With love for hardrock and hatred of the genres conventions and standardization the Schelander brothers began writing songs together many years ago. To write music together, simply for the love of writing, was an old christmas tradition between the brothers. The winter breaks filled the house with reggae, samba, rock and a lot of other songs in different genres. But in 2005 things got more serious. The goal was to write 10 songs, each of which had its own identity but still felt natural to be included in a collection of ten. A rule was that each song would have free reign to take the paths it wanted to. Like the characters in a novel the songs would be able to travel their own ways and the composer's task is only to document its path.

The songs wrote themselves, but the real difficulty was to find a singer who could do the songs justice. Many talented, reputable names have tested the material. Finally Alex Lycke entered the vocal booth and the pieces fell into place.

Alex has over the past ten years, worked as a singer with Europe as a scene. But Astrakhan is Alex's first release in a group. Add Marcus Jidell (Evergrey, Royal Hunt) who has taken care of guitars, mix and production and also will handle the guitars on tours and you have a group that will meet the requirements of years to come.

Astrakhan is thus composed of equal parts experience and musicality, with high level of curiosity and hunger.