After the semi-mythical exploding sound-system incident, which wiped out unverifiable numbers of the audience at the last known Forty Thieves Orkestar concert, back in 2012, the band went deep underground.
Although blame is hard to attach following the complete destruction by fire of all police records of the event, it is rumoured that a relative of Toni 'mincer' Concescau (a notorious mafia hit-man believed to have disappeared at that time) is pursuing a personal vendetta against any surviving Thieves.
According to the personal diaries of a journalist believed to have been charged with tracking them down (doing a piece for the Rolling Stone Balkan department), there are various pieces of unreliable circumstantial evidence linking some or all members to an unsuccessful bank heist in St.Petersburg, a dubious ashram scandal in Rishikesh, a failed siege of the Romanian state recording studios and various other unlikely events. This journalist has since fallen down an elevator shaft in Odessa so it is hard to corroborate any of his sources.
According to an Interpol agent assigned to investigate these and other matters, three surviving 'thieves' found themselves held at gun point by a psychotic fan demanding a third album, in a back-stage hell-hole in Sarejevo. After lengthy persuasion involving various blunt and badly out-of-tune instruments, they were escorted to Istanbul where recording started at the infamous Black Sea Basement studios. Little is known of this process but several prominent musicians were taken hostage around this time only to reappear a couple of days later with no memory of anything from their recent past.
Leaked masters were found on dark corners of the deep-web and also on cassette tapes in a street market in Azerbaijan. There is no knowing if the band will ever make it back on to the stage again but this album offers a timely reminder of what could have been.