Menhir was established in February 94 by Heiko, Fix and I. When Heiko had tried to renounce making music for one year he established a band with new people. He had another band, Endless Pain, since 89 and they were resolved due to line-up problems. In the new band he would include some stylistic changes. In this band they played a mixture of thrash and death metal with melodic extracts and clean singing, things he later brought with him to this band. As the other band members weren't interested in a further development concerning words and music it came to a break. Heiko had started years ago to write about Germanic history and mythology, something he tried to include in his songs but the rest of the band gave him no support. This was a short insight on the time before Menhir. At the beginning Heiko and I stood alone without knowing if our attempts to find a complete line-up would be successful. In the beginning of 94 we met Fix at a concert, he was a friend of ours and a few times his band had played together with Endless Pain. Also his band was dissolved some time ago and he was looking for a possibility to play in a band. So it was no problem for him to accept Heikos offer to join us. After we had found a rehearsal room we set to work. After the break up of Endless Pain Heiko had composed some nice melodies which later became the "Barditus" demo. Because of the difficulties of finding suitable members Heiko took over the the guitar and vocals. We were looking for a singer but we didn't find anyone, Fix and I were of the mutual opinion that Heiko should take care of those parts as he does it very well. It was harder with the guitarist. Till today we have tried out two guitarists and one bass player, neither worked out. Apart from their unreliability both concerning concert as well as rehearsals they never understood that we take both the music and the lyrics very seriously. Even though the second guitarist and the bass player were still playing with us when we recorded the demo we knew that they weren't suitable. After our first gig in June-96 they left the band. Since the actual establishment of Menhir an old friend has been supporting the band and our development. This friend is our current bassist Ralf. We knew that he was in the possession of an instrument, but we didn't know if he could play. When the other two had to go we had nothing to loose and asked him if he wished to give it a try. Within two months he had learned all our songs and in the middle of September-96 he played his first gig with us supporting Helheim and Behemoth on the "Pagan Triumph Tour". On this concert we noticed that we couldn't manage without the reinforcement of a second guitarist. Instead of playing live we started to compose new songs. In the meantime we signed a deal with Ars Metalli and we booked the Buckower-Blue-Art studio. One month before we were supposed to enter the studio Fix remembered a friend which he could ask if he wanted to play guitar in our band. There were two problems. First of all, Roman, That's his name, still played in another small underground band. Second, the travelling for the rehearsal. Roman was very interested in playing with us as he wanted to develop as a musician and that was something he could do within Menhir. He of course liked the music as well. He consented to make a kind of trial period and then decide. This was only one month before the studio-session and as he didn't manage to rehearse all the songs we recorded the album without him. In the end he decided to stay with us and is now a full-time member.
