BiographyIt all started back in 1998 when Krivánik Dániel (keyboards) and Bogáti-Bokor Ãkos (guitars) met in a philosophy campus, sharing ideas and finding out that musically they have so much in common. After some years of friendship they decided to get a band together to jam, to play progressive rock. With Zsigó László (drums) and Turi Tamás (bass) the line-up of Amethyst was completed in 2002.
L-R: Krivánik Dániel, Zsigó László, Bogáti-B. Ãkos, Turi Tamás
And so the band was born. For two years we spent some serious time to "get the groove", while playin' some fine progressive music, our favourites, like: Yes, Genesis, Dream Theater, Platypus, Liquid Tension Experiment, Bill Bruford and The Flower Kings.
Amethyst live at AZFESZT 2004After a little while we started to write our own songs. In 2004 we had a very serious live activity, we played on many festivals, we won a competition on the famous Félsziget Fesztivál 2004 in Romania. That Summer we wrote a lot of songs. After 3 years of silence (Ãkos's activity with Yesterdays was more intense, they released an album at Musea Records , Dániel and László started a band called Mortem - active since today and Tamás played in several bands and projects) Dániel and Ãkos decided to record the first Amethyst album. With 3 new songs the tracklist was ready and the recordings were started in Cluj Napoca (Romania) at Alias Music Studio with Bazsó Tibor sound-engineer.Sadly - due to his health problems (if you know Hungarian, you can read all about it in his blog) - Tamás had to renounce to his role in the band. This doesn't effect our friendship, we understand him and just hope that we'll have the chance to jam together in the future! Tamás, we are sure that we'll celebrate this first release as a COMMON success with You!So, after these hard decisions and sad news Amethyst became a trio, leaving Ãkos to record all the bass parts. This line-up will complete the recording sessions, although our good friend and (in our heart) our forever band-mate Tamás recorded one song to the album. We found out that Musea Records already has a band called Amethyst, so the first album will be released under the name of Tabula Smaragdina
"And then they were three...": Krivánik Dániel, Zsigó László and Bogáti-B. Ãkos
With the help of Makkai István (saxophone) and some vocals from Antal Karola the album is now ready!After finishing the album Tabula Smaragdina will participate on the new Colossus Project called "Purgatorio - A Progressive Rock Epic", based on the second cantica of the Italian Epic Poem "The Divine Comedy". PURGATORIO will be released by Musea somewhere in 2009. We will write a song inspired by Canto XXIV. "Under the Magic Tree".For more information on this project please visit the Colossus Magazine's website. Some photos from the drum-recording sessions:
