When I first spoke with Sofia Frasz and Josh Alexander from Forgotten Shrine back in 2024, “Where Shadows Lie” had literally just landed as their debut single.
There was no debut album yet. Forgotten Shrine itself was still taking shape, with a handful of songs being worked on somewhere behind the scenes while we nerded out about folk metal, video games, soundtracks, storytelling and the way music can make an imaginary world feel completely real. I remember telling them at the end of that conversation that we would have to do it all again when there was more Forgotten Shrine music to talk about.
Two and a half years later, there is a whole bloody album.
Nox Aeterna arrives independently on November 6, and the eleven track record takes many of those loose ideas we were discussing during that first interview and turns them into a journey told across three acts, moving through adventure, darkness, creativity, freedom, revenge, memory and the increasingly difficult battle to hold onto the things that make us feel alive.
Catching up with Sofia again for Crannk genuinely felt like coming full circle. Before we even started recording, she reminded me that ours had been one of the first interviews Forgotten Shrine ever did. Now the experimentation of those early days has developed into something far more confident, and Sofia believes she and Josh learned something important while making the record.
They are capable of considerably more than either originally realised.
Finding The Forgotten Shrine Sound
That confidence did not appear overnight. Sofia explained that one of the biggest changes since “Where Shadows Lie” has simply been learning how she and Josh work together.
They have similar musical backgrounds and influences to the point where she jokes that they can practically read one another’s minds, but the real growth came from developing an actual process. They learned to communicate properly, establish goals, create timelines and understand how each person approaches a song instead of simply throwing ideas into the darkness and hoping something eventually works.
“We’ve really refined our work process and figured out a flow that works for us,” Sofia told me.
When I asked whether there was one song where Forgotten Shrine suddenly understood what the band could be, her answer surprised me.
It was “Terror! At The Ballroom.”
The track is one of the strangest pieces on Nox Aeterna, pulling pop punk attitude into folk metal while surrounding a catchy and playful chorus with the horrific story of the Bal des Ardents. Rather than pushing Forgotten Shrine towards some clearly defined genre boundary, it showed them those boundaries could move.
It was also around that time that the scattered possibilities of singles, EPs and other release ideas finally gave way to one decision. They were making an album, and they were going all in.
The DNA Was Already Inside “Where Shadows Lie”
Going back through our first conversation before speaking with Sofia again, something Josh had said about “Where Shadows Lie” jumped out at me.
He described that original song as a call to arms, inspired by Aragorn leading the Men of the West towards Mordor in The Return of the King, but underneath the fantasy he also saw something more universal. The song was about standing against whatever the forces of darkness might look like in your own life.
Fast forward to Nox Aeterna and Forgotten Shrine have created an entire world around two guardians attempting to save an ancient shrine dedicated to art, creativity and freedom from a darkness slowly consuming everything around it.
The connection seems bloody obvious in hindsight.
Sofia agreed that the DNA of the album was already there. Some pieces existed years before Forgotten Shrine themselves did. “Gods Of War,” for example, was originally going to become an acoustic Exiled Hope song, while Josh had his own collection of ideas waiting for the right home.
What “Where Shadows Lie” established was the foundation. Forgotten Shrine would be rooted in folk metal, but neither Sofia nor Josh wanted that description to become a cage. Symphonic music, extreme metal, pop punk, country, cinematic soundscapes and whatever else served the song could all find a place inside it.
That debut single therefore did more than introduce Forgotten Shrine. It gave them somewhere to build from.
The Real Darkness Is Apathy
The fantasy world of Nox Aeterna initially sounds like something familiar. Two guardians protect a shrine, darkness approaches and the heroes head out to confront it.
Grab a sword, find the evil bastard responsible and save the world.
Except that is not really what is happening here.
The shrine begins losing its power because fewer people are leaving offerings. Art, creativity, stories, imagination and the things people once cared deeply about are gradually being abandoned as life becomes repetitive, exhausting and emotionally empty.
When I asked Sofia whether the real enemy was therefore darkness or apathy, she went straight to the heart of the record.
The darkness represents the apathy.
She pointed towards The NeverEnding Story as an important inspiration, particularly the idea of The Nothing. Forgotten Shrine’s darkness grows because people stop believing, stop imagining, stop creating and eventually stop striving for something beyond the everyday grind in front of them.
