Somewhere Far Beyond

Somewhere Far Beyond, the fourth album, came out on Virgin on 29 June 1992, as 263 066 on the German CD. Victor says the band had signed to Virgin in 1991 for every territory except Japan and South-East Asia, and this was the first album under that deal. Victor Musical Industries issued the Japanese edition (VICP-5178) a little over three weeks later, on 22 July, and it reached number fifteen on Oricon's weekly album chart. Metal Hammer's timeline says the album sold more than 130,000 copies and topped the international album charts in Japan and Greece. It was recorded and mixed between March and May 1992 at KARO Studios in Brackel near Hamburg, produced, recorded and mixed by Kalle Trapp. Hansi Kürsch sings and plays bass, André Olbrich plays lead, rhythm and acoustic guitar, Marcus Siepen rhythm and acoustic guitar, and Thomen Stauch drums. Kai Hansen plays the lead guitar on "The Quest for Tanelorn" and is among its writers. The band's own site lists the subjects as the replicant's story from Blade Runner, Frost and Lynch's Twin Peaks, and the by-then familiar Tolkien, Moorcock and Stephen King. In 2022 Kürsch said that some of the songs he wrote for it were inspired by the death of his father. Andreas Marschall's sleeve shows a circle of time-travelling bards around a gyroscopic timepiece, and those bards are where the band's nickname, the Bards, comes from. Germany's Rock Hard gave it 9.5. In 2024 the band re-recorded the whole album as Somewhere Far Beyond Revisited. The player on this page plays the 2007 remaster. The running order here is the ten songs of the album proper.