After splitting from Dutch black metal band Malefic Oath, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Marco Kehren founded the Deinonychus project to explore a mournful and dramatic form of dark metal laced with gothic overtones. Starting with 1995's sorrowful The Silence of December, the prolific songwriter unleashed a slew of increasingly eclectic and perplexing exercises in suicidal melancholy, including The Weeping of a Thousand Years (1996), The Ark of Thought (1997), Deinonychus (1999), and Mournument (2001).