That completely changes the guardians’ mission. This is no longer simply good fighting evil. They have to somehow make people care again.
How do you convince somebody to reclaim the parts of themselves they have slowly stopped feeding? How do you fight an enemy that does not arrive with an army, but through exhaustion, routine and the feeling that nothing really matters anyway?
As Sofia put it during our conversation, “You can pick up a sword and slay a dragon, but fighting against apathy and emotional state is much harder.”
That might be the real thesis of Nox Aeterna.
Building Three Acts From Songs That Already Existed
Interestingly, Sofia did not spend years writing some enormous fantasy novel before Forgotten Shrine created the music.
The core story began considerably less dramatically. She was bored in law school one day and wrote two paragraphs.
Those paragraphs became the foundation of Nox Aeterna.
Josh had lore ideas of his own, the two started bouncing concepts backwards and forwards, and the broader story came together remarkably quickly. The real challenge arrived afterwards when they had to look at songs that had sometimes existed independently and decide where each belonged inside that narrative.
They became meticulous about the track listing.
Act I became the call to adventure, with the guardians understanding that something is wrong and setting out believing they can fight it. Act II begins pulling that certainty apart as the darkness becomes more complicated, the characters are forced to confront their own emotions and the apparently simple conflict starts revealing considerably uglier shades of grey.
Act III asks what happens afterwards. The journey has changed the guardians, the immediate battle has ended and now they have to work out what to do with themselves once there is no longer a clearly marked quest sitting in front of them.
That structure matters enormously to Sofia because, like me, she is very much a whole album person.
We actually talked about that in our first interview. Sofia admitted how frustrating the modern singles economy can be for somebody who loves concept records, because songs designed to exist beside one another are constantly being pulled out and consumed separately.
Two years later, she finally gets to hand people the complete journey.
Whimsy Becomes A Weapon
“Terror! At The Ballroom” might initially look like Forgotten Shrine simply having a bit of fun in the middle of all this, but it is considerably more important than that.
The contrast between its bright, catchy character and dark historical subject matter became part of how Sofia and Josh approached the entire album. Sofia compared it to the difference between a dull grey day and walking through strong sunlight. When everything is grey, shadows barely register. Put them beside something bright and suddenly the darkness becomes much sharper.
That idea runs throughout Nox Aeterna. Sometimes Forgotten Shrine deliberately smooth the transition between songs, while elsewhere they want to jar you.
Most importantly, whimsy itself becomes part of how the guardians fight back.
That childlike ability to imagine, play, create and find excitement in things is not some weakness the characters have to grow out of before becoming proper heroes. It is precisely what the darkness is trying to take from them, and their refusal to surrender it becomes an act of resistance.
In a world constantly trying to convince people that adulthood means becoming productive, sensible and permanently exhausted, there is something wonderfully defiant about that.
When Revenge Starts Feeding The Darkness
That battle becomes much messier with “Dearly Departed.”
Musically, it is one of the heaviest pieces on the album, but the darkness inside it is not simply there because Forgotten Shrine decided they needed a death metal track. The characters are angry.
They have watched people abandon the shrine and watched apathy help summon the darkness consuming their world. Eventually that anger becomes revenge, and for a moment retaliation can feel entirely justified.
The problem is that revenge begins transforming them into the very thing they are fighting.
Sofia described it as the danger of becoming what you hate when the desire to hurt somebody back becomes all consuming. The anger may feel cathartic, particularly when directed towards the people apparently contributing to the destruction around you, but the situation is not that simple.
Those people are trapped inside the same world. Their apathy has causes too.
That makes “Dearly Departed” considerably more interesting than a straightforward revenge fantasy because Nox Aeterna refuses to give its heroes the moral high ground forever.
Sometimes the darkness gets in through righteous anger.
From Death Metal Straight Into Country Pop
Then Sofia does something beautifully cruel to the listener.
Immediately after one of the heaviest songs on the record comes “Halo.”
Country pop.
That placement is absolutely intentional. Sofia wanted the end of Act II and beginning of Act III to feel strange. You come out of the violence and emotional weight of “Dearly Departed” and suddenly everything sounds lighter, almost as though victory has arrived and the clouds have disappeared.
