Track By Tracks: Our Common Sense - Harbinger Of Calamity (2021)

Our album contains two times five tracks. The first five are brand new songs, the last five were released three years ago, only in Belgium.

1. Slow Crush

2. Abyss

3. Harbinger Of Calamity

4. Icarus Complex

5. Hammer Of Witches

6. Medusa

7. Inhale...

8. Take The Shot

9. ...Exhale

10. Sorrow

Due to the chronology of the songs being written, the first five songs are in fact an answer on the last five. So I’ll start to explain number 6 to 10 to follow my explanation with 1 to 5.

The first EP ‘Mankind’s Worst To Know’ (Songs 6-10) tells the story of a person who feels left out due to the circumstances he lives in. Everything he has ever done, made an impact on his surroundings. People see him as he is, due to his actions. He never followed the line. This vision is difficult to change and is set in stone (cfr. Medusa’s gaze). He want’s to break the cycle and the way people see him by trying to convince there’s other possibilities than walking the line. He wants to take action and takes a deep breath (Inhale...). Filled with hatred he takes the shot, and in a moment he knows the consequences of his deeds whilst he exhales. His deeds won’t change how people see him, in matter of fact it only ads to the perception of the people around him which is represented in ‘...Exhale’ by ‘I’m cast to stone’. We added a speech by Martin Luther King to this song because of the message it brings. Violence is never an answer, we have to dig to the core. Educating people at a young age. With this in mind we wrote sorrow as the last song of the EP. Our actions haven’t change a thing, which only led to sorrow.

This ending point is where the five new songs kick in. Slow crush tells the story of the crushing stress someone perceives after failing. This is set after sorrow. Feeling powerless, and only to experience the power of someone or something crushing down on you.

‘Let me knock the door of my own demise Drain my lifeless soul through my blank and bleeding eyes Tell me fondly this soon be over And let me pray to the ones I once despised’

This verse shows that the pressure makes us give in, and give up on everything we fought for. We know it’s the only thing we can do to make it stop. Even if it means we have to agree with someone or something we hated.

These circumstances lead us to our abyss. Black, dark, with no sign of hope. Lost in a maze of lies that can be told by someone, or the lies we told ourselves and tried to believe. Because it was the only thing that kept our hopes alive. By saying ‘Let the darkness devour my soul’ at the end we agree to abandon all hope and let us be consumed by whatever is eating us from the inside.

This gets us to the title track ‘Harbinger Of Calamity’. Everything that happened before as I told, was the harbinger of calamity. We saw it coming, yet we couldn’t do anything about it. The tone of the song is dark, depressing, and in a matter of fact, we now know it was us all along. We are the ones who is accountable for our deeds. The deeds that led us to this darkness. We were the harbinger of calamity from the beginning.

With this in mind, we acted way above our standards. We took the shot, knowing now we weren’t capable. But at the time we suffered from megalomania. We were overambitious, which led to backlash. This term is know as Icarus Complex in psychoanalysis. This song was written in the perspective of someone that sees as we acted, and decided to keep their distance. Knowing damn well it would end in tears. That’s why they tell us to embrace our fall.

This leads us to the tenth and final song ‘Hammer of Witches’. This book was written by a catholic clergyman to hunt down witches in 1486. Of course our album has nothing to do with hunting witchcraft, but the book was also written because of the criminal status witches got that time. We see ourselves as a metaphor for this criminal status. We took a shot to counter the believes that were cast to stone. We didn’t follow the footsteps that were laid out before us. We know our consequences, we had our sorrow, we dealt with the stress slowly crushing down on us tearing away. Our journey made us who we are, we went to rock bottom, and we agree to be prosecuted due to our deeds.

‘Well to that, I say, burn us alive.’