Pitch Black Process, formerly known as Affliction, consisting of Emrah Demirel, EmreDemirel, Kerem Inci and Fikri Yargici came to being in February 1999. The band originally started off in 1998 with the friendship of Emrah and Fikri and the fact that they both started playing musical instruments in the first year of university. Since he was listening to it from a young age, music was already more than a hobby for Emrah, but the desire to play an instrument was only fulfilled once he was at university. A few months later Emrah met Kerem there. The base of the band was founded when Emrah's proposal to start playing together for fun at the campus studio was accepted by Fikri and Kerem. Within a few months, the group decided to take things to a further level and began the search for a bass player. The first proposal was given to and accepted by Emre who just a few months before had begun playing bass. This being done the lineup was completed. In a short while, Affliction progressed considerably and on May 23 1999 found themselves giving their first concert to their listeners in Izmir at Ege University . After that the group began to compose songs rapidly. With this began the preparations for a demo and the group went into a silent period lasting about a year. This was broken when on May 18 2000 they again gave a concert at Ege University and succeeded in not only attracting the interest of their fans in Izmir but in getting full marks from them as well. Right after that, without putting out the demo on the market, Affliction signed up with Poem Productions and began the preparations for their first album. On the 23rd of April 2001 they gave their – what was now becoming customary – concert at Ege University for 500 listeners.
Турция
While working on their album, they took part in Katatonia's concert as an opening band on the 9th of June 2001 and got very good reviews throughout the country for their high performance. As a result of these ratings, 4 months after, they participated as opening band again for the concert given by The famous Swedish Melodic Death Metal group, Dark Tranquility and after that the positive responses only continued to increase.
After these concerts the recording sessions for Affliction's debut album begun in April 2002 though due to certain unforeseen events album was released in May 2003. This long awaited album got very good reviews from national metal-music-magazines and webzines.
After the album was released, Affliction played on some local concerts and took stage at major festivals such as Rock The Nations II (UDO, Destruction, Pain of Salvation and many…) , Rock Republic (Slayer, In Flames, Over Kill…)
Following the concerts and festivals season, Affliction started to work on new material at the end of 2005. After a long time work in progress, the songs were completed in January 2007 and they started recording in March 2007 which produced their 2nd album: Execution is Necessary.
Progression both technically and musically, also at sound quality was obvious. Album got very good response at national wide and also from out of Turkey.
After the album was released they performed at some major festivals like Summer Rocks Fest (Moonspell, UDO) and Uni-Rock Fest (Testament, Opeth and Dark Tranquillity).
Affliction made their first video for the song “Raven” with Swedish director Daniel Larsson (Soilwork, Zonaria, The Haunted, Witchery).
A few months after the release of their second album, they had an offer from a label in USA. The label kept none of their promises and Affliction decided to terminate the deal with the label.
They made their second video for the song “WWW” with Daniel Larsson again from “Execution is Necessary” album. “WWW” is the first metal video from Turkey shot with an XDCAM HD and also the first Turkish music video to be distributed on the web in HD.
Affliction went on their first European tour in November 2009. They played ….gigs and that tour also the first biggest and longest tour which any Turkish band (in all genre) has ever made so far.
After their successful European tour, they got another tour offer for Warbringer’s ‘Shock and Awe’ tour as opening act. They played 18 shows in Europe with Warbringer.
Before that tour Affliction signed a sponsorship deal with the biggest guitar company in the world, PRS. It was another ‘first’ for Turkey. None of any Turkish bands’ artist signed a sponsorship agreement with such a big brand in music industry.
After the tours, Affliction started to write new material for their 3rd album. Meanwhile they were invited for a festival which took place for the first time at Kalmar/SWEDEN with Dark Tranquillity, Evergrey, Engel, etc. Due to some financial problems the festival was canceled but organizers asked Affliction to play for a gig at Kalmar. They went there and reaction was huge! Affliction were welcomed as if they were from Sweden.
After that great experience, Affliction turned back to writing process. For the time being, Affliction made a hard decision; due to some conflict and confusion they have been faced at abroad and net; they decided to change the name of the band!
They will now continue their journey as:
Pitch Black Process