“Inspirïert von Lena Liri” double album.
As we returned from the medieval temple, full of secrets yet to be understood, I thought about how our music had changed. We play industrial, but we have made it something else. We have dipped into symphonic rock, but we follow our own path. We are carrying back vast material. It is not a sound, but a trace. Not the whole album — that would be impossible. The orchestral parts, the vocals, the structure — all will be born in the studio.
But some things cannot be created artificially. The presence of Sanctum Ferrum is in the footsteps, in the depth, in the reflection of sound off stone in an empty hall where something once happened, something perhaps beyond our understanding. And when I hear that long, receding echo in the tracks, I remember the silver strand in Jürgen’s hair and I’m glad I didn’t ask a single question.
Later, away from the bustle, in a silence that was not a void but a dense medium, I realized one thing: there is a moment when you stop adding sound. Not because you are tired. But because any further movement will destroy the form.
The Architecture of Heaviness and Height.
For a long time, Metallherz was a battering ram. We pierced space with sound. We lived in binary logic: strike — resistance, attack — defense. We sincerely believed that “heaviness” was measured in decibels and aggression. We were wrong.
True heaviness is the mass of rest. It is the ability of a construction to stand on its own, without props or unnecessary proof.
Regarding the Form.
We had an alloy. A hot, liquid sound ready for casting, which we had accumulated for years. But we lacked a mold. I found it outside. Not in music — in words.
The poetry of Lena Liri was not “inspiration” in the usual sense. Inspiration is a spark; it is fleeting. Here, it was different. It was recognition.
I read the lines of her poems and saw in them the exact geometry of what we were trying to play. I would sit, close my eyes, and listen to the rhythm of her lines begin to align with ours. I listen: the rhythm of words penetrates the body, resonates in the chest, like the acoustics of the temple we were leaving. It required not just translation, but a total remelting. The metal finally agreed to lie in the mold without trying to tear it apart.
“Inspirïert von Lena Liri” — a sound that does not invade space. It remains within it.
The album was born hard and slow, as if the metal were cooling inside the mold, taking its final shape. We worked on it for over two years, and every month changed its character. It gradually split into two volumes — Bastion and Valkyrie. They were part of one breath but sounded different, like two sides of the same power.
Bastion.
Bastion proved to be colder, more mechanical, almost architectural. It was the industrial framework of the album — strict and rhythmic. Only dense beats, heavy textures, and the sensation of a massive construction assembling itself around the listener. We recorded it in a studio where the air always felt dense and dry, saturated with the smell of heated tubes and old amplifiers. The space was closed, almost hermetic. The light of the monitors reflected off the metallic surfaces of the equipment, and it seemed as if the room itself was turning into a mechanism.
The music there was built like a fortification — layer by layer. The rhythms sounded like a march of machines. The guitars lay in heavy strata, creating a pressure that let go of neither the musicians nor the listener. Working on Bastion, I felt a familiar confidence. We knew this language. But with it came a strange sensation — as if I weren’t creating the music, but maintaining its balance. As if any extra movement could disrupt the structural stability. Clara was not in Bastion. And that is exactly why this part of the album became a farewell to the industrial language we had spoken for years.
Valkyrie.
But when work began on Valkyrie, the album’s breathing changed. The recordings moved to a different space — into the studios where Clara’s orchestra worked alongside us. There, the air sounded different. Instead of dense isolation, depth appeared. Instead of dry acoustics — a living reflection of sound that returned with a delay, as if the room itself participated in the music.
With Clara’s appearance, the sound began to rise. Her voice was not layered over the instruments. It passed through them like light through a stained-glass window, changing their hue and shape. The orchestra did not replace the industrial rhythms — it expanded them, adding scale and drama that was impossible to create with electronics and guitars alone. The industrial power remained, but it ceased to be closed. The rhythms became footsteps. The guitars became lines that lead the music forward. The music stopped pressing. It began to move.
Conclusion.
Only later did I realize that the album didn’t just split into two parts.
It explained us to ourselves.
We had always talked about heaviness. But for the first time we felt that heaviness is not loudness and not pressure.
It is support.
The thing that holds the music when it no longer needs to prove its strength.
Bastion became that point of balance.
The place where sound stops fighting and begins to stand.
And Valkyrie turned out to be the reason the framework exists in the first place.
The voice. The breath. That internal heat that makes the metal not just sound — but live.
Soon these sensations will turn into several strict formulations that we will call the Metallherz Protocol.
But then, it was not yet words. It was a state.
We are no longer at war with silence.
We build within it.
The metal no longer needs to be heated to prove its strength. Now its task is to hold the form.
When you turn on the track, it does not attack the listener.
It exists beside them — like a structure one can step into.
All of this is still ahead.
And for now, we are simply going home.
(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)