Except something still feels wrong.
That emotional whiplash mirrors the characters themselves. The battle may have changed, but simply surviving one confrontation does not magically erase everything that led them there.
It is one of my favourite things about the album because Forgotten Shrine are using genre itself as storytelling. Death metal and country pop should look ridiculous sitting beside one another on paper, yet the uncomfortable transition between them is precisely why it works.
You are supposed to wonder what the hell just happened.
“Loch Lomond” Carries More Than One Goodbye
“Loch Lomond” occupies another interesting space where Sofia’s real life and Forgotten Shrine’s fictional world overlap.
The song has a deeply personal connection for her because the last recording she has of a school friend singing is their version of “Loch Lomond.” Rather than making Sofia retell that story again, I was more interested in how something carrying that sort of real memory can be placed inside a fantasy narrative without either side overwhelming the other.
For Sofia, finding those personal connections is almost instinctive. Whether she is reading, watching a film or playing a game, she naturally searches for something inside the story that reflects what she is experiencing in her own life.
“Loch Lomond” can therefore carry multiple meanings at once. It remembers her friend, but within Nox Aeterna it also becomes a song about leaving home without knowing whether you will ever return.
Placed near the end of Act I, it helps signal that the bright adventure is beginning to darken. “Where Shadows Lie” and “Terror! At The Ballroom” still carry plenty of light, but uncertainty begins creeping in through “Loch Lomond,” deepens through “Gods Of War” and eventually drops the listener properly into the darkness.
That progression was planned carefully.
“Gods Of War” Finally Found Its World
We had to return to gaming eventually.
Sofia and I nerded out pretty hard about games and soundtracks during our first conversation, particularly the way a score can communicate story and atmosphere even when the player is wandering through an enormous open world.
“Gods Of War” makes that connection wonderfully literal.
Sofia originally wrote the song around 2021 with the idea of creating something that might exist as a bard song inside a world like Skyrim. Five years later it has finally found its home inside Forgotten Shrine.
What surprised me was Sofia’s relationship with the finished track.
She admitted that creation itself is normally the part she loves most. Once a song has been released, her brain tends to move immediately towards the next shiny idea. Older material can start feeling disconnected from who she is now because she has already grown beyond the version of herself who recorded it.
“Gods Of War” feels different.
Because the idea had so many years to develop, Sofia can actually return to the finished song without immediately dissecting everything she wishes she had done differently. She is proud of it.
That feeling extends across much of Nox Aeterna. These songs were allowed to marinate, mutate and eventually become something reflective of who Sofia and Josh are now rather than simply who they were when the first riff or lyric appeared.
Making Surrender Sound Reasonable
The title track sits at the emotional centre of the record and is also its longest piece.
Here the darkness stops being something vague lurking over the horizon and begins talking back. A servant of that darkness attempts to convince the guardians that their struggle is pointless.
Stop fighting. Stop exhausting yourselves. Let go.
That voice needed to be persuasive because obvious evil is easy to reject.
The dangerous voice is the one that sounds reasonable.
For Sofia, that part of the story carries a very real connection to her own experience in law school. Around the period when Forgotten Shrine were beginning, she found herself burned out and increasingly disconnected from music. Classes, readings, assignments and everyday responsibility filled the available space until there was barely enough energy left to create anything.
A lot of people know that feeling. You finish work completely drained, come home and instead of doing the thing you once loved, you sit on the couch and doom scroll because even enjoyment suddenly feels like another task requiring energy you no longer have.
That is the voice inside “Nox Aeterna.”
Not some horned demon screaming at you to destroy everything, just the quiet suggestion that maybe you should stop bothering.
Sofia believes resisting that requires first recognising the voice for what it is. You cannot fight something you refuse to acknowledge, and the guardians eventually have to recognise that surrendering creativity and wonder is not neutral.
That surrender is how the darkness wins.
Reforging The Past Without Removing The Human
There are two particularly obvious full circle moments on the album.
“Where Shadows Lie (Reforged)” takes Forgotten Shrine’s first song and rebuilds it to reflect the musicians Sofia and Josh have become since 2024. The arrangement is denser, the instrumentation has more layers and both musicians bring vocal ideas that simply were not possible when they recorded the original.
