OK, this is some seriously cool news.
A while back, Reed Reimer of Fable Factory (great guy, incredibly talented and hard-working, and the kind of friend you always want around!) asked me if I’d like to be involved in a project close to his heart. Naturally, I said yes.
Reed’s idea was to create a truly multimedia storytelling experience – the kind of thing you can only create if you have a bunch of talented, creative people with different skills to collaborate with. First came Cthulhu Dreamt, a concept metal album about a scientist determined to reunite with her long-lost daughter, even if it takes breaking the barriers between universes to do it. (That album is awesome, by the way. Highly recommended.)
Now, the story continues in multiple forms. Liminality, the second album from Cthulhu Dreamt, releases on March 31st, 2022 in digital and physical forms including cassette and sexy purple vinyl, and you can pre-order it now!
And guess what? I have a credit on this album, which is just the most bizarre thing to me. Yup: I’m the composer of one of the tracks on Liminality, and you can even hear my voice as a spoken-word performance on that track and one other. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be on a metal album, I’d have thrown a lemon at you, so this is just very cool. I’m unbelievably grateful to Reed for encouraging me to take part, and for taking the riffs I’d written and arranging them into an actual song. Plus he programmed a bunch of instruments, played a bunch of others, and growled the hell out of my barely-scanning lyrics. So: thanks, Reed!
But I mentioned that Liminality is just one part of the continuing story, so here’s the next announcement: Reed’s commissioned me to write a novel, which I’m currently working on, to be published by Fable Factory as part of the project. It’ll bridge the gap between the end of the album’s story and… well, the thing that comes next. So keep an eye out for that: the as-yet-untitled Cthulhu Dreamt Project Novel will follow a group of survivors trapped on a ship as everyone’s favourite tentacley abomination awakens around them, brought into our world by the scientist’s attempts to reach her daughter in another dimension.
And then there’s what I’ve just obliquely called ‘the thing that comes next’: Fable Factory is teaming up with Action Fiction to create a role-playing game in which you, the player, will adventure through a world now deadly with eldritch creatures to find the scientist who started it all and seek a way to undo it. Plus there’ll be an entire new original soundtrack for the game, parts of which have been performed by the Moscow Scoring Orchestra.
So… like, that’s cool. Isn’t that flipping cool?!
Liminality is already available for pre-order, but it’ll also be available through a crowdfunding campaign that’ll be kicking off in the next few months. The metal album, the novel, the game and its accompanying soundtrack, probably some merch – all of it will be up for grabs as part of that campaign, as well as being available for separate purchase once it’s all launched.
So basically, keep an eye out for that campaign, ‘cos you’ll be able to pick up the entire story in all its multimedia glory. (This phase of it, at least!) I’m hyped. You should be hyped too.
(PS… on a separate note entirely, but while we’re talking about things I’m working on with Fable Factory, I wonder what this could be…?)
Chris Durston 