Broken Crown Halo

After Dark Adrenaline the band toured with Megadeth, Motörhead, Volbeat and Sevendust. For the next album they brought in Jay Baumgardner, known for his work with P.O.D. and Evanescence, and recorded in September and October 2013 at Officine Meccaniche, an old studio in Milan, with Kyle Hoffmann engineering. Baumgardner also mixed the record, and Howie Weinberg mastered it. The band said it followed a year of personal problems and changes, and named vintage equipment, classic Italian horror films and bands such as Goblin as influences. They called it a cinematic album, the picture of a dark world in the near future. Cristina Scabbia calls the opening "Nothing Stands in Our Way" the band's anthem, a song about getting past whatever obstacle life puts in front of you. The closing "One Cold Day" was written after Claudio Leo, one of the band's founding members, died of cancer. In February 2014 "Die & Rise" went on sale as a download and an official lyric video for "Nothing Stands in Our Way" appeared, and at the end of April came a video for "I Forgive (But I Won't Forget Your Name)", directed by Sitcom Soldiers. Scabbia and Andrea Ferro sang, Marco Coti Zelati played bass and keyboards, Cristiano Migliore and Marco Biazzi guitars and Cristiano Mozzati drums. Shortly after the sessions, in February 2014, Migliore and Mozzati announced that they were leaving the band to spend more time with their families, so this was their last album with the band. Century Media set the release for 31 March 2014 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and 1 April in North America. The album entered the Italian chart at number 13; in the United States it sold around 13,000 copies in its first week and reached number 27 on the Billboard 200, and it charted at 37 in Switzerland, 40 in Germany and 45 in the United Kingdom, where it was number 3 on the rock and metal albums chart. Before it came out, a North American tour with Sick Puppies had been booked from 20 February to 20 March.