France's Alkemyst spent most of the nineties struggling to make a go of it with unstable membership and the oft-used name Endless, but by 1998, both they'd settled on a somewhat stable line-up and their eventual name. Singer Fabrice Sollier, guitarists Séverin Bonneville and Arnaud Ménard, bassist Denis Mellion and a drummer simply called Ramon recorded their A Path to Heaven demo in 1999, then began work on their first album Meeting in the Mist with new, Italian-bred singer Ramon Messina (ex-Secret Sphere) a year later. Tragically, a studio hardware meltdown resulted in the loss of the entire session, barring two salvaged tracks which the band decided to promote as another demo, eventually gaining excellent exposure via France's Rock Hard magazine. All this was small consolation for the band members, who then had to turn around and re-record their melodic speed metal debut album Meeting in the Mist between June and August 2002 -- this time, thankfully, without further incident. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia