With a career spanning over 20 years, four full-length albums released so far, and hundreds of live gigs performed worldwide, STORMLORD is one of Italy"s most celebrated extreme metal bands. The style of the band, classified as Extreme Epic Metal, blends influences from black metal, death metal, Mediterranean folk and symphonic music, is a unique and recognizable sound supported by legions of loyal fans since 1991. Their fourth and most successful album so far, "Mare Nostrum", was released in 2008 for the Spanish label Locomotive Records and was enthusiastically welcomed both from press and fans. The new album, entitled "Hesperia", is the first concept album from the band and is inspired by "Aeneid", the epic Latin poem written by the ancient Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) between 29 and 19 BC. The album features various languages, including English, Italian and ancient Latin; the lyrics of the opening song, "Aeneas", are taken from the poem of the "Aeneid" and are sung in Latin following the original metrical accent (dactylic hexameter), an experiment never tried before in metal music! The production was handled by Giuseppe Orlando (Novembre, Necrodeath, The Foreshadowing, Klimt 1918, Crest of Darkness, Hour of Penance, Deinonychus, etc.) at The Outer Sound Studios (Rome, Italy), while the mastering was handled by Mika Jussila (Stratovarius, Nightwish, Wintersun etc.) of Finnvox Studios (Helsinki, Finland). The cover and the booklet artwork was created by Hungarian illustrator Gyula Havancsák (Destruction, Stratovarius, Grave Digger, Tyr, etc.).