Oath Of Cranes

OATH OF CRANES turn doom metal on its head. Mastermind (and ex-Celtic Frost drummer) Franco Sesa combines his passion for eastern traditional music — particularly the mantra chants of Tibetan monks — with his love for hard rock to create a genuinely innovative wall of sound.

The result fuses metal attitude with the Eastern emphasis on the healing effects of music, creating something much more than simply entertainment. Metal was and is survival, family and religion. It is a healer and a way of life. OATH OF CRANES pay homage to that music and those keeping it alive despite rejection by mainstream society.

Sesa comments:

“For my generation, the metalheads from the eighties, metal was much more than just entertainment. It was survival, not just fun to spice up daily life. It was family, religion, identification. I think it kept a lot of people from committing suicide back then, as it had a healing and "holy" influence on a lot of my metal generation. And I think it still has. It’s still true for the current metal generation. It is more than music. It is a way of life and a lifestyle. With this project I want to show my gratitude to this kind of music and give thanks to all who have helped to create and maintain this musical tradition - although it was always rejected by the masses and ridiculed as music for outsiders. We’re outsiders and proud of it. Not by choice, but by necessity.”

The band's debut album (2023), ‘The Unsung Mantras’, was produced by OATH OF CRANES, engineered at Switzerland's New Sound Studio by Tommy Vetterli (Coroner, Eluveitie & more), and mastered at Sweden's Fascination Street Studios by Tony Lindgren (Sepultura, Kreator, Witchcraft & more). It's available digitally and on 2LP vinyl via Klang Machine Records.

The songs are dark and disturbing yet beautiful and healing: traditional instruments and sounds from Asian heritage and cultures with shamanic roots, including singing bowls, horns and Tibetan monks' chants, support the powerful and innovative metal celebrated on ‘The Unsung Mantras’. The result vividly underscores the album's Daoism-inspired concept and the band's broader cultural influences, such as the choice of Sanskrit for song titles, imagery inspired by the Sadhu tradition, and the tribute to the uplifting virtues described by the iconography of Hindu deities. The Oath Of the Cranes is a promise: good death follows a good life.