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FLAMING ROW is an international band project formed by the German musician Martin Schnella (Steel Protector, Cast In Silence) in 2008. His original idea was to create a concept album with many different musicians, especially singers, female and male. Schnella wrote a lot of music for FLAMING ROW and put it together to complete songs. Because of his big influence of different styles of music, FLAMING ROW does not represent just one genre. So there is a mixture of prog metal/rock, mainstream rock, metal and powerful ballads inside FLAMING ROW.

To complete the idea, Schnella asked his dear friend Kiri Geile (Steel Protector) to join the band. Kiri’s task was to write a story for the concept. Within some months both completed the story “Elinoire”, a drama about a young British family, together and wrote lyrics for the different characters in the story.

The recording sessions started in late 2008. Almost all of the music was recorded until the end of 2009. A lot of friends and local musicians supported Geile and Schnella by joining the band. Also to the core team of FLAMING ROW belong drummer Niklas Kahl (My Inner Burning, Cast In Silence) and keyboard/sax player Marek Arnold (Toxic Smile, Seven Steps To The Green Door, Stern Combo Meissen). Schnella played guitars, most bass guitars, some keyboards and contributed lead and backing vocals.

In late 2010 he got in contact with Gary Wehrkamp and Brendt Allman from the American progressive-metal band SHADOW GALLERY and asked them to join [in] with some additional guitar/keyboard solos. Both liked the music and became a big part of FLAMING ROW. Wehrkamp also did a lot of lead vocals and took part as one of the characters. Together with Brendt Allman he added many backing vocals. Billy Sherwood (Circa, Yoso, Ex-Yes) also provided some lead and backing vocals.

The German guitar player Ali Neander (founding member of the RODGAU MONOTONES, session guitar player for Xavier Naidoo, Sabrina Setlur …) added some guitar solos, too.

To take over the last free character-role Jimmy Keegan, who is the tour drummer/backing singer for SPOCK’S BEARD (also Kenny Loggins, Santana…), joined FLAMING ROW and did some vocals.

Schnella is very proud of this development, because all these musicians have been his idols since his childhood. Thus FLAMING ROW has become now an international band project.

The story of “Elinoire”: It is about a young British family. Lea and Adam Baltwin are in the prime of their lives, having great jobs and living in prosperity. Lea becomes pregnant. But during the birth of their daughter Elinoire, Lea dies. Adam never overcomes the sudden death of his beloved wife and lays the blame on Elinoire. Over the years he cannot build up an ordinary realationship to Elinoire. Adam’s father Cyrus Baltwin takes over the role of the father figure. But after some years some true facts about the previous life of Lea are revealed. Was Lea’s death really fate ? The story is told by the real characters, their emotions (love, rage…) and some virtual ones (Time, Destiny, Death, Spirit ...). More than 30 musicians and 15 different singers, female and male, perform on this album and the roles of the story.