Could the beginning of the third world war be followed by a devastating earthquake on a global scale that causes a bible-like flood, leaving the planet completely destroyed? Well, apparently the answer is yes. Most of the world population have died, All cities have crumbled down and none of them exists any longer. Only one city has miraculously survived: Zareth, the last city on Earth...

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I came up with the basic concept for this album in 1990. For several reasons, though, the right time to record it only came in 2007.
Now it finally exists outside of my mind, too...

Self-released

Normally covers are not a big problem for me; actually, I create most of them before starting to work on the album, as they help me visualize the concepts I'm going to turn into music. This album, however, was different in that the concept dates back to 1990, so most of the tracks had been already composed back then. Unfortunately, I had also had the cover in my mind for all those years, and making the cover look like the one I had envisioned for so long wasn't easy...
The picture in my mind was that of a big city in the distance, a barren land all around it, and an intense sky on the background.
I took some photos of a not-so-big abandoned yard, of a not-so-big building (no skyscrapers around here...), some rocks, and a cloudy sky, and started assembling them just to see how to move from there. I also begun modifying the building, as I needed some kind of futuristic huge city and all I had to work on was the picture of a small-town five-story building...

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On the left: the first draft for the cover as described above.

After a lot of work (you can't see all the different stages and passages in between these somewhat final drafts), I managed to modify the small-town building into what looked reasonably close to a futuristic city. I also wanted to see if leaving the sky (which I had changed with a more suitable one) blue while turning all the rest into a black and white picture was a good idea. In order to try and convey a sense of disaster I added some pictures of rubbish on the foreground. The rubbish, however (and especially the abandoned bathtub on the right) made the whole thing look more like the dirty outskirts of a big city than the aftermaths of the biggest disaster ever...
So, I liked the city, I liked the sky, I liked the title (vertical like a building, as opposed to the horizontal one on the first draft), but I needed the whole thing to look wider, and the rubbish just had to go... Besides, the city in my mind had always been in the center of the picture.
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On the left: the second draft for the cover as described above.

A lot more work, and I came up with something close enough to what I wanted, but it wasn't exactly on the spot, yet. The not-so-big abandoned yard's perspective had to be increased so that it could pass for a huge barren landscape. The colors were just too bright, there had to be a sense of hope after the disaster, but not a cheerful touristic atmosphere. The city was fine, but it had to be smaller so as to look farther away...

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On the left: the third draft for the cover as described above.

Some more work and finally here it was, the cover I had had in my mind for seventeen years, thanks to the magic of photo editing and computer graphics :)
Fortunately, my covers aren't normally so difficult to make (even if they aren't that easy either), otherwise I wouldn't have time to make music anymore!