EXILED HOPE, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Sofia Frasz, sees the release of the anthemic power metal song “Lightborn.” The song is taken from her upcoming concept album, Apocrypha, which is due to be released on April 11, 2025. Apocrypha tells the story from the eyes of one who could be Hope’s enemy… but will he join forces with her or will he succumb to temptations that abound on his side?
Sofia comments, “This was the last song I recorded for the album, and it’s one of my favorites that I’ve ever recorded in terms of melody and structure. I composed and recorded the entire song in about 4 hours the weekend before the 2nd year of law school started. It’s a little more stripped-down and less nuanced than many of the other songs on the album, but that allows the melody room to breathe and carry the story forward. “Lightborn” is simultaneously optimistic and regretful, with one foot planted firmly in “I’m sorry” and the other rooted in “but together, we can survive anything if we can learn to forgive each other and conquer our own flaws.”
Multi-instrumentalist Sofia Frasz established EXILED HOPE in 2019 and draws musical inspiration from the likes of Avantasia, Nightwish, Kamelot and Cradle of Filth, to name a few. EXILED HOPE’s releases all take place in the same fictional universe and combine to form a dark fantasy metal opera. She delivers powerful symphonic gothic metal in a musical fantasy universe of her creation.
Each album centers on a character dealing with both an internal and external conflict in this world, and the lyrics explore how they navigate those conflicts. This is intended to provide some kind of escapism through the lyrical worldbuilding, while still keeping the songs grounded in real, relatable emotions despite their fantastical setup. Through EXILED HOPE, Sofia has composed music for two short films, Hallowed Paths and What Happens After Midnight, and has collaborated with UK melodic death metal outfit Steel Forge.
EXILED HOPE is:
Sofia Frasz: all instruments and all vocals
Sofia Frasz spoke to us recently about her new single, project and music, and we are pleased to show the feature here.
We began the interview with the single “The Silence is Deafening.” It attracted our attention here, as the cover for the single is a painting of Mary Magdalene contemplating and holding a skull. The original is in the Spanish Gallery in the North East and, as Mark (our editor) had been to see the original and really liked it, we wanted to start off by asking about the choice of that. It is such a wonderfully gothic take on the subject.
Sofia: I have an affinity for art from the 16th to the 18th centuries, especially oil paintings. It is a style I love and I feel like the style speaks to the music I create, both dark and elegant at the same time. So there is a juxtaposition with the beautiful colours, and then this woman is staring at the skull. It is both grotesque and beautiful and that is the vibe that I try to convey with my style of music. It is equal parts elegant and pretty, but there is also this macabre side that sticks out and holds attention. So, it was primarily a visual thing but also a love for that style of art overall. For earlier singles, maybe even going back to my second album, I was using paintings from, maybe, the 1600’s and one of the other pieces that came just before “The Silence is Deafening,” “Over for You,” was a painting of Noah’s Ark. That type of art has such a historical connection, and the style is perfect for the music I create.
Great art can certainly inspire great music. Queen famously used the painting “The Fairy Fella’s Master Stroke” by Richard Dadd in the song of the same name on Queen II. Hieronymous Bosch, too, with his wonderful paintings of monsters and demons, etc., is highly inspiring.
Sofia: I took some flak for using a Gustave Doré painting called ‘Death on a Pale Horse’ for my single “The Summoning.” I had no idea that Emperor (the Norwegian black metal band) had used the same art for their debut EP. Then people on the internet were coming after me for that, but the artwork belonged to Doré as a creator, and art is there to be enjoyed. I felt it was a perfect reflection of the music of that song.
All the music created by Sofia comes from her fictional universe. Each song has a character developing within this universe. We asked whether Sofia visualises that world and whether she sees the world that her characters exist within as stories.
Sofia: I am a very visual person, hence the art that I choose for the singles, previous albums, and eventually for the upcoming album. I often start with a visual conception and the whole universe is kind of based around the ‘dark souls’ style aesthetically. It also draws inspiration from the ‘The Witcher’ series and the music. I really like the soundtrack for that. So visually, it is in my head and it is a strange mish-mash between medieval fantasy and Victorian steampunk. So, it is a unique world that exists in a microcosm of its own. It is not connected to anything real; it is just a fictional universe where I take elements from other worlds that I feel are aesthetically on-point with the music I make, and they blend into the world I create.
Sofia was a military child, so maybe the travelling and the lifestyle that came with being a military child meant she became a fan of reading and fantasy?
Sofia: I think a lot of it may come from the fact that I never felt I belonged anywhere physically, so music, books and video games all became part of the world I inhabited wherever I went. I stayed in Hawaii the longest, for 15 years, then I moved to Florida for college for 4 years. Now I straddle Maryland and Virginia, as I am at law school in Virginia. I come to work in the summer and work remotely, so I have been all over the place and never developed a specific attachment to one place. Creating the fantasy world in my music, that became the world I carry with me.
