Manntra

The Croatian rock band Manntra formed in Umag in 2011 and presented their characteristic blend of traditional Balkan folk and electronic metal with their debut album Horizont the following year. Originally conceived by singer/guitarist Marko Matijević Sekul - the producer of the band's debut album - and bassist Zoltan Lečei, both former members of industrial metal group Omega Lithium, the pair recruited Andrea Kert as drummer and set about channeling some of their influences into their new project Manntra. Their next two albums - Venera (2015) and Meridian (2017) - hit, moving more towards folk and away from some electronic influences, with Meridian helping to expand the band's audience outside Croatia. For their fourth album Oyka! (2019), the band turned to the English language and in the same year were surprisingly announced as one of the 16 participants in Dora 2019, Croatia's national competition to select the Croatian entry for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest. They entertained the audience with their song 'In the Shadows' and finished fourth in the competition. Their subsequent album Monster Mind Consuming was released in 2021 and took on a darker character, with meditations on war and struggle, while on the follow-up album Kreatura they embraced the English language and returned to their industrial metal roots to delve deeper into folklore. Manntra released Endlich! Live in Hamburg in 2022, which included a live album and video from their show in Hamburg. In 2023, the band returned with the new studio album War of the Heathens. The next studio album, Titans, was released in mid-March 2025. The album climbed to number 45 in Germany.