Virgin Steele's new album "The Black Light Bacchanalia" will be released as a standard CD, limited edition CD Digipak with a bonus CD, and digital download will be released on November 9th in North America.They will also release a strictly limited edition LP box set which will be released on November 23rd in North America. Each version will have its own unique artwork.
Virgin Steele mastermind David Defeis explains the album title: My answer is this...Well...it is my way of saying something like "This insane Life"....It should be thought of in the same spirit as the way Dante called his Work "The Divine Comedy". He was discussing Life in all its multifaceted craziness, and I mean something similar with the phrase, "The Black Light Bacchanalia". I too am speaking about Life and all its attendant drama, aches, & pains, pathos, joys & sorrows. By that phrase I also mean "The Great Reversal". Where when one culture conquers another, the deities of the conquered people become the demons of the conquerors religion. Everything is turned upside down...topsy-turvy. This is essentially what happened to Paganism & Gnosticism. The Pagans were killed off, and their worship of Bacchus/Dionysus with their bacchanalias was suppressed. But...in the glow of the Black Light things that are white are illuminated... the other colors fade into the shadows...The Pagans went underground....
Yes it is a concept album. It does continue the tale I began on the "Visions Of Eden" album, and brings those elements to their conclusion, with the death of Lilith (in TO CROWN THEM WITH HALOS), & also God finally lamenting all the damage he has done & the havoc he has wrought in ETERNAL REGRET. I equate Lilith with Hypatia( the ancient Pagan astronomer/philosopher of Alexandria, who was murdered by Monks) & Joan Of Arc, and & Lyzebel, (a Sumerian Queen who most people know as Jezebel), (but that name is a perversion of the original Lyzebel, which means Baal is exalted) (She too was murdered), as well as all the various Goddess figures. I continue the discussion of the death of Paganism and the eradication of the Female Goddess Principle due to the rise of the Mountain-Fire-Father God, but I go further with discussing the rise of "organized" religion and its mark upon Paganism, and the subsequent coming of the Dark Ages. However, that being said, I am really discussing today's Dark Ages, and the rise of fundamentalism in all walks of Life, not only religion, but politics, and everywhere else. And ultimately the album is about Rebellion. Rebellion against authority, God, government, whatever.... etc....This is quite clear in songs like THE ORPHEUS TABOO.