Sofia said they realised that first version was no longer an entirely accurate representation of where Forgotten Shrine had ended up. Rather than erase it, they decided to show the distance travelled.
“The Parting Glass (Reforged)” does something similar near the other end of the record, and this one carries another connection to our original conversation because Josh actually told me back then that their version of “The Parting Glass” would be one of the next Forgotten Shrine releases.
One thing that has changed dramatically since then is Josh himself as a vocalist. Sofia remembers that when Forgotten Shrine began, he did not particularly want a major vocal role. “The Parting Glass” helped change that, and when the pair returned to the song Josh decided his original verse no longer represented what he could do.
So he did it again.
The interesting part is what they chose not to fix.
Sofia still hears tiny imperfections across the album. Voice cracks. Notes that might not be completely pristine. Human things.
They stayed.
Forgotten Shrine did not want to process every edge out of the performances until the people making the music disappeared underneath the production. Sofia pointed towards AI, the prevalence of identical plugins and the way artists working through similar production chains can gradually start sounding interchangeable.
Perfection can cost identity.
“We’re intentionally going to sound a little bit imperfect,” Sofia told me, because those imperfections remind the listener that real people made this thing.
I fucking love that.
The First Quest Is Finished
By the time Nox Aeterna reaches “End Of The Dream,” the guardians have survived.
That does not mean everything suddenly becomes easy.
The adventure that gave their lives direction is finished and now they have to decide what comes next without some predetermined destiny telling them where to go. There is something beautifully appropriate about that considering Sofia and Josh have spent years reaching exactly the same point.
They had the idea. They became a band, wrote the songs, found the story, built three acts, reforged their beginnings and finally completed the record they once were not even sure would become an album.
Sofia described looking at the finished thing and basically thinking: wow, we actually did that.
So what happens now?
When I asked whether Nox Aeterna closes the book on these guardians or whether we have only completed the first quest, Sofia did not hesitate.
“We’ve only just finished the first quest.”
The shrine keepers will return in some form. Sofia and Josh already have another concept in mind and, despite both intending to spend some time concentrating on their individual projects, they keep finding themselves returning to one another with ideas for what she laughingly called “shrine number two.”
That feels right, because Nox Aeterna is ultimately not about reaching some permanent state where darkness disappears and everything becomes easy.
It is about continuing to care.
Keeping The Shrine Alive
Coming back to Forgotten Shrine two and a half years after that first conversation made this album hit differently for me.
Back then we were talking about music as storytelling, the worlds we disappear into through games and films, the importance of listening to whole albums and what Forgotten Shrine might eventually become.
Now those conversations have become the record.
The shrine is not simply some fantasy building Josh and Sofia invented. It is whatever part of somebody’s life still contains imagination, creativity, excitement and the desire to make something simply because making it matters.
The darkness does not necessarily arrive dramatically either. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion or routine. Sometimes it is anger and revenge. Sometimes it is the seductive idea that giving up would be considerably easier than continuing to care.
And sometimes fighting it might be as simple as picking up the guitar again, writing two paragraphs while bored in law school, disappearing into a video game, putting on an entire bloody album from beginning to end or refusing to believe that growing older means we have to stop being excited by things.
Forgotten Shrine have completed their first quest.
Nox Aeterna is what they brought back from it.
Forgotten Shrine release Nox Aeterna independently on November 6, 2026.
Check out my complete Crannk conversation with Sofia Frasz as we come full circle from “Where Shadows Lie” to the debut album, dive into the darkness and apathy behind Nox Aeterna, the three act structure, “Terror! At The Ballroom,” “Loch Lomond,” “Gods Of War,” “Dearly Departed,” “Halo,” reforging the band’s earliest songs, why human imperfections matter and where the shrine keepers might head on their next quest.
FORGOTTEN SHRINE Is
Josh Alexander — Guitar, Bass, Hurdy Gurdy, Irish Bouzouki, Additional Instruments, Backing Vocals, Composition
Sofia Frasz — Lead Vocals, Guitar, Lyrics, Composition
Connect With FORGOTTEN SHRINE
Facebook: Forgotten Shrine
Instagram: @forgottenshrineband
YouTube: Forgotten Shrine
Spotify: Forgotten Shrine
Apple Music: Forgotten Shrine
