In late summer 1998 FALL OF SERENITY was born from the remains of CONTRITION. Actually CONTRITION slowly transformed into FOS around that time. We decided for a name change, but still kept playing shows as CONTRITION. Members at this time were Eddy and Alex (guitars), Lars (vocals), Andreas (bass) and Ulli (drum). In ´99 we made it final, buried CONTRITION and let FALL OF SERENITY rise from the ashes. Our first FOS show was with INTEGRITY 2000 in our hometown Schleiz in October ´99.

First recordings for FOS were already done in December ´98 at RAPE OF HARMONIES studio in Triptis / Germany. We recorded six songs plus an intro. Theses songs were supposed to be released on a Belgian label, but for some reasons this never worked out. Fortunately our buddy Olivé from Geneva/ Switzerland offered us to bring out our material on his small label "x83xrecords" as a vinyl-only release. Since we knew him for quite a while from CONTRITION-gigs in Switzerland, we knew that he was a cool guy to work with and signed to "x83xrecords". The record called "Smoldering Doom" was limited to 500 copies, 100 of them grey-marble, and was released in January 2000. (record release party in Geneva @ Cab de l´usine with THE YEAR OF OUR LORD & MERIDIAN, 22.01.2000). Still in 1999 we were back in the RAPE OF HARMONIES studio to recorded for a split 12" (vinyl-only as well) with the guys from HEAVEN SHALL BURN. This record, "THE HEAVEN SHALL BURN / FALL OF SERENITY SPLIT LP", was released in December 1999 on DEEDS OF REVOLUTION RECORDS, even before our "debut"-LP.

During the split-recordings René, good friend and official FOS-roady did some back-up vocals, which we quite liked. So we decided to offer him a job as aditional full-time vocalist. We experimented a lot during our rehearsals and it worked out fine. René became a new member of FOS which didn´t change much for him… he was hanging out with us anyway. Our first show with Lars and René doing the vocals took place in February 2000 and it was a real booster having two guys grunting their guts out.

During the year we played some more shows, among them the Goodlife Summerfest in Belgium and the very fine Y2K-Fest in Plzen /Czech Republic.

Early November we decided to record a new demo that would represent our current musical status which had developed into serious death-metal by then. Again the four "Demonstration Tracks 2000" were recorded at the R.O.H. studio. Those studio-session was Andreas´ last musical contribution to FOS. He decided to quit the band because it was hard for him to equally focus on his job and FOS. Of course he still hangs out with us and supports us whenever necessary. His good-bye-show was on the 11th of November 2000. There, we introduced our new member John to the crowd. We knew John from some gigs and he was also playing bass in a short-lived sideproject of some FOS-members called OBSCURATION around that time, featuring P.W.Engel of IMPENDING DOOM (drums), Eddy and Alex playing guitar and René singing.

So, as a replacement for Andreas, John took over the bass-duties in FOS. On our first gig with the new line-up (20.01.2001) we were supporting AGATHODAIMON and GRAVEWORM and we really rocked the stage.

The next important step in the FOS-history was, when Frank VOICE OF LIFE got his hands on one of our demos. After watching us perform live in Leisnig in May 2001, he made us an offer we could not refuse.

In January 2002 the debut-album "Grey Man´s Requiem" was finally released and got remarkably good reviews world-wide (check our review-section). Since then FOS has been busy writing new songs and playing live-shows as often as possible.
But 2002 was also the year of saying goodbye to one of the band´s vocalists. Lars decided to leave the band because he was unable to make it to many shows, not to speak of practising sessions, since he had moved to Cologne earlier this year. FOS decided to continue with the one remaining singer René and not to look for a replacement. In October 2002 two of the new songs will be recorded.

...to be continued...