Todeswunsch

Todeswunsch – Sous le soleil de Saturne (German and French: "Death Wish - Under the Sun of Saturn") is the second album by darkwave band Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows and was released in 1995. Todeswunsch saw a fundamental change in sound, abandoning the heavily synthesized darkwave music for a sound akin to the Renaissance and neo-Medieval music. A limited pressing of 3,000 CDs was initially available, and the album has been re-released at least three times. An accompanying EP, Ehjeh Ascher Ehjeh, was released later that year.

Overview
Todeswunch was a major departure from Sopor Aeternus' first album, ...Ich töte mich..., in that the aggressive synthesized music of the first record was replaced with ornate Renaissance- and Baroque-inspired folk music. brass, woodwinds and acoustic guitars came to the fore, while drum machines were largely abandoned for varying amounts of hand percussion. Shrill female vocals also resound throughout the album, all of them provided by Anna-Varney Cantodea herself.

The album quotes heavily from other works. One example is the title track, where the music is a darkwave version of Cat Stevens' "I Think I See the Light". "Drama der Geschlechtslosigkeit (part 2)" employs the melody from "Chim Chim Cher-ee", as featured in Mary Poppins, while "Shadowsphere" quotes the bass lines from Black Sabbath's "Under the Sun". "The Devil's Instrument" also quotes lyrics from Rozz Williams' "Mysterium Inquitatis". "Todeswunsch" contains the first instance of Cantodea's long-standing interest in Edgar Allan Poe: "Die Bruderschaft des Schmerzes" is a re-telling of his work Dream-Land.

Todeswunsch would see re-releases in 1999, 2003 and 2008. The album artwork received significant changes for both the 2003 and 2008 editions. The painting on the cover of the original release is a detail of Death of the Virgin by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The title of "Soror Sui Excidium" was changed to "Soror (Sister of Self-destruction)" for re-releases, and both halves of "Shadowsphere" were indexed into one track on re-issue.

Personnel

 * Gerrit Fischer: Guitar on "Soror Sui Excidium", "Drama der Geschlechtslosigkeit (part 2)" and "Only the Dead in the Mist"
 * Varney: Vocals, all other instruments and programming