History of OMNIA part 3
- OMNIA
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
OMNIA - Sine Missione (the first album)
The OMNIA story continues, now where did I leave off?
Ah yes…30 years ago the historical re-enactment group OMNIA played on beautifull Archeological sites around Europe.
This was back in 1996, when I had learned about ancient Greeks, conquering Romans, Iron-age Celts etc…
I loved the romanticism of the idea of our original free “Noble savage” pagan ancestors living wild in Nature, worshipping ancient Gods like Cernunnos and the Morrigan, fighting against imperialist enemies like Rome and just being generally Tree-huggy and pure, far far from the industrialized countries we were all enslaved into.
The whole omnia-group felt this, ah! We loved these places!
Like the “Archéosite d'Aubechies” in Belgium (my personal favourite). Where wonderfull Men and Women, tried to recreate the feel of Gallo-Roman Europe, hand-building (and partially living in) reconstructions of Celtic longhouses. It felt like arriving in the mythical village of Asterix! (they even reconstructed a Roman Temple there, which we inaugurated when it was finished, and where the chief Léonce sacrificed a sheep on the altar… wow good days!)
We were honoured to be able to play in those places, often asking no more than just the opportunity to stay there and feel the atmosphere for a few days.
Aubéchies once actually paid us in bronze Torcs and amulets made on the site for a weekend of “public entertainment” for their visitors!
Over the years we must have played in more Roman Temples, Celtic villages, Amphiteatres etc. (reconstructed and also authentic) than other bands get to play in clubs!
The atmosphere of the re-enactment sites, the smell of the fire, the simple roughspun costumes, the wood and stone buildings, the tanned leather smell, the animals, the nature, the smoked meats and simple fire-cooked foods! wow! THAT is what we longed for… (so that is actually what jenny and me have finally recreated here on TERRA OMNIA!)
Anyway..
Our approach to ancient music was very novel for the time (in those far away days of the 80’s and 90’s all the historical ancient Greek/Roman music was very…euh... horrible? boring? academic?)
So we tried to make it more Alive! by adding next to historical “correctness”, the right (hand made) instruments, rhythms etc. things like… melody! groove!, feeling! and most importantly…Humor!
Example:
One song of ours is called “Priapus” (which is on “Sine Missione”) and it’s based around a 1st century poem about the fertility god PRIAPUS (endowed with a HUGE stiff cock).
We played it very serious and moving, with atmospheric vocals, and the audience would listen with calm, serious faces at our recital because the lyrics are all in perfect classical Latin.
But nobody except educated classical Latinists realised that the chorus is actually “Assfucking, Headfucking, Assfucking, Headfucking” and the poem which I declaim in perfect Roman Metre is actually about swearing in public…
(when we played this at historical venues where a few archeologists or historians could actually understand the words we could hear them cracking up with laughter somewhere in the background!)
Yeah…we loved shit like that! hehehe! Never take yourself or history too seriously!
After a few years we amazingly started getting fans!!? And they would ask us things like:
“This music is great! I want to listen to it at home!”
“Where can I buy this music you are making?”
“Do you have any cassettes?” (yes, these were the 90’s)
(and there were NO streaming internet platforms back then, in those Happy happy naive days!)
Well, making a music recording and getting it on record, tape or cd was a pretty tricky and expensive business back then.
(Yes really! Believe it or not, it wasn’t normal in those days to have any idiot owning a smartphone or a laptop fancying themselves a “music producer” and just start “making music” for the masses…aah blissful days…sigh)
And don’t forget that NONE of us in OMNIA were actual professional musicians (including me!)
I had only just started making music one year before starting OMNIA at the age of 27, because the brilliant archeo-musicologist Walter Maioli asked me to join him on a project of prehistoric and early Roman music and taught me all the basics…
OK that’s a long story but I don’t want to side track again here, this is not about me, this is about OMNIA… just say that I learned a LOT from this genius man who is the ONLY actual shaman I have ever met
(compared to him all the others are fake ego-trippers…including me)
You might not know his name, but if you have seen the movie GLADIATOR or seen the series ROME then you have heard his music…
All the historical stuff…that’s him…
So, us amateurs with a small but growing fan base for our Celtic and Roman pagan songs were looking for a studio (that we could afford!) and luckily a friend of our female vocalist Joyce helped us out (Norbert Veel studios).
We made the first OMNIA CD ever! and burned just 100 copies total.
We hand-made the booklets.
It was called SINE MISSIONE (pronounced “see-ne-miss-jo-ne”) which means “WITHOUT MERCY” in Latin.
These were sold-out in no time and because we were not really musicians we let the project somehow stop there…the band fell apart and that should have been that…end of story.
BUT because Luka, Mirjam (who was mainly our BEAR in the gladiator fights) and myself hooked up with a German Archeologist/Dancer Suzanne Rühling, and after signing a terrible contract with one of the many many many record companies out there that live off screwing over hopefull enthousiastic bands …we got into the studio again and re-made SINE MISSIONE, throwing out half of the tracks that were just too terrible to keep and replacing them with better versions.
It is the ONLY OMNIA CD where I wasn’t involved in the mixing and production (this was given over to “professionals”) so I’m not too happy with the quality, but that is supposedly natural in the music business!
Funfact is that afterwards I got screwed so hard by that little contract that I had signed (story of my life), which bound me to that exploitive little record company for life…(AAAaaah!!) that my ass still hurts a little when I think of it…
But that is beside the point, it’s all healed and “ancient history” now (pun intended).
Now THAT historical piece of OMNIA music is being made public today on all those streaming platforms that were not around 30 years ago, so you can all enjoy the sound of a bunch of enthousiastic history nuts, trying their very best to re-create a sound that could have been heard in the fictional past of northern Europe during the end of the Celtic Iron age and the beginning of the Roman occupation.
Find it on these platforms
Or, if you are more old school and you’d like the actual physical product, you can still order one of the very last copies in our webshop.
Enjoy!
Sicula BiFortunatus / Sic the Celt
PS: I am a human, this is not written by fucking AI.
PS2: I will carry on with relating the history of OMNIA on another day, when I’m not busy felling trees, dragging and chopping wood, planting seeds, digging soil and actually LIVING the past we were trying to re-enact.
PS3: Next part will be about the start of the actual real OMNIA called:
“Finally! here’s JENNY!!!”
