After the success of our fifth album, Into The Arms Of Chaos, which to this day is considered by many to be one of our best releases, we started working on the follow-up pretty much straight away. I had the idea to expand the sound and overall theme of that album into a tetralogy, a 4-album cycle, with each album representing one stage of the alchemical process toward reaching the magnum opus, the great work. That means nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo. Got it?
The next album, The Eternal Arcane, became a mixed affair. Some of our most beloved songs are on it, for example "If Uriel Falls," which we've played at pretty much every show since, and the goth-rock stomper "The Lost Souls," but the album itself is way too long. I wish we'd left some of the songs off. I think it's our longest release, and it shows a pretty broad spectrum of sound and style. There's acoustic stuff like "Blessing In Disguise," heavier songs like "The Wheel Of Pain" (a personal favorite of mine), pure gothic rock like "The Lost Souls" or "From Aeon To Aeon," and the epic, longer stuff like the title track and "Amenta Descending," a song we still play from time to time, as it's a favorite among all band members. The album is almost like a showcase of everything the band was capable of. The downside is that it's a bit unfocused.
The Eternal Arcane was recorded and produced by Zebo Adam and me in Vienna in autumn 2009. We recorded most of the tracks live in a room together and added overdubs or replaced parts later on.
It worked on some songs, on others not so much.
As was so often the case, a lineup change followed right after we finished an album. Our drummer, Curt, left the band before the album was actually released...
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Snow Promo Pictures by Manuela Melichar
a month agoarkanaoflight
Von den 30 Jahren ist eure Musik bereits 27 Jahre ein Teil meines Lebens. Danke dafür ⭐️
a month agowhispersintheshadow
Believe it or not, it took us 13 years to finally shoot our very first music video, and it ended up being for a song from The Eternal Arcane. For whatever reason, we didn't choose "If Uriel Falls" or "The Lost Souls," which were the most single-like songs on the album. Instead, we went with "Blood, Sweat & Tears," a song whose breakbeat rhythm and heavier guitars were different from what people expected us to sound like. It also marked the first appearance of "the man with the hat," my new stage persona and outfit, a shift away from the dark wave look with the big hair I'd been sporting until then. "The man with the hat" would stick around for the rest of the four-album concept. The video was directed by Edie Calie and shot professionally in a TV studio. Speaking of videos, around that time we filmed a lot of the live shows. There was a special edition of Into The Arms Of Chaos with a live DVD, and shortly after the release of The Eternal Arcane we released Searching For Light, another live DVD. All of these releases were very limited; if you have one, consider yourself lucky. They've been long out of print, and only a few snippets can be found on YouTube. Thankfully, after Curt left the band shortly after the video shoot, we found someone new quickly: Reinhard "Blacky" Schwarzinger became the new man behind the drum kit. And off we went to play shows in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and more. Around that time I got in touch with Artaud Seth from The Garden Of Delight, who had just started his own label, Solar Lodge Records, and wanted to sign us. Of course, we'd already started writing our next album. But that's a story for the next chapter.
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