The Story of Gaia

A new voice in symphonic metal has arrived, one that is ready to mesmerize us all with voices of sirens and the destruction of Earth, and change the world with a movement as simple and decisive as a flap of a butterfly's wing. A demanding sense of purpose forces itself from the ground beneath as soon as the album begins, and unlike so many symphonic albums, this is not one that lets you carefully ease your way in…

Composed over a period of fourteen years, John Pickard's Gaia Symphony and Eden are scored for the standard British brass band, with expanded percussion in the case of 'Gaia'. Both works in different ways mirror concerns regarding the world and nature, and their relationship with the human species. Gaia was the Greek goddess of the earth, but is also the name of a theory which proposes that the earth itself is a living organism and that its colonisation by humankind merely marks a certain point in its history.