Tristan Harders
Terra Atlantica
I am doing great, thank you! The new album is being received very well.
Well the pandemic might be kind of over but now we have the war, inflation and a crumbling economy, so I wouldn't actually call these 'brighter times'.
The title 'Beyond the Borders' has a double meaning. At first of course it refers to the story but I can also tell you that we definitely went beyond the borders of our musical skills while recording this album. It's a lot more complex and partially faster than the previous ones. You will also find that we went beyond the borders of the usual power metal toolbox and experimented with some other music styles.
From the opressed citizens' point of view, none of them is really better. It's the old 'the king is dead, long live the king'-story that has happened many times throughout history. For the lower classes it doesn't really matter which higher class holds the power. The problem is the fact that there is a higher class at all.
Yes, exactly. The constant rise and fall of empires is a theme that we already dealt with on our first album 'A City Once Divine'. I guess it will never end and this is just the way of humanity.
That's a good question. You got me there. It's something I will still have to figure out for the story doesn't really end with the album. The way to Atlantica is discovered but we don't find out what happens there. Maybe future albums will tell this tale? The advanced technology could of course be a gamechanger in the struggle present, the same thing that we are witnessing in the real world at the moment. But I don't think that's it all. In the end, somehow the power has to come from the mindset of the people.
I wrote this album in 2020, so any relations to current events are purely coincidential. However, you can see the powers depicted in our albums as your different inner personalities at war. In Transactional Analysis by Eric Berne or Schema Therapy by Jeffrey E. Young the human psyche is subdivided in several segments that are stiering our thouhgts and actions.
The cover shows a scene from the song 'Hellfire' in which the ship of the rebels is engaged in a cannonfight with the pursuing Prussian ship. In the background we can see the tower of the castle, that is occupied by the pirates, guiding the way to Atlantica with a beam of light. The scene is of course modified a bit to make it more dramatic. None of the ships actually burns in the story. The rebels escape by sailing into shallow waters where they can't be followed. So the pursuaders might have their revenge in the next album.
Well the idea was to make a power metal musical, undeniably inspired by me watching Les Miserables shortly before writing this album. So unlike Age of Steam, which is basically power metal songs with an added orchestration, Beyond the Borders is a musical with added power metal around it. This gave me the possibility to experiment with different musical elements and styles, which I find very important in the creation of music because this way it never gets boring.
This question cannot be answered logically as I do not think A and B = C. When creating music such as Terra Atlantica, you cannot plan ahead and conceptualize all elements. It is not like shopping for a meal you want to cook. It is more like there is this feeling inside of me and I want this feeling molded into music. I would say by intuition and gut feeling. Most of the elements implemented in the music of this album were derived from dreams I had beforehand. You could call the final product an output of coagulated dreams.
The album has a lot of different characters who are participating in the story. The first thought was to let every character be voiced by a different singer. But that would have been difficult to reproduce when playing the songs live, so we only hired guest vocalists for small, but important passages, for example the pirate king or the evil Prussian admiral who are fighting against the heroes. It would have sounded wrong if I had sung both roles. By the way: we also contacted some high tier singers from big bands but sadly they didn't reply.
The sound on Age of Steam was also good but considering the time and work that went into the songwriting, we felt that this time the sound had to be perfect to match with the quality of the songs. So we chose one of the best sound engineers there is (in my opinion), which of course required some more financial efforts, but it was worth it. We are really happy with the sound.
The purpose of the song in the album is to crush the calm and romantic mood of the ballad before. This is not only to please the faster harder louder metal fans but also an analogy to the real life with it's ups and downs. One minute you can have a good time and the next minute it can all be destroyed due some unforseen circumstances. I tried to make the song as aggressive as possible, with a lot of Rhapsody and early Blind Guardian influences.
In this song there is a lot going on in terms of the story, so it was logical to me that there would have to be a huge variety of parts as well. In the beginning we have the rebels, who are imprisoned by the pirates, except for the hero of the story. He has the chance to flee but is struggeling as he doesn't want to abandon his friends. Therefore there is a lot of interaction between main vocals and choirs in the first part of the song. He then meets the pirate king and challenges him to a musical duel since they are both musicians. This is the meaning behind the whole classical part which alters between piano and guitar, the piano representing the pirate king and the guitar the hero. Yes, it is a bit influenced by Tenacious D – The Pick of Destiny 😀
Of course, I'd love to do that! When writing Beyond the Borders, I never let go of the thought to one day perform it as a real musical on stage with a lot of different singers and a big choir. That would be epic! So far I am only missing the financial resources for such an effort. So if you're a musical producer and are reading this: Don't hesitate to contact me! 😀
Age of Steam was very well received by the international power metal community and was among the best selling albums of Pride and Joy Music in 2020. We are very happy with what we have achieved with this album. It's only sad that we never got to play a proper release show or go on tour with it.
Next year in March we will be going on a two week tour across Germany, supporting Grailknights and Victorius. It's a really cool power metal trio and we are very excited since it will be our first tour ever. Of course we will be presenting the new album on this tour as glorious as possible. Make sure to come to the shows if you can, you won't regret it!
Thanks for the questions! I hope to continue this journey further in the future and would love to see everyone on our tour next year.
More results...
