[Cover photo features ArranMcSporran, Morean, Mike Heller, Tom Fountainhead]
Fretless guitar player Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger is known for his work in Obscura’s Akróasis era, his live work with Defeated Sanity, Belphegor and many others. Now, he’s launched his own project, Changeling, that will be releasing a debut self-titled album on April 25th, 2025.
Diving into Progressive Death Metal, the band have released the seven-minute long title track and video.
The title track serves as the turning point in Changeling‘s psychedelic narrative. It is inspired by “Lovecraftian horror, existential philosophy, and the bizarre hallucinations of a consciousness torn apart.”
Geldschläger explains:
“This song came from a few musical themes that I had written on the oud. From those few humble notes, it turned into quite the monster – a monster where I think everybody in the core band shines equally. At that point in the album’s story, we’re beginning to take the frame-work of tech/prog death metal into uncharted territory, so it seemed appropriate to give this song a unique, winding structure where a shorter pumping mid-tempo banger is book-ended by intensely psychedelic blast-beat driven parts that are building towards a quasi-black metal frenzy at the end. It also has some of my favorite Morean lyrics of all time. Not only does he paint a vivid picture of a strange, unfamiliar dimension through his signature wordplay. He also quite literally takes us there in the song’s mid-section breakdown, were we envisioned a strange jungle ritual evoking some dark cosmic entity, somewhere between Lovecraft and Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
And, as usual, the man took it to another level by adding a multitude of eery, slithering voices, which make the song feel almost like it’s breathing. Oh, and this piece also has some of my favorite RIFFS (in capital letters) that I’ve ever written, as well as some quite extreme guitar shenanigans that I called ‘layers of cosmic horror’ during production. Get out your best headphones for this one!”
The visualizer for “Changeling” was created by Martin Matiasovic aka Shaped in Dreams (@martinmatiasovic).
