Apocalyptica's Eicca Toppinen recently revealed what the band had been up to

Apocalyptica's main composer Eicca Toppinen revealed recently that the band have been in the studio since August 5th to record their fourth album, due out January 27th in Europe. “I think the next album is not going to be so dark,” he describes. “The songs are more melodic, with better melody lines... well, maybe not better, but it's still strong, very emotional. The compositions have some more positive colours in the music than before. So far it looks like there will be no covers at all. There are songs written by me, and also Perttu, the youngest member of the band, will probably write some. It will be only our own stuff. Of course, it might happen that during the session we suddenly feel that we want to do a cover, but not at the moment.”

In related news, Apocalyptica are releasing a Best Of CD in Japan on September 21, 2002 featuring the following tracks:

‘Driven’ (a new Apocalyptica song was originally composed for Dunlop Japan for the commercial ‘Digi-tyre’), ‘Hope’, ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘Nothing Else Matters’, ‘Pray’, ‘Path’, ‘Unforgiven’, ‘Refuse/Resist’, ‘Kaamos’, ‘Inquisition Symphony’, ‘Romance’, ‘Harmageddon’ and ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’

Source: BW&BK