Brotherhood of Pagans

The Brotherhood Of Pagans is a French Goth group formed in March 1990. It rose from the ashes of two other “Cold Wave” combos of the time – Itchy Souls and Harms Heretics. From the former came Alien (rhythmic guitar and vocals) and Coccs (keyboards), and from the latter came Sailor (drums), Elrik (bass) and Vox populi (guitar). After a year of relentless work, The Brotherhood began to take their music onto the road, having spent the year refining their music rather than presenting the public with something that wasn’t to their own satisfaction (as can be the case with other groups). It was nevertheless a slow start as they performed few concerts before the middle of 1993. Decent bookings were difficult to find, but moreover because the Brotherhood wanted to further refine their work before presenting it to the public.It was during this momentous year of 1993 when things started really happening for them. In September, they meet Darkland Of Tears who decided to manage them. It was a very fruitful collaboration because quickly they were booked into and played much bigger gigs than before – for example playing with Corpus Delicti in Nice in July 1993, and later in April 1994 playing the Gothic festival of Dorsten (Germany) together with the excellent Guanavaana in front of more than 800 people. The work of Darkland was crucial to The Brotherhood. In one year, they had surpassed what they had achieved during the preceding 3 years. Darkland’s role also was also to promote The Brotherhood by means of numerous international compilations, either produced by Darkland such as "Cold Tears" or "Gothicland", or produced by the other labels such as No.controle torture, with “Fight Amnesia”. Their biggest achievement was unquestionably to have managed to get a Brotherhood song on the compilation "The Goth Box" produced by the famous American label "Cléopatra", and equally as laudable to have got a song included on the compilation "Death by Dawn" put together by the German label "Appolyon". The Brotherhood is also available on a dozen other compilations, which demonstrates their capability of conquering public taste and labels on 5 continents. Darkland Of Tears also produced two demos, " Flower of Oblivion " and "Inquisition Day".But the most important event in The Brotherhood of Pagans’ career so far was certainly their first CD, "Tales of Vampires", released in March 1995 and produced by Darkland Of Tears. During the rest of 1995 this album became a real success for the gothic style of the Brotherhood (in 17 countries). But in January 1996, there was a real blow to The Brotherhood when bass player Elrik decided to leave the group. Elrik was not just a bass player to the remaining members, but as the group’s name indicates, he was a brother.In 2006, Coccs, Sailor and Vox Populi finally decided to take up the musical reins again after a long period of inactivity and have re-entered the recording studio. A new album is thankfully in preparation. In fact a preview of their so far unpublished work is available on a new compilation brought out in November and can be found at the following address: http://www.str8linerecords.com/ The group website is also accessible on: http://brotherhoodofpagans.free.fr/