Hollow came to be in the late 90's. The group consisted of Urban Vikstrom (drums), Marcus Bigren (guitars), Tomas Nilsson (bass) and Andreas Stoltz (vocals and guitars). That was the original line-up, and there was never any changes. It all started when Tomas and Andreas did their military service in the same platoon. They shared tastes in music and the idea of forming a band started to grow on them. A couple of years later Hollow released their first effort, a self-titled mini-CD. It received much praise from Asia, but nothing more happened. It was not until they recorded the album "Modern Cathedral" on a small Swedish label, that things started to happen. A copy was sent to German label Nuclear Blast and Hollow was offered a contract. The album M.C. got good reviews and sold reasonably well. The songs on the album were written over a period of several years, and the material is thus very varied. The second full-length album was released in '99, "Architect of the Mind". It is a concept album on artificial intelligence and the basic story goes something like this: A scientist goes almost crazy over losing his father and buries himself in work. He finally succeeds in creating an AI, but he never expected this being to be so similar to himself. The album tries to raise questions regarding creation and responsibility for the created, parenthood and religion as well. The songs on AOTM are generally faster and heavier than the ones on its predecessor. That development continues in the new material, without losing the melodic elements which are one of the essential trademarks of Hollow. In the fall of '99 Hollow went on a small tour in Norway, along with Norwegian progressive metal band Divided Multitude. Playing on Oslo's rock bar Mars, the sound on stage was fatefully loud, and Andreas damaged his ears to the point that rehearsing was no longer possible. Hollow chose to split up, since finding a new singer was never in question. The new songs you can hear on this page are thus the fruit of Andreas Stoltz' labors in front of the computer. Although singing is the difficult factor in recording, since it is hard to sing metal softly, there is progress in composing.
