So, Where Is It?
Searching for metal's infamous lost albums
This piece originally ran in Stereogum’s The Black Market on June 2018. This is an annotated version.
Henrik Drake, Ph.D., is a researcher at Linnaeus University.1 His name has appeared atop numerous papers this year with titles like “Incorporation of Metals into Calcite in a Deep Anoxic Granite Aquifer,” “Fungi in Deep Subsurface Environments,” and “The role of anaerobic fungi in fundamental biogeochemical cycles in the deep biosphere.” He has multiple multi-year projects in the works studying “methane consumption in the crystalline bedrock.” He is no doubt extremely busy.2
I emailed him to ask about a death metal album.3
I know Henrik Drake as the bassist for Anata, a Swedish tech death band that last released an album in 2006.4 That record, The Conductor’s Departure, remains a favorite. The culmination of Anata’s fascination with polyphony, Departure is like a string quartet shaped into a death metal band, with guitarists Fredrik Schölin and Andreas Allenmark interweaving independent melodies while Drake pulls double duty as a third thread and batterymate to the dexterous rhythms of drummer Conny Pettersson.
And yet, for all of its braininess, it retains an earthy quality,5 emphasizing hooks while getting brutal with the best of them. Needless to say, it holds up because it has few peers. I could listen to it forever. But I wanted to ask Drake about the album after this one.6
In 2008, Pettersson posted this to Anata’s official band forum on SMN News:
Finally the day has come. Earache have given us the green light to record and the studio engineer are micing my drums as I write this. I will write a sort of a studio diary next week that will be posted on the Earache website. Now I have to focus. Wish me luck.
A few months later, excerpts were available:
Anata proudly present two excerpts from the upcoming album, both of these from the track entitled ‘Greed conquers all.’ The album will be released on Earache later this year, and we hope that you will find these clips appetizing…
And then…welp, not much…unless you were in the band, I guess. A post pleading for updates in 2009 received news that Anata and Earache weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. Come 2012, as reported by Heavy Blog is Heavy, a “Digby” at Earache responded to a fan’s inquiry by contesting that Anata had essentially ghosted on the label for years and then offered an unmixed instrumental album for release. Earache, which feels the need to operate its own rebuttal blog, used the hashtag “#splitup” in an Anata-referencing Facebook post.7
Heavy Blog is Heavy and MetalSucks then spied an “HD” in the comments who refuted Earache’s version of events. A subsequent MetalSucks piece in 2014 detailed a post by Drake on Anata’s Facebook page that said the “album will be released [eventually].” A Facebook update in June 2016 echoed this, stating that “mastering of the long awaited album will take place in July.”8 And then…welp, here we are, me sending emails asking about a “lost album.”
To me, a lost album is one that either has been shelved or lingered in varying states of completion for a significant amount of time following an initial “get ready for new stuff!” announcement. For a certain type of obsessive fan such as myself, these albums take on a legendary air. Perhaps there are psychological reasons for that: curiosity has been linked to the dopamine reward system and irrational optimism stokes an intense bias fostering unwavering belief in favorites.9 Maybe it’s just my OCD tendencies at play, a conspiracy theory-esque insatiable desire to take control and ownership over a process that will forever be outside my grasp.10
Regardless, each passing year only seems to grow the legend, making a lost album’s vacancy in an artist’s discography all the more maddening. In my own experience, this leads to some asshole-y behavior11 as annoyance overflows and I publicly complain about an artist’s seeming inaction without (a) knowing what is actually causing the delay and (b) considering the potential ripple effects of the pressure I’ve applied. Learning about the former in order to diminish the latter was exactly why I wanted to reach out to Drake directly. His reply inspired me to check on two other lost album cold cases that have long been on my mind.12
“The album is more or less done,” Drake emailed back.13 “Fredrik has spent so much time on this record. People may think we have not done anything but sit and wait, but Fredrik has worked on this recording a lot with mixing and so on to make it as good as possible but a lot of personal issues have come in between.”14 Drake also said that labels were interested, a point of contention that had been proposed in the past as an additional hurdle needing to be cleared.
