“Forever dwelling in darkness”……. And forever will rise. This is the dark anthem of a band determined to conquier the world and make it to it’s own colours: Black and Beautiful. To the question:”How would you describe Adagio ?” Stéphan Forté replies:” If I had to dedicate my life to create one, and only one painting, it would be a black and glossy painting, describing a detailed scene of the apocalypse, with beauty, passion and above all a strong dramatic dimension. The particularity of this painting is that it would have a size increasing constantly, each time getting deeper and wider”
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Adagio born from guitarist Stéphan Forté’s creative mind in 2001 with the worldwide release of the first album “Sanctus Ignis”. This neoclassical progressive release soon establish Adagio as a strong contender for the “Best newcoming progressive metal act” title, having awesome reviews rated 5K/5 in the famous Kerrang magazine, 9 out of 10 in Rock Hard magazine and lots of other very positives notes from the Metal medias. Guitar fans over the world are also quickly ranking Stephan as one of the best shredder, and “Sanctus Ignis”immediately reaches a considerable success in both France and Japan.
After two years of intense work and a long period of reflection about death and existence, Stéphan finally compose Adagio’s second album “Underworld”.The overall sounding is much darker than the previous effort and features heartful orchestral elements and a 50 piece real choir. The arrival of an absolutely amazing classical piano virtuoso/keyboard player Kevin Codfert consolides the line up, and immediately brings to Adagio the classical touch Stéphan was looking for since the beginning. For a lot of progressive metal fans, this album is a still nowadays the absolute Neoclassical/Progressive-Metal masterpiece of all time. Soon after it’s realease, Adagio goes on tour to promote Underworld, and does it’s first headlining tour, playing France, Spain, Holland and several other European countries.
After a separation with their previous singer, the band recruits a new vocalist from Brazil, Gus Monsanto, and one week later, goes to play the US for the first time at the prestigious Prog Power Festival in Atlanta (GA)
In 2005 the band signs with label DoubleVision/SONY BMG in France and release it’s 3rd album “Dominate”. This new opus marks a pretty radical change of style, much more powerful and heavy, but still keeping it’s trademark elements such as virtuosity and massive orchestral influences. One of the major add to the music is the adjonction of extreme vocals, in support of a heavier but still melodic kind of voice. Dominate’s darker image and sound soon gathers new kinds of fans issued from the Gothic and Black Metal movement
This same year, Adagio opens for Robert Plant in Carthage Amphitheater in Tunisia, in front of 6500 insane fans. After several headlining shows in Europe, the band goes for the first time in Japan in September 2007 and plays Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, the first and the last show being sold out.
Adagio is at the moment working on it’s next album “Archangels In Black” planned for a late 2008 release worlwide.