Breath of Sindragosa returns with new logo, upcoming album announcement, and a few notes
Hello all! Matthew here with a long-overdue update on the state on Breath of Sindragosa. It’s been almost 2.5 years since the release of Shadowflame, and I’ll admit the project kindof disappeared off the face of the earth for some time in spite of several attempts to get back to it. Anyway, I just want to thank those of you who have kept BoS in mind and have still streamed and shared the tunes!
I actually began writing new material immediately after Shadowflame, building on some leftover stuff from that album. But unfortunately, life and other projects got in the way and got me sidetracked several times over the last couple of years…on top of some periods of burnout and some short hiatuses from music in general. As many of you know, I have a pretty busy home life, but I also have multiple other projects going on at any given time.
But I have finally been able to turn my efforts back to Breath of Sindragosa over the last couple of months, and the result of that is a brand new album that is very near completion. As I put the finishing touches on it, I’m incredibly stoked with how it’s turning out and I hope you will be too. It builds upon the same style as Shadowflame…raw, old-school melodic deathcore that heavily borders on melodeath and incorporates a lot of symphonic elements as well. It is also once again a World of Warcraft concept album; whereas Shadowflame was largely centered around the expansion Dragonflight and one of its protagonists, Fyrakk…the new album centers around one of the most legendary characters in the entire franchise and touches on numerous points in the story, spanning multiple books/expansions. Anyone familiar with WoW will instantly know what/who it’s about…
The new album is titled Betrayer, and will be out sometime in August (no exact date yet).
Tracklisting:
1 - Ascension
2 - Illidari
3 - Demons II
4 - The Black Temple
5 - Imprisoned
6 - Sacrifice
7 - Plague of Fools
8 - Where I Belong
You may notice a brand new, absolutely sick logo. That logo is courtesy of Derek Jacobsen, an incredibly talented musician and artist who also designed the logo for my grindcore band Aberrant Extermination Impulsion. The album art, on the other hand, was largely conceptualized, designed, and edited myself, but with collaboration from Derek. (No AI was utilized in any form, btw.)
I also wanted to address a couple of things some of you may have noticed:
Firstly, Breath of Sindragosa is no longer on Bandcamp. This is by design and is also the case with all of my other projects. Bandcamp as an entity has very quickly fallen to enshittification, particularly on the backend, and is no longer the entity it once was. After multiple buyouts, several rounds of layoffs, union-busting, a number of artist-unfriendly backend changes, a forced switch to a different merchant processor, and a continued decline in artist-platform relations/communication, customer service, dev communication, etc…I chose to no longer support the platform. I, along with a number of other independent artists, have found an absolutely outstanding home here on Ampwall…which will continue to be the primary place to purchase the original, lossless audio files from BoS releases. (All of my music will also still be available on every major streaming platform.)
Secondly, some of you may have noticed my absence from social media, both personally and with any of my projects. This, too, is by design. I’ll be honest….I just can’t do it anymore. 90% of social media is just mis/disinformation, ragebait and engagement bait, bots, bad actors, etc. The algorithms are fucked. Genuine user engagement has tanked…pushing bands, artists, etc. further towards paying for expensive and inefficient advertisement with a rapidly declining ROI just to get their material noticed. I refuse to play the game and at this point in my life and career, I just don’t fucking care. I don’t even want to look at the shit anymore; it’s just a chore.
I’m not out to make it big. I’m fine staying strictly underground. I make music for myself first and foremost. If folks already know and dig my stuff, that’s great. If folks happen to come across me via algorithms or suggestions or whatever else, that’s also great. But it’s an exercise in futility and a detriment to my mental health to engage on most social media anymore. So I’ve bailed from Insta, Bluesky, and Facebook. I never got into Tik Tok or Twitter, fortunately. I did take another extended break from Reddit; although I’ve recently come back for a few reasons, I try to keep my engagement there to a minimum and that’s pretty much the only platform I engage on anymore. Ampwall (and the Ampwall Discord server) will continue to be the primary spot for news and updates on any of my projects going forward, though I may post some stuff here or there on Reddit.
Anyway…that’s it for now. Appreciate anyone who reads through all that, and also those who have stuck around since Breath of Sindragosa first formed in 2022 and have watched the project develop and progress. Once the album is 100% complete, I’ll drop a couple songs on Ampwall and Youtube and get an exact date out there for y’all.
Cheers!
-Matthew “Axl” Brammer