General Update

 

Honored black metal fanatics and internet warriors,

If you have accessed this page recently, you might have gotten the impression that this band has been out of service for the better part of a decade. Rest assured that that is not the case, we have been pretty much alive and kicking the entire time, only this page died down at some point in 2016 when we were recording our critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful sophomore album, “Children of a Nuclear Dawn.” Social media completely took over around that time.

Here's a backwards timeline of what happened in the last 9 years, feel free to stop reading at any point if you have the feeling you have little interest in events that have been buried by time and dust.

2025: Nihlathak and Mithras are recording the last vocal tracks for our new album, which will be entitled “Folk Devils & Moral Panics”.

2024: Basically busy with album recordings. Mithras on tour with Wight for most of the year, so progress was kind of slow. Osiris nailed all the drum tracks pretty early on, rest of the year was bass and guitars, piece by piece. The entire process was halted by Mithras becoming a father in November 2024 – which is also the reason for the quiet on the live front as of now. We did play a few gigs in 2024 though.

2023: Sorting out album arrangements, and playing a few gigs.

2022: Osiris joins as our new drummer. The guy is located in the Stuttgart area, so Fallen Tyrant turns into an online project that only meets every once in a blue moon to rehearse. We played our first gigs after a long-ish absence – and when we did the first one, that was the third time ever all three band members were in the same room. But this kind of thing does work with experienced musicians (and the help of in-ear monitoring) as we found out.

2021: We got access to our rehearsal room again, but shortly afterwards fired our founding drummer Sperrfeuer Heretic for personal differences. That could have been the end of the band, especially as the guy did shape our sound in more ways than you’d think, and as he was definitely an audience favorite. But sometimes things go sour, and it’s better to go separate ways…

2020: COVID hits. We lose access to out rehearsal room which is on public property and was hence subject to all sensible and nonsensical COVID restrictions imaginable. Mithras takes up home recording and basically writes a whole album during the various lockdowns.

2019: Few but highly successful live appearances – the original Fallen Tyrant lineup with Sperrfeuer probably peaked at this point when it comes to live delivery. Already writing a few new songs.

2018: We actually played way too many concerts in the first half of the year, so by the time “Children of a Nuclear Dawn” comes out in autumn, we’re basically out of booking options. Shit planning. Album gets released and gets very favorable reviews in the press.

2017: Busy working on the album, a few live appearances. Highlight of the year is probably our appearance at Metaldays in Tolmin, Slovenia. Thunderstorm destroyed the stage so we had to play a day later and in the rather early morning, in a completely hungover state. Perfectly nice gig though, not least owing to the professionality of the Metaldays stage crew. There is a video of someone in the audience brushing their teeth to Sperrfeuer’s blastbeats, fi you go look for it.

 

 

Rant, rave & summer break

Morning,

I am Mithras Sol Invictus, and this is "South Hessian Black Metal, fuck everyone!!"

Well, almost... we played two more gigs in Göttingen and in Mannheim, which went very well, and now we're back to working on the album. I've been practising my ass off for the fucking solos, studio is coming up next month, and the artwork is on its way as well.

That being said - I recently noticed my blood pressure levels went far down, back to a healthy level, when I blocked almost everyone (except for a few musicians I know) who has anything to do with black metal from my facebook feed. What the fuck is wrong with black metal these days? The first thing may be that it takes place on facebook, and now I start sounding like Grandpa Mithras, but some trends still piss me off. First, to get this out of the way, can we stop discussing the political affiliation of EACH AND EVERY BAND?! We don't support right wing extremists and will speak out on that as well, but this is currently being taken much too far, from both sides mind you. All these connections "around three corners" are fucking meaningless - try this with Fallen Tyrant, and you'll probably end up convinced we're antisemitic pro-Israel islamophobic muslim-loving nazi communist fundamentalist Christian theistic pagan Satanists. And we fucking watch our backs who we associate with already, but you can construct something like this for each and every band.

And while I'm at it: Fuck the hipsters. Since when has it become the norm for "black metal" bands to use tonloads of heart emoticons in their posts and use slang like Moneyboy (the guy who's been taking the piss out of German Hip Hop for the last years)? I know it's supposed to be "funny" and "edgy," but it's not. Stop it and think about creating a coherent concept for your art, will you? Even if it's extremely outlandish: At least Sunshine & Lollipops (check them out!) mean what they say and do, which I can't say for most of those pretentious wannabes. And hey, I'm completely fine with not wearing warpaint and looking like art students while playing black metal, as long as there's something sincere to it and some quality to the music, but stop the bullshit. Just stop it. And stop pretending "hipster black metal" is something new, unique or innovative. Just because your core audience has absolutely no clue who Emperor or Ulver are, doesn't mean your stuff hasn't been done before. Have you looked at and listened to fucking Ihsahn or Garm?!

The "trve" community can stop to label everything they don't like "hipster" as well, and I know I've been guilty of that as well. You know, there's American black metal made by American black metal people that happens to sound vaguely similar to German hipster BM, but that doesn't mean the attitude behind it may not be completely different. Hell, there's German "hipster black metal" like Ultha, which isn't "hipster" at all, but full out black metal.

More of this: If you play in a black metal band, wear corpsepaint and claim to be hardcore satanist (yeah right), that's perfectly fine as well, we understand, we're kind of in the same boat. But can we at least stop to call everything "orthodox" and "occult," and most of all, can we stop calling every fucking concert a "ritual"?! This is turning into being the "new hipster," to say it with a friend's wise words, and very, very few performances are actually ritualistic in any way. I'll tell you, if we wanted to do a ritual, it would certainly not involve a bunch of drunk metalheads - and those people ARE the audience at most concerts, however "trve" and "elitist," and it's alright. A Fallen Tyrant show isn't a ritual: However we're painted up and however much of our inner darkness we spit out at the audience, it is and will always remain a pure balls-to-the-wall, hand made and heartfelt rock performance. Just with a different tone and maybe a slightly different attitude behind the music. And as I said, we might be doing something very ritualistic at some point, but that will involve very little audience, if at all.

Then again - in the end, we're all artists and have the freedom to do whatever the fuck we like. But we also have the freedom to criticize it when other people are completely full of crap and try to pass it off as legitimate art, either to pretentious wankers who pride themselves in being overly "unique" (hipsters) or to weaklings who can't find their own identity and thus need to belong to a "elitist scene" (and you know who those folks are.) And remember, everyone is full of shit, even us, only the filling level is different - I have a feeling next to everyone in the black metal scene scores pretty high here.

That's it. We keep working behind the scenes, and we'll be back on stage in autumn 2016.

Worst,
Mithras