History

The band SOUL CAGES comes from Hemer (Germany) and was formed in December 1990. All members played in several metal-bands (mostly Speed-/Thrash-Metal-bands) before. Cause of all different experiences in music of all members during the years and different influences and faves of every person in the band, they joined each other and tried to create a more flexible, melodic and interesting style in music. So the music is influenced by lots of different kinds of music-styles and sounds. The aim of the band is to create a kind of sound in music, which you could describe as timeless - away from the trend during the time. The most important thing for the band is, that their songs get interesting sounds of harmonies in combination with the sound of lead-and backing-vocals. The creation of the untypical sound of music should knowingly show the listener different feelings. The realisation is reflected in combination of the lyrics with the music. The band itself would describe their music as „melodic Art-Rock combinated with progressive influences“.

The band started with a line-up of five persons. The only difference to the actual line-up is, that there had been a lead-vocalist called Frank Lau, a good friend of the band and no female backing-vocalists. Cause of a lot of new ideas all members had from the start, SOUL CAGES wrote 4 songs in three months and joined the first time the PWS-studio of Peter Waldhelm in the beginning of 1991 to record their first demo-tape, that had never been released officially. During this recordings the band and their vocalist recognized, that there were different opinions about voice-lines and so Thorsten (he only did backing-vocals before) made his first steps in working out the lead-vocals.

At the end of 1991 SOUL CAGES joined the studio again to record their first and only official demo-tape with four songs. There had been the following songs on it: The Narrow Path Of Truth; New Horizons; Soul Cages and Mindtrip. During this recordings the band thought of trying to put more backing-vocals on the ballad „Mindtrip“ and remembered the female backing-vocalists of a local band called „Latoya“. Beate and Patricia were asked, if they are interested in to do this unusual job for a demo-production. They agreed and did the background-vocals for this song. After this recordings the band was surprised and proud of the interesting combination with female-background-voices in their music and they decided to have a try in using more female-vioces in their material. Afterwards Beate and Patricia joined the band. The demo-tape was published in spring 1992. It got lots of very good reviews in a lot well known magazines in Europe and some songs of this tape were published on different CD-Sampler and MC-Sampler.

In December 1992 SOUL CAGES signed the record-deal at MASSACRE-RECORDS. In 1993 the band recorded their first album at first at the home-studio of the record-company, but noone was satisfied with the result of the recordings and so they recorded the material in the PWS-studio again during two weeks including the mixing. The debut-CD, called "Soul Cages", was released in May 1994. It was published in Europe and Japan. After the publication of the debut, SOUL CAGES played some live gigs with such well-known bands like SAXON and GOLDEN EARRING. In the summer of 1995 Patricia left the band cause she didin't have that much time that's needful to work with the band cause of her job. She only did a few more live-performances with the band and helped with the recordings to the "Moments"-album.

The recordings of the second SOUL CAGES album were also made at the PWS-studio with the same producer like the debut-album at the end of 1995. The second SOUL CAGES-CD, called "Moments", was released in February 1996. In March/April 1996 SOUL CAGES were on tour with "SAVIOUR MACHINE" from the USA and "VENI DOMINE" from Sweden for about three weeks. Live gigs with well-known bands like RAGE followed.

Afterwards SOUL CAGES worked at new material for their third album and did several pre-productions during the time. In August 1998 the band got a constant keyboarder called Enrique Foedtke as a full member of the band. The recordings of the actual album called "Craft" were made in the "Skyline-studios" in Düsseldorf in March 1999. The producer was Matthias Black. The album was released in August 1999.

In July 2000 SOUL CAGES left the record-company MASSACRE-RECORDS by themselves. Afterwards the band works constantly at new song-material for the following album after "Craft" and has still recorded some songs as a pre-production in their own built up "Soundcages"-studio. Enrique Foedtke left the band because of musically differences in July 2001. In spring 2002 SOUL CAGES will send the new song-material to several record-companies to find a new label for the fourthcoming album. SOUL CAGES will release their new album in 2002. A title for the new album could not be mentioned by now.