The tales travel further when more hands carry them.

What this is

Blutmärchen is a melodic death metal project that retells the Brothers Grimm in their original adult shape — not the Disney softening, but the version your great-grandmother might have heard by candlelight. Black forests, plague-haunted villages, vows broken under iron crosses, curses that outlive the kings who pronounced them.

Dornröschen as a hundred-year coma whose suitors die on the thorns. Hänsel und Gretel as starving children who learn to kill before they learn to read. Schneewittchen as a queen who eats what she believes is her stepdaughter's heart. Rotkäppchen as the moment a forest stops being a setting and becomes a hunger.

The music is dark symphonic melodic death metal: dual male and female vocals, gothic atmosphere, symphonic choirs, German quote anchors from Grimm and Goethe, disciplined leitmotifs threading the cycle together. It is released free of charge, openly disclosed as AI-assisted, and built on a single editorial principle:

The tale is older than the teller,
and the teller is older than the listener —
and none of them are safe.
And the tale belongs to whoever is willing to
carry it forward truthfully.

The mission is plain: keep the old tales alive, and carry their message forward to the children and youth of today. Not by softening them, but by giving them back the weight they were born with.

Why this letter exists

Folklore was never one teller. The Brothers Grimm collected from hundreds of voices, in kitchens and inns and around fires. What they wrote down was already the sum of countless retellings.

A project whose mission is preservation through retelling cannot, in the end, be only one voice.

So Blutmärchen is opening its doors. If you sing, play, write, paint, conduct, or otherwise make work that could help carry these tales further — and if the spirit of the project resonates with you — there is a place for you here.

Who we are looking for

Vocalists

Harsh male vocalists who can carry the curse, the forest, the fate, the devouring. Growls and screams with melodic control.

Ethereal female vocalists who can carry innocence, memory, sorrow. Soprano or mezzo, classically trained or self-taught; range and emotional honesty matter more than credentials.

Instrumentalists

Lead and rhythm guitarists comfortable in melodic death metal and symphonic metal registers. Bassists with cinematic sense — not just locked to the kick. Drummers with double-bass propulsion and dynamic restraint.

Classical instrumentalists: strings (especially cello and viola), woodwinds, brass, harp.

Folk and period instrumentalists: hurdy-gurdy, nyckelharpa, Glockenspiel, organ, period plucked strings — anything that sounds older than the listener. Pianists and keyboardists who think orchestrally rather than rhythmically.

Choirs and ensembles

Vocal ensembles able to record real choir passages. Latin and German diction welcome; ritual and liturgical experience welcome.

What we offer, plainly

Blutmärchen is distributed free of charge under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. That means right now, no one is making money from the music — including the project itself.

What we can offer is honest:

• Full named credit on every surface the track touches — metadata, streaming credits, release notes, the cover artwork, the website.
• Full ownership of your own performance. Your isolated stem is yours; you can use it on your showreel, in your portfolio, on your own demos. We license the combined work; we don't take ownership of your contribution.
• A high-quality copy of the finished release for your archive.
• A binding, written commitment: if the project ever goes commercial — if a track is ever licensed for sync, film, games, or paid distribution — every named collaborator gets a fair, proportional share of the revenue from that commercial use, negotiated in good faith at the time.

What we will never offer:

• Money up front. Not at this stage. The mission is reach, not revenue.
• "Exposure" as payment. Exposure is not payment.
• Anonymity. Every collaborator is named. The project will not hide who carried the work.

What we ask of you

That you care about the tales — or are willing to.

That you can work within an established editorial direction. The project holds final cut. The mission, the leitmotifs, the German anchors, the visual identity, the sealed canon — these stay locked. Inside that frame, your craft has true room to contribute.

That your work is yours. Original performances, original lyrics, original art. No samples you can't clear, no AI-generated stems passed off as your own. (We use AI; we are clear about it. We will not be unclear about you.)

That you are reachable, in writing, in plain language, when we have questions. And we are reachable to you the same way.

How to reach us

Send a short note that includes:

• Who you are and where you are.
• Why the project resonates with you. (Two sentences are enough; we are not running an interview.)
• A representative sample of your work — a recording, a link, a portfolio, a Bandcamp, a YouTube channel, whatever shows what you do.
• The role you are interested in.
• Your preferred credit name.

Reach us →

We read every message. We reply to every message. Response time is honest: weeks, sometimes months, depending on what we are in the middle of producing. But every door knocked on gets opened eventually.

If your work fits a current need, we will move quickly. If it fits a future need, we will say so and stay in touch. If it doesn't fit, we will tell you that too — directly and respectfully.

The full terms

This letter is the warm, plain-language version. The complete, binding terms — rights, credit, compensation, editorial direction, withdrawal, the collaboration agreement — are in the project'sCollaboration Charter. The Charter is public, signed by the project, and binding on every release that involves a named collaborator.

Read it before you commit to anything. Ask questions before you commit to anything. The doors are open, but they open into a real frame, and you deserve to know the frame before you step through.

One last thing

If you know someone who should see this letter — a vocalist whose voice would carry one of these tales, a violinist who would bleed for a Schneewittchen mirror-theme, a choir whose voices could shape the Hexenchor — pass this on.

The tales travel further when more hands carry them.