Photograph, “The Faceless,” taken by me ~2019.

This album was produced during what I am confident was (and continues to be) a very difficult time for myself and many others. I want to first acknowledge that I am wildly fortunate to have been able to express my struggle musically. I owe more than I can articulate to my friends, family, and supporters. Thank you.

May this expression of my terror, sorrow, pain, rage, determination, and hope be a companion to those with whom it resonates. Take care of yourselves and one another. May we all see better days.

The first track, “Alone,” is sparse and stays in a very subdued space. The title reflects how immensely isolated I’ve felt the past year, especially through Autumn and Winter. It features three acoustic guitars: one lead, one rhythm, and one used as simple percussion. I started writing it one Spring evening with an open window during a calming sunset. I could hear my favorite seasonal frogs chirping in a nearby swamp. It was a much welcomed, restorative breath after the Winter. I decided to start the album with this song simply because it felt like a good, soft introduction. This track is a lot cleaner and quieter in production than most of my recent work. My rhythm, however, is still shaky… A metronome, I am not.

The second track, “恐怖 Kǒngbù,” which translates to fear or terror, began as sort of an afterthought. I had completed all the other songs, thinking that the album was done. Upon listening to those together, I realized that something was missing. I remembered that I still had (and have) a lot of frustration, anger, and fear to express. I played three somewhat different drum parts to get a huge, intense percussion section to help convey those feelings. I chose not to follow any traditional song structures and experimented with different meters to see where they would lead. This approach, I think, is reflective of the often chaotic nature of life. Neurosis’ profound influence on me is glaringly obvious on this one. Amusing note: It took two years for me to bother trying a different distortion effect on the output track that provides a tone that’s easier to balance… It’s not as harsh as the one I’d been using, which crackled too much during guitar fades.
The lyrics roughly translate (I hope) to:
Fear paralyzes me, rage consumes me.
Greed, predation, hatred, violence… Is there still hope?
The world is collapsing.

Track three, “Fall,” is a guitar-driven, hard rock song light on vocals. I usually add vocals last, and by the time I’d gotten to them here, I didn’t think there was much room for them. I liked the guitar enough that I decided to mostly keep my mouth shut. It’s a bit of an amalgamation of motifs, feelings, or ideas that I’ve had for decades and that have evolved some over time. I’m very fond of harmonic minor scales and guitar bends. Recycling is good, right…? Amusing note: The structure for this one was loosely based on Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild.”
Lyrics:
How far will we fall?
How far will we fall?
We are tired, let us sleep.

“Catacomb” is a sort of break from the intensity of the previous two songs. The drums actually started from a different idea that I’d scrapped out of frustration. I muted them with rubber and towels, which was something that I hadn’t tried yet. I padded this song with an environmental recording that I’d taken on a quiet morning to capture footsteps and fan drones. I hadn’t tried adding a live piano over other tracks yet either, so I did with this song. I decided to revisit a theme that I’ve had since I think my late teens. This theme and I frequently find our way to each other in the dark (see “Possession” from Nightmare [Crucible 2] and “Mirrors of Shadow” from Abyss). It was inspired by Rachmaninoff.

That concludes, in my mind, the first phase of the album. I’ll write about tracks five through seven in the next post.

Thanks for listening and reading. Take care.

Thoughts