Part of me was understandably stoked: It’s done? It’s real? I thought, recognizing a Gollum-like tenor to my interior monologue. But I couldn’t help but read into “personal issues,” sensing the underlying weariness, feeling less than enthused that I’ve probably gone on record joking about Anata’s decade-long absence.15
Drake touched on this a bit while answering a different question: “We have always been aiming to release this album. Things have just not gone our way … over the years. We know a lot of fans are waiting for it and are frustrated. We are sorry for this.” From an extremely online fan’s perspective, album updates that ultimately don’t bear fruit can be a tough thing to swallow. I mean…maybe that’s worth an apology, if one ever needs to apologize for not making death metal.
I asked if there was a disconnect between a fan’s conception of a creator and what is actually going on in a creator’s day-to-day. “Probably,” Drake answered, “and we all have jobs, kids, families, etc. to take care of. It is a bit different from when we were touring and releasing a lot. Death metal doesn’t pay our bills. Also, we lost Andreas from the band, which had [an effect], of course.”16
I’ve asked this again and again this year, but how are a fan’s expectations formed? If expectations are forged in a vacuum where unreproducible contextual metadata like time and place don’t matter, that might be one thing. But what if my expectations are something else…say an illogical hope that hearing a beloved band’s new material will restore a part of myself that has since eroded?
As I said about Sleep,17 it’s rare that band and fan grow in tandem. To expect otherwise denies the creators their humanity, intentionally obscuring all of the icky life stuff that happens between albums, the mess that tidy narratives and timelines tend to purge. People do indeed get jobs, have kids, have families, etc.; their priorities change. Their health changes. James Murphy wants to make a second Disincarnate album, but, because of reoccurring medical issues and a busy work schedule, he’s been dealt a tough hand.18 But…would I even know that unless I cared enough to look?
I asked Petr Tománek, a founder of Lykathea Aflame, how he was doing.19 “For me as an analytical, deep thinking and sincere person, [this is] one of the tough questions, to which the answer could become an essay on my life up to now. 🙂 But to put it simply, I AM. I am observing life and learning, going through all that emotional variedness arising from confrontation of self with the outside world. Sometimes in great and positive vibes, sometimes in less great and positive ones.” This is the most Lykathea Aflame answer. Tománek followed it up with “…and I am working with full focus on the successor of Elvenefris.”20
In 2000, members of Czech brutal death grinders Appalling Spawn rebranded and released Elvenefris, a true classic of out-there, progressive death metal. In the fashion of its former incarnation, it absolutely rips with an atypical technical adeptness that is all its own. But Elvenefris also has an expanded sound palette that is unlike anything before or since. Encyclopaedia Metallum lists Lykathea Aflame’s lyrical themes as “Spirituality, Hope, Philosophy, Salvation.” The album sounds like that, just, you know, with death growls and crazy drumming. It closes with an 11-minute, synth-heavy, meditative instrumental; a Laraajiian21 encore to a, let’s not forget, death metal record. On the whole, Elvenefris is a combination of things that should be too rare to live but ends up flourishing, blasting a big-ass beam of light into the darkness. It’s one of my all-timers. And I always wondered if there was going to be another one.
