WAIDELOTTE unveil album details

Vocalist Andrii Pechatkin (WHITE WARD), bass player/composer Zlatoyar (SOEN) and guitarist Mykhailo Bogaichuk (I MISS MY DEATH) are the core of newly established Extreme Metal ensemble, WAIDELOTTE. Hailing from Ukraine, the band will unveil their inaugural album, "Celestial Shrine," on March 29th. The debut features nine tracks that blend Black Metal, Melodic Death Metal and Progressive Metal with traditional Ukrainian Folk singing/instrumentation:

01. Descending
02. The Era Of Stagnant Gods
03. Todestrieb
04. Opulent Mirage
05. The Mortality Archway
06. Ascending
07. Lightkeeper
08. Celestial Shrine
09. Dissolving (feat. SOLAR KOLLAPSE)

The album was mixed and mastered by Anton Vorozhtsov. Serhii Kochmar created the cover artwork, Olga Kann was responsible for the band's logo and Ivan Parkhomenko oversaw album design. Lyrics were written by Andrii Pechatkin and Anna Solovei. Guest musicians from ТІНЬ СОНЦЯ, NAONI ORCHESTRA, CASA UKRANIA and GORDIY STARUKH contributed to the album.

Vocalist and lyricist Andrii offers insight on the album title, "Celestial Shrine":

"It was quite hard to choose a proper name. First of all, because we had all the song texts in Ukrainian. Some titles sounded damn cool in our native language, such as 'Брама Смерті (Brama Smerti)', which is called 'The Mortality Archway' on the record. When we started translating them into English, they lost the power associated with the context ciphered in our native language. This happened to 'The Mortality Archway'. Its close translation from Ukrainian is something like 'The Gate of Death', which sounds cliched and hackneyed. So, it was quite challenging to come up with all the title ideas.

Both Zlat and I proposed tons of different variations before "Celestial Shrine" emerged out of nothingness. We consider a celestial shrine the highest point of the catharsis – the leitmotif of the album. After reaching this point, you either fall down, stay there for a while, or dissolve. We chose 'Dissolving' for our story.

A 'celestial shrine' doesn't have to be an actual place that exists somewhere. It is a place within one's mind. The journey to this sacral point starts within and ends there. You reach it when you learn how to deal with the burden of your past experiences, both good and bad. Since it is one of the key ideas behind the record, we've decided to name the album after the song."

Main composer Zlat adds:

"The working title for the album was "Ode To Catharsis" but when I invited Andrii to the band and we finished the album, we started to think more about each song's name and what glued them all together. Everything was connected, especially after we got our album cover done. It was pretty obvious that we needed to add the final destination's name: "Celestial Shrine", which is the main focus of the album. As it is a journey through the catharsis, our protagonist gets reborn and his final state is meditation; he's pure, absolute, and a paragon.

Of course, you can see a big inspiration from Dharma and Hindu religions, attributes of creation and destruction, meditating asana, etc. All this symbolism matches WAIDELOTTE's idea: it tells ancient wisdom through Art, poetry, and music."

The cover artwork, designed by Serhii Kochmar, mirrors the album's concept, as Andrii explains:

"As for the cover art, it depicts a deity with symbols of both death and life. This artwork shows the necessity to accept these two sides on your way to your private celestial shrine. Although it's not a particular Hindu god, we looked for inspiration in this religion, reinterpreting some of its pearls of wisdom from the perspective of our background. But everyone can see their unique shrine on the cover art. It's just a trigger that might push one to further exploration and conclusions."

A first taster from the forthcoming album and pre-order possibilities will be revealed on February 14th. "Celestial Shrine" will be released on CD, vinyl and digital formats including merch on March 29th.