The band is: thomas / udo / ingo / martin
it seems unlikely that an idyllic but totally obscure country-side region at the utmost western border of germany called eifel (sometimes refered to as the 'siberia of germany') should spawn a progressive rock outfit. nevertheless, singer and guitarist thomas thielen, drummer martin walter and keyboardist udo gerhards met there while playing from 1994-1997 in the wildly unknown progressive rock group 'powds con fusion'. after 'powds' imploded for a number of reasons, thielen, walter and gerhards decided to keep on musicking together and went on the lookout for a bass player. soon they found ingo roden who had been turning down offers by other local bands because he wanted to do something 'more adventurous': he found exactly what he was looking for in 'scythe'.
they began to write and rehearse material, preparing live work as well as the recording of their first self-produced demo cd each other which was released early in 1999 and was received very well internationally by fans and critics. encouraged by the success of 'each other', in the spring of the year 2000 the band set out to record their first official album, titled divorced land. impressed by the strength of the material presented, the swiss progressive rock label galileo records offered to release 'divorced land' internationally.
apart from recording 'each other' and 'divorced land', scythe have played a number of live gigs as well, among them appearances at the german prog festivals 'monsters of prog #2', 'progparade' and 'progparade #2'.
scythe play what they themselves call 'symphonic progressive rock with an edge'. the band draw from a wide variety of influences without one of them dominating their compositional approach. therefore their sound remains fresh and original while at the same time recalling the great days of progressive rock. some favorites of the band members are: king crimson, genesis, yes, soft machine, marillion, peter hammill, magma, the beatles, frank zappa, peter gabriel, the cure, mike oldfield, jethro tull, brian eno, mahavishnu orchestra, radiohead, present, motorpsycho, chick corea, return to forever, astor piazzolla, john coltrane.