So too have the tireless keepers of the aforementioned Encyclopaedia Metallum page, who dutifully detail the news over the years, including that the quartet slimmed down to a duo counting Tománek and drummer Tomáö Corn, who also plays in Cult of Fire and Death Karma. (Plenty of other diehard fans abound, some working for labels. In 2012, lovingly constructed remasters by Blood Music introduced both Appalling Spawn’s discography and Elvenefris to a new legion of listeners.) But whenever I drop by the page for updates, the yellow “On hold” status always seems to subdue hope that more material is on the way.22
Tománek answered all of my questions with the same studiousness and deep self-reflection found in his music, returning a Word document that ran over three pages (which you can read in full here).23 I asked if he’d ever felt pressure to deliver a follow-up to Elvenefris, to which he responded, “No, I do not feel any. I always work in accordance with my inner voice … I am not getting confronted with the outside world’s expectations which is allowing me to stay free in my music expressions. Elvenefris was once made and there will never be Elvenefris II. There is a new time for something new to be born.” As for when that time might be, Tománek slipped this in later: “But the status is that more and more music is done and completed and we plan to go to studio to make two promo songs this year.”24
The bulk of our conversation, though, centered more on a person’s path in life and following one’s own truth. He tells me he’s not active on social media. His writing exudes a sense of warmth and peace. It’s hard for me to not conflate the two. However, I was probably most struck by what he wrote when I asked if there was anything he wished he could tell his younger self:25
I am learning in general on my journey through life so I cannot come up with anything particular. I would also not tell anything to my younger self as I was always acting in communion with my inner guidance and all what I went through was exactly what I needed to go through.
This sentiment also popped up in my conversations with Curran Reynolds and Gene Fowler, two-fifths of NYC’s Wetnurse, once a noisy and charismatic-as-hell live wire that mushed many heavy sounds together into a dramatic whole.26 In a Pitchfork review for Wetnurse’s second full-length Invisible City, Cosmo Lee (a writer we should…bring back)27 wrote that “They’re punk, they’re metal, they’re classic rock; they’re the ‘all of the above’ that makes New York City frustratingly wonderful.” Invisible City was also what I needed, Fowler’s singing a proxy for the internal yell that I tried to stifle with a smile as I increasingly regretted my occupancy in various prisons of my own making. I’ve been better, I’ve been worse, but Invisible City is always there even though the band is no longer.28
“It has unfolded the way it had to,” Reynolds wrote in an email reply, recapping the band’s lifecycle. Busy with Body Stuff and PR gig The Chain (which represents Aeviterne, a Wetnurse relation we covered in April)29, he took time out his day to confirm something I had heard making the rounds: “There’s a third Wetnurse album that was almost fully tracked and never released. Certain people who know about that still ask us about that third album.” And ask they do. Fowler replied “OMG YES” when I inquired if people reached out to him frequently for a status. So…what is the status, then? Reynolds: “Track some vocals, put the songs in order, final mix, master it, put some cover art on it.” Is that time coming? Well, Fowler chipped this in:
People have been asking for the status for a decade it seems. I refer to my favorite band PORTISHEAD who ironically went down this same exact path. They released their third album 10 years after the second. Does life imitate art? The release of our album is equivalent to opening an aged cask of bourbon or wine. To have an authentic “throwback” sound, it had to sit. I was selfish. I didn’t want “the movie to end.” Everything does. So now is a perfect time to open that bottle and let the credits roll.
Albums are kind of weird when you think about them: little temporal oddities that are eternalism in action;30 a fleeting moment that lasts for as long as the album is available to be listened to. They’re a marker of existence that may or may not even still be applicable to the creator when other people uncover them. And, in metal and punk particularly, there’s an inherent instability to the band dynamic, where you can only teeter on the edge for so long before it smooths out and becomes a parking lot or you step back to establish residency elsewhere. This was something that Reynolds alluded to later when I asked if it was weird for a 2011 recording to be considered “new” by people who haven’t yet heard it.
Yeah it represents the 2011 me, not the 2018 me. After recording that album I went on to become a better drummer and then to quit drums entirely and start writing songs and singing. We’re seven years down the road now, it’s a whole different scene for all of us. That album is a snapshot of a very specific time and place and set of circumstances, as all albums are. That said, I think it is a wonderful thing. It’s the pinnacle of a decade’s worth of work. There’s all kinds of feelings sealed up in that thing – still real and relevant to a listener today, even if they are the feelings of our younger selves – and it would be nice to unlock that and share that with people.
