Keldian is a progressive power metal band from Norway that was founded by childhood friends Christer Andresen and Arild Aardalen. Both are from a small town called Aurland in Norway. Christer Andresen was founding member of the long-lived metal band Madam Curie (1988-1998). This band toured Norway alot, but never released a proper album ever. Arild Aardalen was member of Protos Nemesis (techono-rock) and Alien Love Gardeners (pop-rock). During the summer of 2005, after having played in various bands and projects for about 10 years, Chris and Arild decided to embark on a musical project of their own. They wanted to focus primarily on the songwriting this time, and not so much the band concept. The goal was to write a great album, record it, and get it relesaed. Though the musical expression of Keldian was explored in different directions, they quickly ended up on a melodic and powerful style of metal heavily inspired by a lot of the legends from the 80's. After about two weeks of writing and pre-production recordings, a very rough demo-version of their debut album "Heaven's Gate" was finished. For different reasons, the project was now laid to rest for about a year. They picked up the ball again early summer 2006. With a fresh perspective, the demo-versions of the songs were revieved. Most of them were re-worked and a couple of them were cut from the record completely. Keldian is the first project by Christer and Arild. Christer played all the guitars and did the majority of the vocal work. Arild did all the keyboards and some vocal work, he also engineered and produced the album. Their debut album "Heaven's Gate" features Jorn Holen from the norwegian black-metal bands Vreid and Windir. He is friend with Christer since there high school days. Album also features Maja Svisdahl, Gunhild Matea Olaussen and Mats Rybo. Maja is a singer/songwriter in Norway. She makes folk/country/pop inspired music. She has a very beutiful voice. Gunhild is a violin player of norwegian band called black metal band "Pantheon I" and Mats is singer from "The Fabulous Lightbulb Society". The "Heaven's Gate" album is basic 80's Scandinavian beautiful hard rock and has a lot of good melody that hits your heart. "Heaven's Gate" was released in Japan with a Japanese edit of Plains of Forever (track 10) and Japan bonus track "Hope".
