Hello! My name is Reece, I play guitar and sing in the band, and I'm here to talk to you about our new project, The Heir Apparition.
As you may know, we recently ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise a chunk of money for studio time, and we laid out the general idea of what we want to do on the campaign page, but i felt it appropriate to really get into some nitty gritty details of what exactly this whole thing is going to be.
So, first of all, let's talk about The End Of Summer.
The End Of Summer was our first single, and it also acts as a sort of Prologue to the whole anthology of stories we're going to tell with this band.
TEOS sets the scene of a post-human world where weird little animals gather every night in a town called Fate's Hollow, to hear stories told by a mysterious antlered bird. The Heir Apparition is the first story they will hear, and the first album we will make.
In a nutshell, The Heir Apparition is a two-part concept album detailing the journey of a young prince named Elo as he seeks revenge on the men who killed him. Yes, killed.
The first half of the story, and the first album, is called Part I: Broken Crowns. That's the album we're about to track, and the subject of todays blog post. (We'll talk more about Part II in the future.)
The story begins on a distant planet named Kepros, a beautiful, lush green planet where nature is still dominant and the human population lives inside huge cities surrounded by thousand-foot-tall stone walls. Elo is the Prince of one such city, and his father, Riolus, is the King.
Elo is, for lack of a better phrase, a spoilt dick. Growing up rich with an emotionally absent father has given him a warped view of the dangerous world he lives in, and it's made him reckless.
It's this recklessness that ultimately gets him into trouble, as he sneaks out of the palace one day to spend some time in the slums with the common folk. He isn't there to see how the other half lives, he's there to gloat and show off, and this is of course a very bad idea.
Through a series of rather dark events, Elo is betrayed by someone close to the King, kidnapped, tortured and killed. It's not the best Tuesday he's ever had, admittedly.
His story clearly doesn't end there though, as he begins his journey to the afterlife.
After Elo's death, the King is grieving. Irriot Krast is the king's right-hand man, his primary courtier, and, coincidentally, the man who orchestrated Elo's death in the slums.
As the King grows suspicious of Krast and motivations, Krast has a choice to make. He can keep up the act and risk discovery, or he can go full send and murder the King too, completing his journey to the throne. He chooses the latter.
As Krast ruins the city of Nyrissa from the inside and allows his darkness to spread, Elo is coming to terms with being dead. As he travels through the void of death, he is greeted by the ghost of his mother Alegre, who presents him with a choice. Stay here forever and rest in peace, or return to his body as a revenant and seek revenge on Krast and the men who aided him. He also chooses the latter.
There is, as always, a catch. In the event of defied fate, or a destiny unfulfilled or refused, the universe has ways of correcting itself. In this case, the Astrophage Trinity are deployed. A trio of creatures, whose origins are between the folds of reality itself, are sent to find and destroy Elo for the crime of cheating death.
The trinity are this worlds version of the grim reaper, in a way. In myth, they are referred to as Star Sirens or "The Dancers In The Dark". They have been depicted in many different forms, but the form they take now is that of three immensely beautiful, angelic women. The implication here is that at some point in time, these creatures figured out that there was an evolutionary advantage to looking like that, making their prey easier to catch. A terrifying intelligence.
If they catch Elo, they will not only destroy his body, they will obliterate any evidence of his existence from the entirety of reality. Pretty harsh.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where Part I ends. With Elo returned to life in pursuit of Krast, and the Star Sirens in pursuit of him. Very dramatic.
Part II picks up exactly there, and it only gets more dramatic from that point on, but we aren't ready to talk about that just yet.
The story is very deeply ingrained in every aspect of this album, we've spent an awful lot of time developing and discussing the things that make this whole project tick, and we believe that once both parts of THA are in your hands and your ears, you will understand the full scope of what we're trying to do.
Ambitious? Absolutely. We are truly in love with what we've created here, we've spent countless hours honing these songs and storylines, and this blog is barely scratching the surface of what this will ultimately become.
We've already begun to use our new logo, the crown & dagger. This emblem will be the unifying symbol of both halves of The Heir Apparition, so expect to see it a lot more. Check it out below.
We also have received some rough sketches for the album cover from our man Adam Stone, an incredibly talented artist who has a natural affinity for drawing beautiful, weird stuff. You're going to love it.
We will be posting some track-by-track story explanations as we begin to do PR for the album itself, and we'll also be posting regular video and photographic content from the recording process.
We begin tracking this weekend, the 7th of April, with an eye to release Part I sometime around September/October, but as always things are subject to change.
We'll also be performing the entirety of Part I, front to back, along with a few other songs live at The Spinning Top in Stockport in the 11th of April, so if you want a super early listen, thats your opportunity.
Until then, thank you all for your continued support, we appreciate you all very much. We can't wait to start showing you what we've been up to.
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