Singled Out: Cryptex's Bloodmoon

Cryptex just released their new album "Once Upon A Time" and to celebrate we asked Andre Jean Henri Mertens to tell us about the song "Bloodmoon". Here is the story:

Bloodmoon was a song that came to life really easily and fast. We had the first piano section ideas already in some of our recording snippets and from that point on it was a fruitful songwriting experience. We knew immediately that this song was something very special. Not to praise ourselves too much, but we knew from the starting point that this would become an epic song with a big story. We knew the title immediately and added many different sections, our creativity was exploding. I also added a simple catchy guitar melody in the chorus, that I had in mind for almost 10 years and it worked out great. We tried to create a song with powerful and big epic hard rock moments, but also with quiet sensitive feelings and atmospheric aspects. Also the singing is different this time. We started with really dark and deep vocals, but equally powerful. For me this song defines all, what we are about. Diverse styles, aggressive, moody, emotional, catchy and melancholic aspects. At the end of the song you hear also some kind of post rock with fast staccato picking from the guitar, added with the starting piano theme and adding soft vocal lines in the background. It ends in the more aggressive sounding riff attack with a really high female vocal line on top of it. We have so much feelings in our heads, when we hear this song and after it was finished, we started collecting ideas for a Story music video. Its some sort of love song, not directly but the main topic is love. The video we did is epic. We shoot with a real wolf which was magnificent. We also had great actors and an expressive woman who was the lead character in the plot. She was some sort of shapeshifter and could turn into a wolf. Of course it's just a story, but it really came to live in this video, made by Freak Shot Films. You have to check it out. Its also our most seen video with almost 33.000 clicks since its release in February. I can hardly wait to perform the whole album �Once Upon a Time" live on stage and especially I am looking forward to make Bloodmoon alive on stage.

There is also a funny story of the drum process. Normally as a composer, we have all in our heads after starting with a new song, not just the guitar or piano parts, but also the basic groove and time changes and the general structure and arrangement of the song. We had finished the pre-recording, but had not yet started with the drums. After a long day of teaching drums, I was in the right mood and just hit play, cranked it and played along the pre-recording. I did record it with my Mac Book but without interface, you can imagine the distortion of the drums when using your laptop mic. But that actually became the basic drum track of the song. Of course, we recorded the drums properly in the studio and Simon Schroder, who recorded the drums for the whole album did a fantastic job on it. But it's funny how songs and drum parts can be created in different circumstances.

In the aggressive riff section of the song it has almost a kind of 'Rammstein' feeling. I can see flames and explosions in my head, when thinking of a big stage production. I hope that we are able to visualize our songs with a bigger production at some point of the future and if we are I can tell you: It will be a huge and epic theatrical show for sure.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here

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