After the first Vision Sufferance demo came out in October of 2006, I didn’t plan on continuing this band. But in January of 2007 I started recording songs that did not fit in any of my active bands, Vision Lunar or Throne of Mortality. Some of these new songs helped form Vision Éternel and some just were too atmospheric, universal space sounding, so they were stored in the Sufferance folder, without necessarily meaning that they were Sufferance songs. But after more material was composed, I decided that I should do something big with this unattended folder. I thought that all these bits and pieces of recorded jams and different songs should be compiled into an album. Throughout the rest of 2007, I recorded more songs, but by the end of 2007 I was having issues with my computer at Mortified Studios and could no longer recording anything. So I selected seven key demos to compile in this first EP to show off to fans what I had been working on.

‘”Song of Sand” (originally titled “Song of the Camel”) was one of two songs recorded with Darklink’s (Phil Altobelli) Agile guitar, which I had borrowed for a couple of months to fix it. There are two takes of that song, the other appears on the album “Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the Mind“. The other song was a cover of Harmonium’s “Comme un sage”, of which only a demo exists. At the time I had discovered their tuning for the song DGDGBD, which I believe “Song of Sand” was recorded in. I also used the alternate CGDGBD tuning for a little while and perhaps some material on the album was recorded with this tuning. After searching for other people who used this tuning, I became aware of Joni Mitchell and her song “Cold Blue Steel”. The song “Sounds of Whales” was named after the Vlad Tepes bootleg album “Sounds of the Dolphin”. I believe that a lot of these songs on this EP were influenced by Peste Noire and Les Legions Noires.

Up until the fall of 2007, these songs all went under working titles. The titles for the EP were chosen last minute.

• “Rouge gorge” – “Bass Song” (and almost became “Le Rouge Gorge En Sommeil”)
• “Le surnom d’une tristesse” – “Sounds of Whales”
• “Song of Sand” – “Camel Song”, “Song of the Camel”
• “Monastère d’un moine perdu” – “Chants de Moines”
• “Suicide by Venus” – “Alien Reverb Song”
• “A Memory of Past Emotions” – this one never had any other title

Based on the fact that I had credited myself as “Peine”, the sole member of Sufferance, as far back as February of 2007, I kept my identity secret for a while. The reason being that in Triskalyon, I was known as Virkelix, a guitarist and vocalist. Any bands in which I would play bass in (Gallia Fornax for example), I would be credited as “Peine”.

In late October of 2007, I hired a newcomer to create the artwork for this release. I don’t recall how I met Belgian designer Niels Geybels but it was probably through Myspace. He was studying graphic design in college and was a fan of my music. He was looking for bands to design artwork for through his new studio Depraved Designs. The artwork for Forthcoming Travels was his first professional job (which he did for free as a fan of my music) and also his first band artwork. He created a front cover and two alternate versions of the back cover (both back designs have been lost over time). The only difference between the two back covers was that the track listing was formatted differently. The first version had them sort of all over the place left and right, which I didn’t like so much. The second version had them all lined up and clean cut.

I really wanted “Forthcoming Travels” to be released on CD. Initially, Dungeons Deep Records was interested to do it, and they were supposed to before the end of the year. But the guy kept stalling throughout October and November of 2007 and then in late November I had to leave for New York City to sell Christmas trees with my cousin. After coming back to Montreal on the night of December 25th, I contacted him again and he was still stalling or finding excuses (or maybe even not responding to me anymore). So finally I gave up.

On January 4th of 2008 I bought one hundred blank jewel cases with black CD trays from District Lines online, planning to release it myself through Mortification Records. It was going to be limited to 100 copies with home burnt CD-Rs and photocopied artwork. Unfortunately, this too never happened. I didn’t even make a single test copy for myself. I wish that I knew why, and if I had to guess it was because I felt that I would have produced an inferior product that didn’t warrant people’s hard-earned money. Looking back, I wish that I had done it because it would have been appreciated by fans and would have helped me secure a better record label deal in the future.

A couple of months went by with the release stalling until the new Mortification Records website was launched in March of 2008. On March 24th I finally released “Forthcoming Travels” digitally through Mortification Records, but back-dated it to November 30th 2007. I have no idea why I chose that date. Early November would have likely been a better date to chose as it was closer to when the release was ready.

The original EP had only seven songs. Over time I lost a few songs that were recorded for the “Travels” album but that were never used. When I decided to finally press CD copies of this EP for the “Travels” boxset in 2013, I added three more songs which had since been found.

Download Link

Forthcoming Travels artwork front cover

1. Theory of an Odd Man
2. Rouge gorge
3. Le surnom d’une tristesse
4. Song of Sand
5. Monastère d’un moine perdu
6. Suicide by Venus
7. A Memory of Past Emotions
8. Outro Reverb Song
9. Solo Like Part (Original Mix)
10. Comme un sage (Demo)

artwork by Niels Geybels at Depraved Designs
recorded January-July 2nd 2007 at Mortified Studios (NJ)
released by Mortification Records (MT013)
released on November 30th 2007