A couple of thoughts about Porta Obscura

By Coronatus Vocalist Carmen R. Schäfer

Dear readers of Lucem Fero,

This is Carmen from Coronatus. In the following, I would like to share a couple of thoughts about our album Porta Obscura with you...

There are in fact many bands with female vocals, but we have two different female voices, both as main vocals! I, Carmen, sing operatic and my colleague, Ada, rather sings in the Rock style. She replaces Viola, who quit after the Lux Noctis album.

The framework of our music is Gothic Metal, although Porta Obscura includes more elements of bombastic / Symphonic Metal and also Folk Metal than our first album, Lux Noctis did; Lux Noctis was “purer”. Plus, friends of complex rhythms – which appear in our drums / bass / rhythm guitar section - should like our music. It is sometimes even a bit progressive, say the first critics.

Some of our lyrics on both albums are romantic or erotic songs of existing or lost love, so “Fallen” on Porta Obscura is based on the German fairy-tale of the Star-Taler and poses the question: What would happen if you gave everything away and there are no stars which fall for you, like they did for the girl Star-Taler? We also have stories about angels (“Volles Leben” and “Strahlendster Erster”) and religious topics like a crucification (“Am Kreuz” on Porta Obscura) and an exorcism (“Exitus” on Porta Obscura).

Luckily, everyone of us is a songwriter, so our songs are from totally different members of the band. So one musician introduces a song to the band and then everyone tries what he or she can contribute to the song. Finally, we go into what we call “pimp-my-song” and check out how we can make the song perfect in our ears. After recording and mixing at the Klangschmiede E with Markus Stock from The Vision Bleak, it was very important for us to finish our CD with Mika Jussila in Helsinki, like last time. For us, he is the best engineer to do our mastering (he also masters the Nightwish albums).