In 2006, VAN CANTO surprised the world of metal with a revolutionary idea: to perform metal music with vocals and drums only. Nine years later, after five top 20 releases in Germany, sold out headlining tours throughout Europe and festival performances taking the band from Wacken to Australia, Van Canto now mark a new chapter in the story of metal a cappella: Vocal Metal Musical.For this release, the band has teamed up with German bestseller author Christoph Hardebusch (Die Trolle engl. The Trolls). We are barely able to tell what came first: the music as part of the novel or the novel as part of our album. Christoph Hardebusch and we worked hand in hand on this. Our compositions did influence the novel and vice versa. Simply put, we created our own world a world full of competing kingdoms, epic battles, dragons, fire and bards. Not always deadly serious but full of adventures to set your imagination running wild like Van Canto does, explains lead singer Sly who developed the plot of the novel together with Christoph Hardebusch. On the one hand working closely with Van Canto was a lot of fun but on the other hand it was also very demanding, adds author Christoph Hardebusch. The great picture can only be achieved when creative minds interact with each other; the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Right from the start, story and music has been a unit which has influenced and fueled each other. For the first time, Van Canto is working with the London Metro Voices a choir which also sang on the soundtracks of the popular blockbuster saga Lord of the Rings. Nowadays, especially in metal, everyone is creating this pseudo symphonic metal, trying to squeeze as many drum machine tracks and fake orchestra sounds in one song as possible. We wanted to do it differently. We wanted to create an album full of human sounds either by using ones hands for drumming or using your voice, drummer Bastian, who is responsible for directing the various international choirs on the album, explains. The cover artwork for Voices Of Fire as well as its various illustrations were created by fantasy artist Osmar Arroyo from South America. For this album, we wanted people to actually see the most important scenes. Omar is a great artist who understands our vision, Ross, responsible for the guitar vocals, adds.The cover artwork for Voices Of Fire as well as its various illustrations were created by fantasy artist Osmar Arroyo from South America. The impressive graphics and their developing stages can be seen in the 44 page strong hardcover mediabook.