Popularity or "marketability" weren't really part of the equation when we started the music endeavor of Pentakill.
The real reason was that we had a few metalheads on our music/sound team that were dying to make some metal. (Kyugene(Eugene), Protoshredanoid(Jason) and I, to be specific. The skins had been out for a while, we thought "wouldn't it be fun to make a few Pentakill songs and put them out, just for sh*ts and giggles", and we started it as a fun weekend project. Because we could play the instrumental parts and produce all the songs ourselves, we knew that we could probably get it done without having to ask for any budgets.
Eventually, we just kept having new ideas for cool songs, so it turned from "let's make 2 or 3 songs" to "lets... kinda make an album?" -- we got the songs to a pretty finished place pretty soon.
I remember us reaching out to Jorn Lande ZP Theart (I remember that when I called Jorn on the phone, he was currently on the roof of his cottage in the Norwegian woods, fixing a leak or something. It was snowing and all. I figured that he indeed is the high lord of metal) -- both were just super cool and said "hell yeah lets do it!" And then I remember cutting all the drum recordings over the Christmas break. :P I started mixing the songs soon after, getting vocals in, etc.
Few months later, people at Riot started hearing some of the songs, and League and Riot were kind enough to go "you know what, let's make this a proper thing", and they decided that they would help us with a proper publishing plan for the album and even update the skins to give us some support.
Really, we were just lucky that we were allowed to make the Pentakill album. :P I think the success of it made the second possible, where a new skin and even a music video became part of the direction.
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