The Medea Project - Kharon: Forbearance

In the quiet, cold hours of night, with the light of dawn still a world away, she stares out across the water. She’s been drawn here again and again, compelled to rise from her bed and wander through the dew-damp grass to the banks of this river that she can never seem to find once the sun has risen. And again she sees him. An indistinct shape flickering into being, out there on the sluggish current. A boatman, pole in hand and eyes aflame, shimmering on the edge of reality – a shadow, a memory, a dream. Each night drawing closer to the shore…

The birth of an album is not a simple process. From the first imaginings of the first song, through the process of shared ideas and rough musical sketches, the original demos and rehearsals, to that final product of all the blood, sweat and tears that emerges into the world…it’s a long journey with many a moment of despair and doubt along the way. Some of those raw, bloody incarnations that are eventually cast aside leave ghosts behind them, spirits that never quite fade from the minds of their creators. They are the paths not followed, the Titans overthrown by their Olympian children - cast into the deeps of Tartarus, far from the light - the whispers in the night that will not be silenced. When The Medea Project released their second full length album, Kharon, in June of last year, it left many such wraiths in its wake, trapped in purgatorial half-life. The brutal, cavernous sounds of the early demos, rehearsals and writing sessions refused to die, haunting the band, screaming in frustrated rage as the Live At Dingwalls album and the Akkadian Artefacts EP were made flesh. Now, The Medea Project have submitted to the will of these hungry revenants. They have been given life and will never return to their tombs. Kharon: Forbearance walks among us…

Nightmarish, distorted, oppressive and suffocating, ‘Absence’ plunges the listener straight into the chaos of this raw, unforgiving maelstrom – a voice calling through the vortex from the other side of midnight. Kharon: Forbearance is not pretty or refined; from ‘The Cave Song’s echoing chamber of secrets to the imperious power of ‘The End’, a war machine swathed in obscuring shadows, these abandoned children writhe in the primal power that lurks in the dark heart of The Medea Project. They are the boiling, incandescent emotions that seethe amongst the foundations of the songs they came to be, exposed to the light. They are the stained bones upon which the legacy of Kharon was built. Be it the immediacy of grief that informs ‘Purgatory Trapped’, the rampant passion of ‘Stygian Surf’, the grimy doom of ‘Tartarus Waltz’ or the burning intensity of ‘Dying Sun’, these dark incarnations demand to be heard.

Kharon: Forbearance will be released by BDB Studios on limited edition CD and digital formats, complete with a dark and distressed reworking of Daniele Serra (Stephen King, Clive Barker, Shining etc)’s stunning Kharon artwork, on September 7th. For those who want to venture deeper into the darkness, the doorway is open…