Sea Of Tranquility recently caught up with SERENITY's Mario Hirzinger to discuss the band's debut album, Words Untold & Dreams Unlived. The following is a brief excerpt from the interview:

Sea of Tranquility: Can you give us a little history of the band first.

Mario Hirzinger: "We started out in January 2001 performing our own style of melodic metal with some progressive influences. We rehearsed a lot, played several gigs, released a demo CD called Starseed V.R. in early 2002 and gained a quite high level of professionality until the end of 2003 when one of the founding members quit the band. In February 2004 I got in contact with three musicians who wanted to start a metal band (Thomas, Georg and Simon) and only a short while later we had a 'new version' of Serenity. With this line up we felt we could really reach higher grounds. And so we did- a support show to DIO and many remarkable gigs (with bands like SYMPHORCE, MORGANA LEFAY, METAL CHURCH) brought the respect of the Austrian underground. Our demo CD from 2005 (Engraved Within) was Demo Of The Month in some magazines and we thought it was the time to risk it all and produce a full length album. It was the right decision because finally we ended up with signing to Napalm Records in December 2006."

Sea of Tranquility: It apparently took a few years for you to put the finishing touches on the debut CD-can you talk a little bit about the writing process and the ordeals you went through to get this album completed?

Mario: "The first 'new' song for the CD ('Canopus 3') was written sometime around May 2005, and we entered the studio in Munich in February 2006 and the CD was released in April 2007, so you're right talking about a long time of production! As we all work in normal jobs we needed the time, for first we write songs very carefully and thus rather slow. Lyrics are also very important to me and I always spend much time on writing them. The songs of the last demo needed to be rearranged, so we searched for a cover artist and had to prepare for and play gigs – so we had enough to do! Then after the first weeks in the studio we had to wait for the contribution of the guy who did the orchestral stuff, the mix and mastering were done in Helsinki in September 2006 and when the album was finished we couldn't yet release it because we had to wait for the labels' answers. When it was clear that we would sign to Napalm they said they would not release it before Christmas, but in spring. You can see why it took such a long time, but we promise the next one will follow next summer, not later."

Go to this location to read the complete interview.