Limelight
A stranger in a strange land spins a tale of loneliness with help from some new friends.
“THIS WAS A ONE-MAN project in the beginning,” Eduard Levitsky explains, when Prog asks about the theme of loneliness that runs through The Anchoret’s debut album, It All Began With Loneliness.“I built the band to connect with other people through the internet and have a bit of collaboration.”
Levitsky had just relocated to a new city in early 2020 when the world around him began to change, and it hit him hard.“I was in a new town,”he explains. “I still felt like a stranger in a strange world.”
He had a vision of combining genres and creating a bridge between the prog world, which he enjoyed growing up, and the metal world.“With that vision, I started putting pen to paper, one thing led to another and I connected with all of these other people who were just as isolated as myself.” The musician sees this as a coming together of worlds, a coincidence that was always meant to happen. He created the demos for the album alone, and wanted them to be as accurate to the final product as possible, before posting them on forums and apps to find“people who use music to help themselves as well”to work with on the release.
He gathered an eclectic group of people to work and record together, but aside from Levitsky and vocalist Sylvain Auclair, none of the other members of The Anchoret have ever met in person.“I never expected such talented people to reach out, but I got lucky,”he explains. In reality, the musicianship, writing and end result of Levitsky’s ideas is more than likely what drew in
Auclair, and
