"The Spell" to już drugi album w dyskografii Cellar Darling. Zespół założony przez muzyków, którzy odeszli z Eluveitie zyskał sobie od razu sympatię fanów tego drugiego bandu, jednak jak podkreślają członkowie Cellar Darling, muzyka obydwu zespołów zdecydowanie się różni. "The Spell" to koncept album, który oparty jest na osobistych przeżyciach wokalistki zespołu, Anny Murphy.
CELLAR DARLING FEED US WITH MORE
EPIC & PROGRESSIVE STORYS!
CELLAR DARLING's second full-length "The Spell" weaves a dark fairytale for the modern era, told through
heavy yet intricate, progressive folk rock, enchanting visual art and utterly immersive storytelling. The band
began in 2016 after Anna Murphy (vocals, hurdy-gurdy), Merlin Sutter (drums) and Ivo Henzi (guitars and
bass) left Swiss folk metallers ELUVEITIE, which they had all played in for over a decade. But they weren't ready
to end their musical journey together yet, and embarked on a new and different path.
"We're happy that ELUVEITIE fans have joined us, but we didn't want to do the same thing with CELLAR
DARLING: we want to do our own thing," explains Merlin. "With CELLAR DARLING, we deliberately didn't set
ourselves any limits - and that really enabled us to find the type of music that we wanted to play."
Anna originally used the name CELLAR DARLING for her own solo album in 2013, but it also perfectly encapsulated
their vision for this new adventure. "Our music stems from ideas that were kept hidden away in a type
of creative cellar, and are now ready to see the light," Anna explains. "It also visualises our music: the darkness
is the cellar, and 'darling' represents something light and beautiful."
The three-piece introduced these spellbinding sounds to the world with their debut album "This Is The Sound"
in 2017. But for "The Spell", they decided to take their musical ideas and creativity one step further, and to
make a concept album, after the initial idea for "The Spell" came to Anna randomly while she was out hiking
with her father. It tells the tale of an unnamed girl who is birthed into a world that is full of pain, damaged
and debilitated by the human beings that inhabit it. We follow her as she searches for meaning in life, when
suddenly she meets and falls in love with death - concluding with an ambiguous ending that leaves the listener
wondering. Though Anna set out to create abstract rather than autobiographical lyrics, "The Spell" became a
personal journey for her.
"Even if you write completely abstract lyrics, it is based on your life and personality somehow," she says. "It
was strange, because even though it was a dark concept, when I created it I was feeling happy. But then, as we
were working on the album, my mental health got really bad - worse than ever before. It was as if the creative
part of my brain was realising what state I was in before I became fully conscious of it." But focusing on the
album helped Anna to work through these demons: "The music is always my outlet," she says. "Without it, I
probably wouldn't be here anymore."
Though it was Anna who conceived the concept of the album, CELLAR DARLING is very much a collaborative effort. "A song that is
written by only Ivo or myself would not sound like Cellar Darling," says Anna firmly. "That is what makes this band special." "It was
something new for me," adds Ivo on the experience of writing music around a concept for the first time. "It was challenging, but after
12 years of making music, it was really good for my musical experience. It gave us something to focus on." "I think the lyrical concept
definitely helped in making the album a coherent whole," Merlin adds.
On "The Spell", CELLAR DARLING have cemented their sound. Juxtaposing darkness and light, the album soars with melody, pummels
with heavy passages and is peppered throughout with progressive flourishes, folky interludes and classical elements, as well as
their use of hurdy gurdy and flute. "I think prog fits us best," says Merlin. "Prog isn't just about guitar solos, long songs or technical
ability: for me, it's pushing the limits of genre. We don't want to set any boundaries for ourselves, and to me, that is the definition of
progressive music." His enthusiasm for grandiose rock and prog bands like QUEEN and DREAM THEATER shines through in "The
Spell", and it comes as no surprise that Anna is the child of two professional opera singers, as her stunning vocals glide majestically
throughout this ambitious album.
But the ambition of "The Spell" doesn't stop with the music and lyrics: CELLAR DARLING have created an audiobook that's narrated
by Anna to help complement the album's story, and they enlisted Romanian graphic designer, Costin Chioreanu (OPETH, ULVER,
WARDRUNA and more) to create vivid illustrations and animated videos for every track.
"He's the artwork rock star in the metal scene!" laughs Anna. "I was a huge fan of his - I actually have a sleeve tattoo with artwork
that he did for ULVER. So I got in touch with him about that and kept in touch ever since. He's an amazing artist: we just sent him the
music and lyrics, and he delivered."
For CELLAR DARLING, the intricate artwork is central to the album. "Even now when I am listening to an album, I like to be able to
look through the artwork," Merlin says. "To hold the sleeve in your hand while you listen. It's very much a part of the album experience,
in my opinion: I grew up with my dad's record collection, he had something like 10,000 vinyl! It was a more deliberate way of
listening to music. It's amazing that now WE have something like this, that you can actually spend some time looking at while listening
to the music. So I think it's amazing that we are able to make the artwork available digitally as well, in the form of animated videos
for each and every track, and on our website, too."
"It gives more importance to the concept," Anna concludes. "Having something like a bonus track would have been great, but it
wouldn't have completed what we started. With the audiobook and the fitting artwork, it closes the circle." |
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