Speaking with Metal Hammer Germany, ATROCITY vocalist Alexander Krull discusses the band's upcoming album trilogy, Okkult:

"With Okkult we want to start a very special album trilogy. We began work on the Okkult trilogy a long time ago. Most recently with the Die Gottlosen Jahre (The Godless Years) DVD, a splendid film documentary was released commemorating our longer than 25 year career, which even now is to run at film festivals. Reason enough now to usher in a new era of Atrocity!

Musically, no prisoners will be taken, the Okkult series is also brutal, bombastic and dark. These will not only be the heaviest and most brutal albums of Atrocity since years, but also the darkest works of our band's history. Lovers of our harder material like 'Hallucinations', 'Todessehnsucht', 'Blut' or 'Atlantis' will surely be delighted with the Okkult series at their expense, although the Okkult songs have their own trademarks, of course.

The orchestral parts will be recorded in September by the Lingua Mortis Orchestra under the direction of Victor Smolski (RAGE) in Minsk / Belarus. In keeping with the dark atmosphere of Okkult we got the Canadian Sound Designer Katie Halliday on board. She worked for movies like Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D (VII), The Devil's Carnival and Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, and already could reap some awards for her work.

The lyrical concept is anything but one-dimensional. For Okkult, we have no desire to go only in a certain direction. So the whole thing will be broadly based: From occult magic, occult places to conspiracy theories and mysteries that are still unsolved.

For our fans, we've come up with something very special: There will be no conventional bonus tracks on the Okkult albums! In return, all fans can actively engage in a kind of treasure hunt. For the respective Okkult albums, we will hide one song on an "occult site", which is the "missing track" to each album. For the first Okkult record that certain place will be in Europe. For the following albums the places will be on other continents, perhaps in America and Asia. l will be the only one that knows these locations. All original recording tracks and mixes of these songs will be destroyed by our own hands, that also means we as a band will also not be able to listen to these songs until they are found. They are in the truest sense of the word: Unique. If someone finds these songs, and wants to keep them for himself, then we will have have no way to listen to these songs ever again in their original form. Internally we have already had some serious discussions on what song is supposed to be hidden for the first Okkult (laughs). We will ennoble this "treasure", to something like The Golden iPod, we will spare no expense or effort. More info on how it will look exactly and how you can participate in the treasure hunt, will be announced a later date.

In times when more and more music seems to lose it's value, we want to make a statement. These hidden songs will definitely have an great added value, especially when they will dig them out in 200 years (laughs). That will probably not be the case.

On December 21st we will release something exclusive in advance, we want to provide the right soundtrack for the apocalypse, and actually that was our preferred date for the first release of the Okkult series. Unfortunately, this release date is not possible, therefore the first Okkult album will be released in spring 2013, in case the world downfall didn't happen."

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