Albert Bell's SACRO SANCTUS "Ad Aeternum" details and pre-order.
It's high time to announce our next releases, to be out as always at the Keep It True festival, which is on April 29th this year. The first one of them is ALBERT BELL'S SACRO SANCTUS "Ad Aeternum". On his second solo album Albert (known mostly for his bass work with FORSAKEN and NOMAD SON, but also as the organizer of the Malta Doom Metal festival) has become much more confident as a vocalist, exploring various styles of expression, and also the arrangements became richer. Musically, "Ad Aeternum" offers old school epic and primeval blackened heavy/doom metal, with references to VENOM, ROOT, TÖRR, NEMESIS (pre-CANDLEMASS), early CELTIC FROST, SABBAT (UK), ATOMKRAFT, later ZEMIAL, MORTUARY DRAPE, epic era BATHORY, ANCIENT RITES, Abbath's I or SAINT VITUS. And lyrically it's a concept album burrowing deep in Knights Templar myth and history. It picks up where the debut, "Deus Volt", left off, charting the last crusades, the Templars' discovery of ancient hermetic texts, their persecution, excommunication and executions, the curse of de Molay, and finally, the infiltration into several secret societies by the surviving ones.
You can watch a promo clip for "Ad Aeternum" album (featuring a fragment of "Seal of Damnation") at this location or here:
There's also the official video clip for the title track, featuring pro-filmed and edited footage from two Knights Templar re-enactment associations from Poland, as well as the filming of Albert himself singing and playing. For another song, "Hex and Heresy", there's a static promo clip on our YouTube channel here. And from the Bandcamp player on the ALBERT BELL'S SACRO SANCTUS page you can listen to yet another song, "Invocations of Unlight". The album track listing is as follows:
2. Terra Santa
3. The Messenger
4. The Key of Splendour
5. Hex and Heresy
6. Seal of Damnation
7. Invocations of Unlight
8. Illuminati (Will to Power)
The CD is released with 4 cover arts, printed on a separate insert, additional to the 12-page booklet with lyrics, liner notes for each song and plenty of other artwork. The cover arts are by two contemporary artists: Leticia Almeida, whose Dark Templar was chosen to be the main one, and Paolo Girardi, who painted de Molay being burned at the stake, and who was originally commissioned by Albert, as well as two artists from the XIX century: Claude Jacquand, who's the author of "The Capture of Jerusalem by Jacques de Molay in 1299" painting, and an anonymous who did the etching of de Molay being led to the stake.
Cover art by Leticia Almeida.
"The Capture of Jerusalem by Jacques de Molay in 1299" cover art by Claude Jacquand, 1846.
"Jacques de Molay being led to the stake" cover art by anonymous, XIX c.
Cover art by Paolo Girardi (concept by Albert Bell).
You can find more info about "Ad Aeternum" and see the high-res covers on the page of this release.
Since the release date is very soon, we've extended the pre-order offer for 5 more days. Until Tuesday night, May 3rd midnight Standard Central European Time (UTC+1), you can order ALBERT BELL'S SACRO SANCTUS "Ad Aeternum" CD from our SHOP page, with 2 Euro discount. We've made it available also in a convenient bundle with the previous CD ("Deus Volt"), as well as with the new "Ad Aeternum" T-shirt - and with both the previous album and the T-shirt! ATTENTION: the possibility to order the T-shirt or T-shirt+CD bundles will be disabled during April 29th and 30th, because of us selling at the Keep It True festival.
You can also pre-order the other new releases which we'll have at the Keep It True festival: VV.AA. "Compendium of Metal Vol. 9" (our annual compilation, this one with 14 songs of 13 bands, including some previously unreleased and exclusive tracks, clocking in at 74 minutes), CADAVERIC POISON "Cadaveric Poison", WILDHUNT "Descending", ARKHAM WITCH "Get Thothed Vol. II" (the 2nd in the series of 3 EPs of the Witch playing THE LAMP OF THOTH songs, including one previously unreleased track) and ARKHAM WITCH "Demos from the Deep" (their 2008 demo, remastered in 2014, with 2 bonus tracks - this edition is re-packaged in cardboard sleeves with 4-page insert and limited to 250 copies, like the sold-out digipak edition was). We've changed the shipping rates in our shop to the most convenient Deutsche Post ones and we'll keep them until this Tuesday night. With the German postage rates, you can buy many more items for the same low shipping cost, which is particularly convenient for orders from outside of Europe and within Germany.
If you don't collect CDs, you can pre-order "Ad Aeternum" as digital download (in lossless formats) from our Bandcamp page. Later on the album will be distributed digitally by CD Baby and made available also from iTunes, Amazon MP3, eMusic and other retailers.