I thought seeing as behind the shadows lie madness is days away from being complete, that it would be interesting to hear where you think the story will go on behind...

As we know album 1 and 2 are linked storywise and album 3 also carries on from the end of worlds.

Basically what do u guys think of the story, what's it all about for you personally, where would you want it to go, do you like the underlying background to it all and the links through out the albums?

The concepts presented in Mithras have become quite personal. Speaking for myself and based purely on my own connection with the songs/music, they are generally about belief. A belief in a higher level of human existence, a belief in the capability to rise above a material existence and that within humanity is the potential to leave behind the irrelevence and souless-ness of much of what modern life contains. Then there is the belief in a connection to our ancestors and another reality or world in which we are reunited. Finally there is self-belief. Mithras is about strength, drawn from within and a rejection of those that attempt to influence us:

'Palaces from my dreams
My spirit can embrace
You attack my body
Making me ever strong
I shall stand tall
I am everlasting'

and of course:

'We are the ones who shape our lives
We tread our way
Along these paths seldom trodden'

On a deeper level, I've found that the albums have become a symbolic art that represents a sort of Universe-al pagan spirituality (Yes, I'm wierd). I think it grew out of tracks like 'The Green Wanderer Returns' and the Pagan references in 'Vae Solis' and 'Sloping Altars'. Paganism being Earth based, WBTV sort of expanded my spiritual beliefs I attached to the FA..L album into a universe where Earth was under threat as well as being a small part of a greater world. It makes me imagine the possibilities of an pagan spirituality when we finally reach further out into the universe and things become greater in scale. The death of a planet is not the end. The cycles* of the sun become the cycles of the universe.

ORRRRRRRR...it acts as a flexible metaphor for traveling/transcending the worlds of Yggdrasil or the Sephiroths of Kabbalah...SO THERE! And of course, the end of the world is coherant with the conceptions of Ragnorok and the Apocalypse.

Anyway, that's one** vision of Mithras through Leeless framed glasses. So what does that mean for BTSLM? What happens after the world ends? Is it reborn? What of humanity? I look forward to seeing where it goes. I love the Mithras story/stories and all I ask is that you journey onwards! Explore the worlds beyond the veil!

* Quite satisfyingly, the death of the sun appears in Vae Solis

**There are others, more obvious, and a lot more sinister.

FAL- Man awakens thing
Worlds- Man worships thing
Behind- Man is corrupted by the darkness of the thing

I'm a veggie, I'll bring the quorn :p

I'll bring tons of beer though

Unikron = Vegetarian????

Veggiekron!