As we know from the history, Marco’s father Nicollo travelled to the Mongolian empire and back when Marco grew up in Venice. After his return home, he needed to make second journey back to Mongolia, because he promised to deliver a message back to Khan Kublai. For this second time, Marco was the part of the expedition. Their first steps led to Acre and Jerusalem and then further east through the war-torn land of Armenia and Persia. That’s exactly what the song Crimson Silk is all about.

Musically, it is a swift power metal of European provenience spiced with elements of Middle Eastern music. We used a lot of ethnic instruments, especially in verses. As an example, you can hear the instrument called Oud (short-necked fretless lute used in Turkish in Arabic music and one of the main melodic instruments in the Middle East), Saz (long-necked fretted lute), Middle East Kanun (a Turkish zither) or Ney (long end-blown flute).

We use also special percussive sounds (most of them were recorded live by our special guest Ladislav Šiška), such as darbuka (small goblet drum), dohola (large goblet drum similar to darbuka but with deeper tones because of its larger size) or Riq (small tambourine-like frame drum with jingles).

You can pre-order the album here.