Which, of course, leads us back to my new (creepy?) preoccupation: asking people what they’d tell their younger selves. To Reynolds, specifically, I asked what he would pass on to the bands he now helps. Part of his answer included this:
Recognizing the temporary nature of things. Recognizing good chemistry and making the most of it while it’s there. Recognizing that enthusiasm has a time limit, motivation has a time limit. These are beautiful forces that are temporary. If you can harness these forces and make something out of them, you’ve won. Toward the end of Wetnurse’s run, we labored over songwriting because we really wanted to make art that was special. I think you can go so far in that perfectionist direction, but you might run out of time.
Fowler offered this inside one of his answers:
Our first shows I was 20 years old sneaking into the bars to play our sets. I would hide with all the gear…. So, I would tell young me, “Keep hiding and enjoy the ride!” because, growing up with this band, these guys taught me how to rise with the tide, and always see the sun.
Keep hiding and enjoy the ride. I kind of love that. I’m glad I asked.3132
OK. These are going to be the longest footnotes in the history of footnotes, a massive monument to footnotery casting a gargantuan shadow that would make even David Foster Wallace cower like he was in the presence of a supreme being. Why? We're going to talk a lot about process and how I learned to write over the years. I don't think this piece is that good, but it has a lot of good examples of things I've picked up along the way that have made me a better writer. Is that interesting? Choose your own adventure!
We'll start with my approach to interviews. If you're doing extensive interviews for shorter pieces like this, I think having more than three talking heads is overload. At that point, you have to keep reintroducing who is talking every few grafs. It ain't pretty. Of course, if you're just picking up the stray quote here and there, go for it. Vaya con Ronnie James Dio.
If you're doing access journalism in a writing sphere, i.e., writing intros for a heavy metal column, I think emailers are better than phoners. People can think about their answers, and the copy typically comes out better. After all, you're turning writing into writing instead of speaking into writing. That said, I'd rather do phoners with, like, Doyle of the Misfits because I know he's going to say some funny stuff. There are also a host of metalheads who are debatably literate. Pick your spots based on charisma and perceived ability to write, in other words.
If you're doing adversarial work, toss all of that out the window. You want to do phoners because you need to press someone on their bullshit.
I've done a lot of stupid things to nail down interviews. Drake was pretty simple to track down. Once I figured out he was a researcher, I found his university and poked around the directory. One email, boom. It isn't always that easy, and you have to get comfortable with (a) people telling you to get fucked, and (b) having a lot of awkward conversations with the wrong people or relatives of the right people.
Fun pun. The earth scientist has a band with an earthy quality.
Decent transition. Still waiting for the nut graf.
I’m pretty sure I had a much nastier Digby dig here, but I still wanted him to send me my CDs on time without pissing in the mailer first.
Guys, once again, I will pay for the stupid mastering if that’s the holdup.
This was back when I couldn't help but link everything back to scientific studies, like I was pitching this to Nature or something.
Trying to figure out when, why, and how I should relinquish control is a big touchstone of mine and seems to show up in my writing more often than not.
Me? An asshole?
I’m going to keep harping on this: This is an OK preview, but where is the nut graf?
I tend to think of this piece as my epiphany that you could just start things in the middle. Like, you didn't need some elongated preamble setting the scene before getting down to the story; less crust, more pizza. So, it's funny to read how long it took me to get to this part.
When I said the footnotes were going to go long, this is the particular footnote I was thinking of. If you're writing something longform like this that doesn't feature a straight Q&A transcript, you have to introduce your subjects as quickly as possible. If you don't, it causes whiplash for the reader when you start introducing talking heads, like, a thousand words in.
If I were editing this piece now, I'd start it like this:
I'm emailing Henrik Drake, Ph.D., a researcher at Linnaeus University and the author of "Incorporation of Metals into Calcite in a Deep Anoxic Granite Aquifer," about a death metal album. I mean, as one does whenever reaching the inbox of one of the leading lights in the field of "methane consumption in the crystalline bedrock." "The album is more or less done," Drake replies.
There you go. You've piqued the reader's attention — "Wait, what death metal album?" — and set up that you'll be interviewing people for the remainder of the piece.
