ARCANE REIGN – DARK HEAVY/POWER METAL
Архив новостей | Русская версия
ARCANE REIGN was founded on September 15, 2025. It all started with Thomas "Thomen" Stauch, former drummer of BLIND GUARDIAN and member of MENTALIST, and his fiancée Silke "Silla" Gärtner. As things became a little quieter around MENTALIST, Thomen felt the urge to start another band and open a new musical chapter.
One thing was clear from the very beginning: ARCANE REIGN was never meant to become a randomly assembled group of musicians. Character and humanity came first – closely followed by a genuine passion for music. Super egos and personal battles, on the other hand, were something everyone could happily do without.
So the obvious choice was to look among friends and longtime musical companions.
Guitarist Horst "Hotte" Baumhackl was a longtime friend from the old Krefeld music scene. When it turned out that Hotte still had a considerable number of previously unused songs sitting in the vault, the musical direction of the band quickly began to take shape. Thomen and Silla started developing vocal lines and arrangements for the material, while Thomen added the drum parts.
With every new influence, Hotte's original ideas began to evolve, sometimes taking on entirely new dimensions that even he hadn't imagined when he first wrote the songs. This became the working philosophy that defines ARCANE REIGN today: the original idea may come from one person, but in the end, the song belongs to the entire band.
Guitarist Markus "Macken" Dörk's history with Thomen goes back even further. He was already part of the circle surrounding Thomen's earliest musical beginnings with LUCIFER'S HERITAGE, the band that would later become BLIND GUARDIAN, and played on the first LUCIFER'S HERITAGE demo. Finding themselves playing together in a new band decades later brings a very big circle back to where it started.
The story is similar with bassist Jörg "Captain" Deinis. Their friendship and musical connections reach far back into Krefeld's old metal scene. Captain played in PILLOW KILLZ alongside his brother, drummer Stefan "Shorty" Deinis, and the late Christoph Theissen, who played guitar on the second LUCIFER'S HERITAGE demo and was therefore also part of the band's early history. Their musical paths crossed even back then: André Olbrich and Hansi Kürsch lent a hand during the making of the first PILLOW KILLZ demo. Captain and Shorty remain musically active together today, including in the cover bands MOONJAM and LUKE VITO.
Musically, ARCANE REIGN can best be described as Dark Heavy/Power Metal. Classic Heavy Metal riffing meets melodic and anthemic Power Metal elements, darker and heavier passages and modern influences. Rather than forcing themselves into one particular box, the band allows each song to go wherever the music takes it.
ARCANE REIGN currently has three songs in working versions, with several more being developed in parallel. The material is increasingly becoming a collaborative effort involving the entire band. Hotte's original song ideas often provide the foundation on which the different influences and personalities of all five musicians can build.
Since none of the band members makes a living exclusively from music, and everyday life outside ARCANE REIGN naturally demands its share of time, the band deliberately puts itself under no artificial pressure. The priority isn't to release something as quickly as possible, but to create music that all five members can fully stand behind.
The goal, however, is clear: to build up enough strong material for an album, eventually hammer it onto a hard drive with full force – and then take it exactly where Metal ultimately belongs: onto the stage.
