”It’s a bit like sitting on a island, writing SOS-messages, putting them in bottles and eventually throwing them into the sea … – some of them are caught by the tide and, after a while, get washed back on the beach, while others seem to disappear forever…”(from an older interview of Sopor Aeternus)
Many have attempted to get closer to solving the mystery of this, darker than black, musician called Sopor Aeternus/Anna Varney Catodea . Since the release of the first album called ‘Es Reiten Die Toten So Schnell’, Anna Varney, who takes this name from the character named Varney in the book ‘Varney the Vampire or The Feast Of Blood’, has consciously made very few interviews and no concerts. Sopor Aeternus is a person which embodies, as a musician, the darkest concepts of human existence. Anna Varney’s work so far has revealed a preference for Edgar Allan Poe’s work (the album ‘Poetica’ ‘dresses’ with music 11 of Poe’s poems) and Charles Baudelaire (the album ‘Fleurs du Mal’ takes its title from the poems of Baudelaire) . Sopor Aeternus has a unique sense of caustic and cynical humour and this has been so far revealed in the lyrics of songs such as ‘Cornucopia D’Amour’ , the titles of some earlier songs (i.e. ‘Shave, If You Love Me‘) and the cover versions of well known pop songs which were part of ‘Have You Seen This Ghost?’ album (the song ‘Hello’ is a cover version of the song with the same title by Lionel Ritchie, ‘Holding Out for A Hero’ is the cover version of the famous song with the same title by Bonnie Tyler). (more…)