The other important consideration is structure. I genuinely believe you have to structure these things like a stand-up routine. Your best piece of tape has to go up top. That's your hook. You have to close the piece out with, like, your fifth-best piece of tape because no one reads or remembers the end of an essay. You've got to wow them with the intro and the middle. The outro is more about enforcing whatever feeling you wanted to convey throughout the essay. I used to kill myself thinking of perfect endings. They do not matter. The only people who care are other writers. Free yourself up to do your best work in the preceding two-thirds.
Lastly, you have to get to the nut graf ASAP. You have to give readers a reason to care after you've hooked them. So:
I'm emailing Henrik Drake, Ph.D., a researcher at Linnaeus University and the author of "Incorporation of Metals into Calcite in a Deep Anoxic Granite Aquifer," about a death metal album. I mean, as one does whenever reaching the inbox of one of the leading lights in the field of "methane consumption in the crystalline bedrock." "The album is more or less done," Drake replies.
The album that Drake claims is more or less done is one of the most anticipated albums in death metal. The band: Anata, the Swedish tech death maestros who built a cult following atop the foundation of entwined leads and honest to god counterpoint. The album: Well, the album isn't out yet. The Conductor's Departure, Anata's Schrödinger's swansong, was released 12 years ago. Longtime fans have waited for Anata's fifth album ever since, checking news items with the fervor of a starving squirrel looking for nuts. But maybe those fans don't have to wait much longer.
Boom. Done. Hook, interview introduction, intro nut graf. After dealing with the Drake stuff, you'll want to put another nut graf, expanding the scope to being about lost albums in general.
I don't think what I originally wrote is terrible, but all of that explain-y stuff can go under the nut graf to flesh things out. It's too much prattle before telling the reader why they should care.
Should’ve reminded the reader who Fredrik is.
Worth remembering you’re always dealing with humans.
Probably should’ve mention that Andreas left the group in 2008. He’s not dead.
I don’t remember this at all, haha.
As I remember it, Murphy was supposed to be the third interview, but we couldn’t get things lined up.
The fact I transition to this so casually blows my mind. This is the most newsworthy reporting in this whole piece. Oh, yeah, just talking to Petr from Lykathea Aflame.
Now, getting Petr nailed down was a real test of my ability to annoy people. tldr, after many aborted attempts, I finally got a good email for Tomáš Corn. Initially, I wanted some background on Cult of Fire. He said the band doesn't do interviews. I asked some questions off-record, and he gave me Petr's email. It was, like, a month of legwork to make that happen.
Not sure why we let the double 'i' through. Should just be one or go with an 'ean.' I think I usually default to '-y' these days — Deicide-y instead of Deicidean. Seems more conversational, less academic, which is a nice way of saying pedantic.
Shadow, the Japanese melodeath band, was another "on hold" band I tried to get on the horn but never could.
Note: I fixed the link so it will point to the Stacks instead of a dead blog.
Hey, you’ll never guess what didn’t happen.
I get why I probably needed to be the reader surrogate in this piece, but I think it would've been stronger without me in it. It just feels so up my own ass when I’m a character.
Ugh. This bums me out. Gene died in 2022.
This is an Invisible Oranges in-joke. Whenever we got a new editor, everyone would comment "Bring back Cosmo" as a hazing ritual.
What a weird sentence. Anyway, setting up this interview was the easiest of the bunch. I talk to Curran quite frequently about PR matters. Gene tagged along. What's up, Curran? Body Stuff to California, when?
Forever lashed to the yoke of ethics. I think this disclosure is probably overkill, but I am who I am.
One of the five things I write about: the eternalism of music.
I imagine I was running over deadline, and that's why things got so block-quote-heavy in the end. And yet, it substantiates that no one remembers the end of these things because people wouldn't still talk to me about this intro if they remembered that the structure was complete dogshit.
It’s almost 2025, and none of the albums discussed in this essay have been released.