Set Sail to Mystery is the fourth album of German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Gothic Metal

Gothic metal

Gothic metal or goth metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that combines the aggression of doom metal with the dark melancholy of gothic rock. The music of gothic metal is diverse with bands known to adopt the gothic approach to different styles of heavy metal music...

 band The Vision Bleak

The Vision Bleak

The Vision Bleak is a gothic metal band from Germany formed in 2000, consisting of former Empyrium member Ulf Theodor Schwadorf and former Nox Mortis member Allen B Konstanz. The band's themes are most notably orientated towards horror....

. It was released in April, 2010 in Europe, and in May 2010 in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

.

The song "The Foul Within" is inspired by the 1973 horror film The Exorcist

The Exorcist (film)

The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...

. Other tracks were inspired by the poetry of Lord Byron and Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

 and texts by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

 and Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

. "I Dined with the Swans" references the German serial killer Peter Kürten

Peter Kürten

Peter Kürten was a German serial killer dubbed The Vampire of Düsseldorf by the contemporary media. He committed a series of sex crimes, assaults and murders against adults and children, most notoriously from February to November 1929 in Düsseldorf.-Early life:Kürten was born into a...

, dubbed the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" in the 1920s.

Reviews

The German Sonic Seducer lauded the album's mix of hardness and atmosphere and noted the theatrical style that is typical of The Vision Bleak.

Track listing

1. "A Curse of the Grandest Kind" – 3:55
2. "Descend into Maelstrom" – 5:26
3. "I Dined with the Swans" – 4:20
4. "A Romance with the Grave" – 5:50
5. "The Outsider" – 5:11
6. "Mother Nothingness (The Triumph of Ubbo Sathla)" – 8:11
7. "The Foul Within" – 5:59
8. "He who Paints the Black of Night" – 5:54

Bonus CD

1. "I Dined with the Swans" (with Niklas Kvarforth)
2. "By the Misery of Fate he was Haunted" (Master's Hammer cover)
3. "Descend into Maelstrom" (classical version)
4. "Mother Nothingness" (classical version)
5. "The foul within" (classical version)
6. "I Dined with the Swans" (piano version)
7. "A Farewell at Sea" (classical version)