Arcana

"After the huge success of our debut album 'Sunrise In Eden' we didn't want to waste to much time to what would become the its follower 'Arcana'. The time from the recordings of 'Sunrise' (mid 99) till its release (Autumn 2000) gave me plenty of time for songwriting. All in all I wrote 17 songs and 12 ended up on 'Arcana'. 'Thin red line' and 'The Silent Wake' remained in the drawer for a later use, while there were 3 songs that were not as good as the others so they were thrown into infinity. The titles of those songs were 'Oceans of Time', 'Heaven's Calling' (which at least made it into rehearsal room) and 'Malice in Wonderland'.
It was a very creative time and completely stressless. Georg Edelmann was replaced by Andreas Eibler on guitar and so we spent the first half of 2001 to rehearse the new songs to prepare them for the studio to record.
We entered the House of Audio Studios in Karlsdorf (Germany) on July 3, 2001. Drums were recorded from July 4 to 7, while everything else was recorded parallelly from July 9 till 25. This process was more relaxing for Andy, Kurt, Sabine and myself, so none of us had to record all day through. It was a hot summer and so we enjoyed many evenings on the porch and had some nice barbecues. Angra were there at the same time to record their comeback album 'Rebirth' and so we shared the apartment with them. The mix was done again by Dennis Ward and started at the end of August.
'Arcana' got overwhelming reviews and was released on November 26, 2001. The album was followed by a European tour with Metalium in May 2002 and our first appearance in Asia, co-headlining the International Busan Rock Festival in front of 20,000 people and had a great club show in Seoul with Sinergy. Sadly the Korean tour was Kurt's last one as he decided to leave the band due to his profession."
- Lanvall, Spring 2013