Sculptured

History

Don Anderson formed Sculptured in 1996 as a one-man project after his previous band dissolved. With drummer John Schlegel and clean vocalist Brian Yager, the group recorded the demo Fulfillment in Tragedy that same year. This demo led to a deal with Poland's Mad Lion Records for the debut album The Spear of the Lily is Aureoled (1998), which was later licensed as the fourth release of The End Records in North America. The album combined the demo material with four new songs recorded at Soundtracks studio with engineer Ronn Chick. Around that time, the band contributed a cover of Iron Maiden's "Iron Maiden" to the tribute album Maiden America: Iron Maiden Tribute; their version featured a doomy, slower intro with nylon string guitars and a jazz/swing middle section with trumpet. The sophomore release Apollo Ends (2000) came out worldwide through The End Records, expanding the use of brass instruments and emphasizing atonality and dissonance. The core lineup for that album was Anderson, Yager, bassist Jason Walton, and drummer John Haughm; this trio minus Yager also formed the core of Haughm's main project Agalloch, and the three rehearsed and recorded both Apollo Ends and Agalloch's Pale Folklore simultaneously. In 2001, the band (without Walton) recorded a cover of Goblin's main theme from Suspiria for an unreleased Goblin tribute album, later released on The End Records' 2002 sampler Phases: the Dark Side of Music. The third album, Embodiment: Collapsing Under the Weight of God (2008), featured returning bassist Walton, drummer Dave Murray, keyboardist Andy Winter, and vocalist Tom Walling. This album was composed predominantly with atonal and serialist techniques, using what Anderson called 4-tone row matrices.