Ewigkeit began life as a solo, studio-based project in the mid 90's when a young James Fogarty, tired of playing in generic Thrash or Death bands within his local scene, retreated into a damp & cramped basement to record extreme music his own way.
Through distancing himself from bands which were only too happy to imitate rather than innovate, James set foot on a unique path of musical discovery and experimentation. Initial demos saw James mixing heavy riffs with layers of ambience to unusual, if amateurish, effect. The final demo "Dwellers On The Threshold" was well received and in 1997 Neat Records released Ewigkeit's debut album "Battle Furies" through their short-lived subsidiary "Eldethorn". The blend of mid-paced Death Metal riffs and simple orchestration was considered "different" at the time, but it was not different enough for Mr Fogarty
The following months saw James donate his entire music collection to the local Oxfam and retreat further into solitude. Determined to create a sound no-one else would possess. James advanced the role of keyboards and programming within his music - a move that led to descriptions such as "Ambient Metal" being applied to 1999's raw and bleak "Starscape" (Neat Records).
(Around this same time James co-founded The Meads of Asphodel. James wrote, produced and recorded 3 demos, the album "The Excommunication of Christ" and "Jihad")
Also at this time, James was concentrating on a far more progressive path for his new Ewigkeit full-length, and the result was arguably the first "real" Ewigkeit album: "Land Of Fog". This blended an eclectic mix of 70's rock, 80's metal and 90's melodic death metal with the developing "trademark" Ewigkeit sound.
Recorded for Neat Records, the album lay untouched for months whilst the Sanctuary Group bought Neat for it's back catalogue and bid adieu' to all current artists. Eventually "Metal Age Productions" stepped in and rescued the master copy from the seemingly inevitable fate of being discarded to the sands of time. With elements of space rock, death metal, stoner, thrash, ambience, folk and prog, some felt that James had pushed the boat out too far. Others could see truly great metal being created without any care for convention
Now, in 2004, the offices of Earache have tuned in to Ewigkeit's frequency. The home of death metal will shortly be bringing you Radio Ixtlan' "James" most ambitious musical journey to date. James has ventured beyond the Land Of Fog, explored the depths of his own will to experiment, and returned to Earth with one of the most interesting metal albums in years
(Source: Earache)
So, as I have now seemingly constructed the majority of the music for a new EP / promo length release, I can start to reflect on the nature of the music, and perhaps why I have written and recorded it at all ;
I can't honestly say I know the exact reason why to be honest with you. A re-found love of the raw and ambient music that lead me to form Ewigkeit in the first place perhaps ? Or maybe I have reached a point that far away from the begining of it all that I can now appreciate what was good about the era that I was so eager to escape from after the 'Starscape' album ? Needless to say, although the past 14 years have been filled with many ups and downs in life, I strangely find myself treading familiar ground in some respects - enough to invoke the name of Ewigkeit once more, and put down some tracks to exercise the emotional demons that haunt me (for, as anyone who has knowledge of Ewigkeit's true nature will know - it has always
been a personal inner journey).
'Starscape' was written with a certain frame of mind, and perhaps that is where I now find myself again, on a returning orbit. So it seems fitting that perhaps the era of Ewigkeit bearing most resemblance to what I am now constructing is that of when I was about 19/20 in 1998, and when I recorded 'Starscape'. It was an album of both musical delicacy, and yet harsh raging guitars and drums. Lyrically expressing the feeling of being totally lost in time and space, being buffeted by the gravitational pull of all the different astral bodies, and completely helpless - and yet, like the music, having also the polar opposite of defiant inner strength and vision to command and rule destiny. A two-card tarot reading of both the fool and the magician, if you will permit me.
What I can say is that the music is complex enough, yet deceptively simple. There are no superfluous samples, production edits or even the dynamics as on the albums which followed (Land of Fog through to Conspiritus). The lyrics are very personal, yet fittingly ambiguous. I do not intend to agonise long over the final results, and hope to share it all with anyone who is interested in the next few months.
I hope that you like it - i think you will.
More news as it comes...
F O G
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