Thork biography

Thork
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Thork (Probably referring to Thor, a God from Viking mythology) was founded at summer 1998 by Sébastien Fillion (keyboards) and Antoine Aureche (guitars) in Annecy. Later Michel Lebeau (drums), Samuel Maurin (bass) and Claire Northey (violin) joined the band. Soon they begun to wrote their own songs that they performed live around France. At the time of their first album, Urdoxa (2000), Thork was a clear five piece band, yet still young and unexperienced and they were short on singer and good production. Still they succeeded to produce a very impressive album. According to them, they played dark progressive folk for their original sound is bottomlessly dark, truly progressive and deeply complex with folk influences appearing for example in Claire Northey's violin playing. Most of the ideas and influences come from celtic and medieval music and issues, yet also metal, classical and even jazz can be found in there, but their sound was still extremely original without a slighest idea of a similar band.

On their second album Wê-ila (2004) the group's personnel were accomplished not only by Sébastien Penel (lead vocals) and David Maurin (guitar), but also several quests like Roselyne Berthet (vocals), Renaud Burdin (dununs, djembé, guira, cloches, shaker, woudou), Sébastien Lacroix (sitar, dilruba), Stéphane Lagarde (tabla) and Ian-Elfinn Rosiu (violoncelle). Antoine Aureche had left the band after Urdoxa and on We-ila he was still in, but in a visiting role of playing acoustic guitar. Antoine took a part of Thork with him, a part of the dark, anxious atmosphere. Their sound were also changed into a direction of Nil, which is natural for they now shared a whole three members! Besides the needed complementary on personnel, they had also more experience now that can be seen in a quality of the album that was perfect in every way.

After We-ila Thork went throug a radical change of personnel, again. For the sound-point of view the most important leavers must have been the Nil group, David Maurin, Samuel Maurin and Roselyne Berthet even if Roselyne was only a quest on We-ila. Their twisted, utterly complex compositions and playing, the mesmerizing metal of Nil was no more a part of Trork sound. Then went Lebeau... and then they kind of went everyone, excluding Sébastien Fillion, who now was Thork in a way: Thork has turned to his "personal project" and on Tork's third album Nula jedan (2007) Sébastien Fillion was alone responsible of the songwriting, composing, vocals, guitars, bass, synths & keyboards, percussion,... Almost everything and the other musicians were only some kind of quests... like Claire Northey on violin, the only remaining member from previous Thork besides Fillion himself... and from the present. The quest list now included Philippe Maullet (drums, percussion), Arnaud Fillion (violoncelle, oud), Samuel Maurin (bass, fretless bass), Violette Corroyer (backing vocals), Hugo Quillet (trumpet, bugle), Jérôme Blanc (trombone) and Jérémie Maxit (tablas).

Thork's latest album hasn't really got much to do with their first one for the group and sound has changed quite a lot within a few years. Still the band has managed to keep it high quality and interesting, even increasingly so, because nobody can set any predictions for their next outcome...