“The Silence is Deafening” is a relationship song. It’s all about the silence from the other person when you are trying to make the relationship work but are met with nothing from the other side. How does that one fit into the world Sofia is creating?
Sofia: It is from the perspective of the main character. His lover feels that he is growing distant from her because of the internal struggles he is facing. He seems not to be putting the effort into the relationship, in her opinion. So he distances himself and she is unsure of what has happened or what she did and it may not even be about her. It is more about the issues he is dealing with on the inside but is not ready to put to her. Their relationship blows up for a time because they can’t communicate and talk through their differences.
When did Sofia start songwriting?
Sofia: I started writing songs when I was around 13 or 14. But I wasn’t recording anything until I was about 18. My earlier lyrics written at that point were a part of me; they were me speaking. But they were all high fantasy and lyrically abstract. My music has changed because I have collaborated with other artists and discovered my style as a songwriter. Now, I feel that I am finally able to take ideas from my head and sort through them in a coherent way to take the listener on a journey. In the early days, I would use more random ideas; my characters are now on a clearer journey that tells my listeners what they are thinking and feeling. I want to connect to the emotions that I now have the capacity to lay out in front of me.
At the magazine, we do love the gothic, the strange and the supernatural. There is a podcast called “Uncanny’ that is good fun to listen to with its tales of ghosts and bigfoot!
Does Sofia also draw on elements of the gothic and supernatural in her lyrics and music?
Sofia: Unusually, I sometimes have dreams that take me into the minds of other people. By that, I mean that I will dream from the perspective of different characters who may be fictional or may be real people that I have met. Sometimes my dreams let me see the world through their eyes while I sleep. It sounds freaky, but that is where I am closest to the paranormal. I wrote a song about this called “Dreamwalker.” I feel this will continue to inform other parts of my songwriting, as I think it is a fantastical thing that fits within my created universe of the gothic and grotesque. I think it is also a beautiful thing, and I will also dream of people who have passed away in my life and I feel that I am still with them. They will be showing me around somewhere. I lost a friend in my first year at college; she had been through school with me and we were very close. But she passed away in 2019, and for the next few weeks I had dreams where she was talking to me and reassuring me that everything was okay and she was happy where she was. So my music does draw on these ideas. Also, even if it sounds creepy, my ideas sometimes stem from random conversations that I have heard or things that I have seen happen. Then abstracted onto myself, it takes on a life of its own.
It’s funny how you can observe things around you and turn them into creative ideas.
Sofia: I’ve been doing that since I was a child. When you are a kid and you mishear words or think you are pronouncing something correctly but you aren’t, you then create a mythology around the word in your head, and I still do that.
It is incredibly impressive how Sofia plays every instrument on her tracks. But what are Sofia’s instruments of choice?
Sofia: I am primarily a guitarist. I had tried to play the piano when I was younger, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get into it. Then later on, when I had a range of song ideas that I couldn’t fit into the context of the band I was currently playing with, I realised I needed to learn the piano properly so that I could continue to make the music I wanted to. I took what I knew about the guitar and translated it to the piano. With guitar, everything is based around chord progression; pick a scale and chord progression. I took that knowledge and taught myself the basic chords and scales on the piano to match up.
“Blood of the Ancients,” the new single, swaps genres from opera to heavy rock and melody. It is a full menu! Is it a marker for the album that is to come?
Sofia: Oh, yes! My music is multi-faceted. I feel like it is boring to write the same song twice. All my music comes from the same place. I heard something that I really liked and then maybe another artist did too; so what happens when I blend the ideas together? I put my twist on things, it is a process of Frankenstein to create something larger than life!
Taking things live would be an impossible challenge. It is musically so complex and symphonic that it would be very difficult to take live, not to mention how Sofia plays all the instruments!
Sofia: I don’t intend to take things live; I have no plans. Unless it is an acoustic, which I could possibly do. I license film contracts and so forth to make my money; I did not write these with the intention of going on the road. The plan is that it could fit into a videogame-style context. That is the plan.
Sofia has already composed for two short films and her work seems ideally suited for the world of graphic adventures and so forth.
Sofia: With the director of one of the short films that I did the music for, he and I have been talking about making short films and music videos that take place in the world of Exiled Hope, so maybe my music can move even more visually.
And the closing question is: What was the last album Sofia listened to?
Sofia: I am a huge fan of Avantasia, so I was listening to an album by them, “The Wicked Symphony,” while working out this morning! I find them inspiring; I draw from and learn from them; their music is nuanced and really interesting.
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You can stream music from Exiled Hope here.
Also available via Bandcamp here
By Mark C. Chambers
and
Lorraine Foley
