THERION To Release Two Albums In May

Sweden's THERION will be issuing two albums, "Sirius B" and "Lemuria", on May 24 through Nuclear Blast Records. The CDs will be released separately to start with, but will be made available in a single double-CD package within a couple of months of the original album release.

According to a post on the band's web site, "This release will be pressed as much as people buy it during these two months and after that what ever left in stores and distribution channels can continue to sell as long as it lasts. You can consider this special offer as a present from THERION to the fans."

With regards to how THERION came to record so much material this time around, a posting on the group's web site states, "After the touring was finished the band started to work on the album that [mainman Christofer Johnsson] was having in mind to make before the idea of a Nordic album had come up. Meanwhile there had been a lot of new songs written, so the 7 songs on the shelf had grown to a huge number of songs, which increased even more as time went by and also Kristian [Niemann, lead guitar] and Johan [Niemann, bass] contributed with several compositions to the pot. When the time felt right to start putting all the ideas and songs together to an album, they discovered that they had 55 (!) songs — some of them being not entirely finished though. Discussions were made on how to do things with such a huge source of song material and they ended up deciding that they had enough good material for 3 (!) albums. They decided to record and release two of them simultaneously to catch up with their creativity (else there would probably be 55 more songs written by the time they get to record the third album in this trilogy).

"The recording sessions started in Modern Art and besides instruments like drums, bass, guitars, balalaikas, domras and mandolines, the lead vocals and most of the opera soloist singers were recorded there. Then a huge symphonic orchestra, grand piano, harpsichord, some opera soloists and a 32 people strong choir were recorded in Prague. A real church organ was recorded at the oldest church of Copenhagen and finally they entered the Sun Studio with Denmark's finest producer Lars Nissen to make some additional recordings of Hammond organ and mellotrone before finally mixing this huge mass of songs there.

"The results of 171 people involved with playing/singing and over 9 months of recording and mixing were finally put together and were named 'Lemuria' and 'Sirius B'. Scheduled to be released the 24th of May (2004),these twin records will hopefully convince people that THERION is a band that just have begun their musical odyssey and that the journey will both surprise, tease and astonish both their long time loyal fans as well as new listeners for many years to come.

"As drummer Richard suddenly decided he didn't want to be a permanent member and had him self tied up with other projects, THERION decided to use a session drummer for the upcoming tours."

"Sirius B" track listing:

01. Blood of Kingu
02. Son of the Sun
03. The Khlysti Evangelist
04. Dark Venus Persephone
05. Kali Yuga Part 1
06. Kali Yuga Part 2
07. The Wonderous World of Punt
08. Melek Taus
09. Call of Dagon
10. Sirius B
11. The Voyage of Gurdjieff

"Lemuria" track listing:

01. Typhon
02. Uthark Runa
03. Three Ships of Berik, Part 1: Calling to Arms and Fighting the Battle
04. Three Ships of Berik, Part 2: Victory!
05. Lemuria
06. Quetzalcoatl
07. The Dreams of Swedenborg
08. An Arrow From the Sun
09. Abraxas
10. Feuer Overtüre/Prometheus Entfesselt

THERION's last studio CD, "Secret of the Runes", was released in 2001.