01. Force of Gravity (5:12)
02. Follow Me (4:39)
03. Isle in Me (6:00)
04. Embedded (3:30)
05. Turn of the Tide (6:53)
06. From the Silence (5:43)
07. Midnight Sun (5:12)
08. King Porn (7:31)
09. Episode 609 (6:00)
10. God of Rubbish (4:01)
11. Vapour Trail (14:30)
For a lot of fans, their personal Sylvan-story starts with “Posthumous Silence”. No other of the band’s albums has made so many uncommitted “just a little”-listeners instantly to enthusiastic devotees. In relevant forums, you often find statements like “I didn’t know the band before and then I listened to them on the festival and it just blew me away.” Progressive magazine reviewers were enthused, too, and awarded top scores in a row.
“Posthumous Silence” is a milestone in a long history reaching as far back as 1991, when keyboarder Volker Söhl, guitarist Kay Söhl and drummer Matthias Harder were schoolmates in Hamburg and together founded a band. Singer and bassist in those days was Marko Heisig, but he left soon to engage in other projects. When in 1995 Marco Glühmann joined the band (at that time still called “Chamäleon”), Matthias Harder and the Söhl-twins had finally found the charismatic voice they had been searching for so long. Together, they renamed the band as Sylvan after Sylvanus, the god of woods and forests.
From the very beginning, the band’s founders had committed themselves to opulent compositions and epic stories like their role-models Marillion, Genesis, Queen and Pink Floyd and they went on with this style under their new name. That was proven impressingly when Sylvan in 1999 released their first album “Deliverance”, with five of its eight songs running close to ten minutes or even longer and being correspondingly complex.
Encouraged by a lot of positive feedback and success, Sylvan released “Encounters” already in May 2000, a CD that was much more mature and harder than its predecessor.
Sylvan had engaged several different bassists until in spring 2000, Sebastian Harnack completed the band to care for the basslines permanently – just in time to join the “Encounters”-tour that was finished in spring 2002. The five musicians enthralled their audience not only in Germany, but on several festivals in different European countries and even in Mexico. Another highlight was the performance of “Encounters – Das Rockballet” together with the “New Dance Project”.
In October 2002, Sylvan released “Artificial Paradise”, their third album. The eponymous title song still belongs to the fans’ absolute favorites. The reviewers, too, gave Sylvan credit especially for this song’s outstanding quality and for the development of their music from one CD to the next. Although “Artificial Paradise” wasn’t really a concept album all the songs dealt with the same subject: society’s superficiality, deceitfulness and greed.
Compared to its predecessors Sylvan´s fourth album “X-Rayed” sounds rougher and darker. On this album, too, the songs all embrace a single subject: each tells a story about people who try to cope with an emotional encumbering situation. The release party in April 2004 was followed by an extensive tour throughout Germany and Europe (until winter 2005) with two outstanding events: the appearance at the “Rites of Spring Festival” in Phoenixville, USA, and the support of Marillion in Cologne.
Those highlights gave Sylvan important support to cope with the most stressful year in their history. Producing two albums simultaneously that couldn’t be more different entailed an enormous and almost unbearable workload. But when the five released the first of the two albums, “Posthumous Silence”, in April 2006, they were more than rewarded for their efforts with an overwhelming positive feedback.
The level of enthusiasm even surprised Sylvan themselves, because at that time you couldn’t foresee the trend to concept albums that is visible now. And the CD’s subject – a father reads the diary of his apparently dead daughter and learns for the first time about her desperation – as well as the complexity of the compositions could by all means have scared potential listeners off. Instead, the music as well as the story manages to enthrall the audience instantly and to touch everybody in a unique way.
So “Posthumous Silence” already achieved what actually the next album called “Presets” was supposed to do – which was to make Sylvan’s music known to a wider range of rock fans. Produced at the same time as the predecessor, “Presets” with its shorter and more catchy songs formed a perfect counterpart.
Shortly after finishing the work on their last two albums another major change in the band took place as founding member Kay Sohl who had been the band´s guitarist for many years decided to leave the band. However at the end of 2007 Sylvan was very happy to present a new band member to the public: Jan Petersen who already had been part of the Posthumous Silence- Live Show as a guest guitarist.
With their incredible LIVE DVD production “Posthumous Silence – The Show” Sylvan surely has set a new milestone in their band history. On their first DVD celebrating their 10th anniversary Sylvan presents the entire concept album in a breathtaking setting worth their unique music … and maybe those are the images and pictures which will start the personal Sylvan-story of many new fans.
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Post je objavljen 12.08.2009. u 15:50 sati.