The Swedish black metal band Algaion was formed in the early autumn of 1993 by Mathias Kamijo and Mårten Björkman who had been playing together for several years in another band called Abemal. Mathias had felt that the music he wanted to make didn't fit the concept of Abemal and therefore he formed Algaion as an outlet for his own musical ambitions. In October they recorded a demo containing the tracks "On The Reach Of Zaphonia" and "...And With Darkness I Pierce Him". This demo was released in only 30 copies of which one happened to end up in the hands of Jon at the American label Full Moon Productions. In the spring of 1994 they recorded the track "Kratos" for a compilation tape called "Drap" which was released by Nattfursth of Sorhin.
The summer of 1994 Maring;rten spent in Florida together with Jon at Full Moon Productions. The two of them worked out a deal and they released the debut album "Oimai Algeiou" in November of 1994 after several recording related delays. The album was recorded at the Abyss studio with Peter Tägtgren of Hypocrisy and they were actually only the second band to record in his studio (the first was the Hypocrisy black metal side project simply name The Abyss). Fredrik Söderlund of Octinomos helped them out with programming of keyboards and drums and Mathias' girlfriend at the time did some backing vocals and so did Nattfursth of Sorhin who was with them during the whole recording process.

In August of 1994 Mårten and Henry Möller of Puissance went to Norway to stay with Emperor for a couple of days. On their way there they stopped to take some photos of the churchruins outside of Oslo - the Frogn church which had been burnt down only a short while before they got there. The Oslo police later on interrogated them concerning the fire but the two of them kept the pictures. A full-page article in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten was the result of it. One of the pictures was used as the cd cover for one album from the German band Absurd.

In the winter of 1994 Mårten formed a record label which was supposed to have released the full length album "On The Demiurge" from Octinomos. They also planned to release a 7" from Algaion later in the spring of 1995. On April 22nd, 1995, the band entered the Abyss studio once again, this time with Peter Ta¨gtgren helping them out on drums. They recorded four tracks instead of the originally planned two. Shortly after that Mårten was arrested for a fire back in Sweden and kept in jail long enough to spoil any plans for releasing Algaion material on his label. When he got out on parole they were without a record deal for a short period of time.

The band went to Full Moon Productions once again and they were just about to sign a new deal when the German label Nuclear Blast contacted Peter Tägtgren and said that they were interested in releasing the four tracks as a mini album. In the final hour they pulled out of it though for unknown reasons. This was September 1995 and their new label came to be the Italian Avantgarde Music / Wounded Love Records.

The band broke up in 1998. Mathias later on started working in a music store. An MCD called "Herostratic Legacy" was recorded in 1998 but it was never released.

From www.tartareandesire.com