
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