Orthanc: Underated band!

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Orthanc, also known as Isengard, is Saruman’s black tower in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of  The Rings. In addition Orthanc is a Belgian band, and they will release their first album Carnival on October 9th 2019. This album will be released through the band themselves, so this is an Independent Release.

This band from Belgium brings us heavy, melodic powermetal. They already did put themselves a bit in the picture in the early and mid-nineties from the 20th century through two demos and through cool gigs with bands such as Channel Zero, Annihilator, Deviate, Crumb, The Company, B-Thong, Congress, Ancient Rites…..They did split-up in 1997 but they stayed active in metal bands such as Rafflesia, Patriarch, Healer, The Colony and Mörehead.

Orthanc was described as the most underestimated band within the Belgian metal-scene.  Given the music style and the honors list  “What happened?” sometimes people asked.  Well, life happened, jobs, houses, families, …

Early nineties, De Haan, Belgium.  After a few years of musical experiments in various bands, brothers Geert (drums) & Marnick Serreyn (guitar) attracted Matthias Vanden Berghe (bass) and Ortwin Lietaert (vocals) and started looking for a second guitar-player. The plan was to play face-melting metal. With Iron Maiden, Metallica, Tygers of Pan Tang, Accept, Ozzy Osbourne, … , as inspirational examples.

In October of 2014 Orthanc were asked to do a one-off reunion concert with a number of guest musicians. This after 17 years of inactivity!  Fun, let’s do that the musicians said!  In the following months they decided to carry on with the current 4 headed line-up. The pure Orthanc songs were dug up, dusted down and refreshed.

Since early 2018 the band have been working hard composing and arranging the songs on the album Carnival.

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