The Symphonic Black Metal band ‘Dark End’ has just released their much awaited Grand Guignol – Book I on the world. Combined with their haunting melodies, rich orchestras and dark elements I took the first opportunity to ask the band about their Music, Philosophies, and History behind everything that they are today.

1. Welcome to Metal Shock Finland, I’m Dylan, could you please introduce yourselves and the positions you take in the band.

Ave Dylan, to you and to all the Sons of the Northern Shades out there, here’s Animæ and I am the lead singer of DarkEnd.

2. Can you explain the principles for creating this album? What was going through your minds when you first started writing it?

Well, as for the previous concept album “Assassine”, the first stone settled in the creation of “Grand Guignol” was directly connected to my strong philosophical and theatrical researches, used as a basis to set up the whole structure and the general atmosphere of the opera. So, to find the principles from which the album takes it moves, we have to search among the vast halls of Esoterism, Astronomy, Psychology and Magic, finding their infinite grains of knowledge and those ruins of centuries lost that build up our Theatre Of Horrors. Basically, my target was to explore through a rich narrative and metaphorical plot the common roots of occultism, mysticism, self-martyrdom and obscure ancestral ceremonies, and then to create a solid musical structure able to deeply transmit every single emotion involved in this complex spiritual process. What we wanted to reach was a profound absorption of our fans, moving them not only to listen but moving them… to feel.

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