Cargo Records

Sacred Pathways

A neoclassical and progressive metal band made of up five very talented and well trained musicians

Vitalij Kuprij (Ring Of Fire) on keyboards, Kevin Chown (Magnitude 9, Tiles) on bass, Mike Terrana (Rage, Axel Rudi Pell) on drums, John West (Royal Hunt) on vocals and Roger Staffelbach on guitar. The band came about when Vitalij, a Ukraine born and classically trained musician, travelled to Switzerland in order to pursue and enhance his studies on piano. There he met guitarist Roger Staffelbach. The two of them immediately became great friends and started making instrumental music together. The outcome was a demo which was sent to different labels. One of them was Shrapnel who eventually did respond and was willing to work with such talented musicians. Mike Varney, the managing director of Shrapnel, asked them to write some vocal tunes as well since the instrumental music was not really a hot thing at the moment. This brought them finally to the record deal! The rest of the members were introduced to Roger and Vitalij by Varney himself, and the band finally established its base of operations in Philadelphia, USA. In 1996 Artension released their first album "Into The Eye Of The Storm" which got amazing responses from both the public and critics, especially in Japan! After that a few more records followed: "Phoenix Rising"; "The Forces Of Nature" and "Machine". Eventually, the band members started to do a lot of different things in order to explore the world of music even further! Therefore it was only after a few years of hard study for everyone that the original line-up finally was able to get together again! This immediately raised the interest of Frontiers Records which always admired the talent of those amazing musicians and the outcome is "Sacred Pathways" an intense and diverse album which shows all the sides of the songwriting of this band: melody, intensity, technicality but above all great songs and breathtaking performances !!!