Track By Tracks: Symphony Of Heaven - Maniacal Entropik Discordium (2021)

First I want to say thank you for the opportunity to talk about this release in depth. There is a lot of meaning to these songs and the full album overall. The album talks about loss, grief, suffering and anger in your life, experienced through the worst events you have ever experienced. 

1. Soul Retch:

"This track is more of a first person experience for me. It references a time I was so distraught I felt like I was retching out my soul instead of the contents of my stomach. So in a way it's a song about throwing up from anger and torment of the spirit."

2. Light Upon the Pillars:

"On my front porch, we have 4 white columns that we wrap in Christmas lights for the winter. One night I was sitting there in soul crushing agony, and I looked out at those lights. And in those lights I saw all the happy times of life and the beauty of them. I compared that to how I was feeling and what was happening in my life then, and it made the pain hurt that much more. So when I wrote the words "burned into my mind's eyes", I meant it. To this day I can still feel and see that moment."

3. To Gaze Upon Destruction:

"This song has reference to a specific event in my life, but can really be applied to anyone who has gone through a traumatic event. Also what I like to do is use double meanings whenever I can in clever ways. So to gaze upon destruction in one way is a horrifying thing. But in another way I long to see God destroy that thing so there can be peace, so that is the other way to "Gaze Upon Destruction."

4. Entropy:

"Interesting thing, this track's title was the original name of the Album until very late in the process. In Physics, Entropy is the term used for the loss of energy from a system. So to abstract that out to the spiritual and emotional parts of life, we get an idea. Imagine a fire; the things in the fire are ablaze, at the same time burning, and at the same time losing a part of itself to the world. So it was a song about that idea, being run down and wasting away from the things that have happened."   

     

5. Dead Winter Fields:

        

"This song has 2 mental pictures associated with it. That Winter I began writing for this album was especially cold and icy. Winter and snow has a beautiful yet haunting quality to it. Snow is white and clean, yet it comes during a time of death and no life, a true paradox. The other mental picture I saw was of a dark loft. Up in the loft, in a dark corner, was a box covered in dust. Inside that box was everything I wanted to bury and never see again or deal with. I think everyone has that box in the attic, where they place things that are too much to deal with in life. Kinda like Edgar Allen Poe's the Telltale Heart, it haunts us the whole time no matter what we try and do, it follows us like a ghost out of a Charles Dickens Novel."  

         

6. The Darkest Nights:

            

"This refers to a night I was on the front porch by myself in the summer time, alone and crying. I didn't think I could possibly keep going on with how life was going. It was warm, and I just remember lying down on the ground on the concrete and staring at the full moon. The lights from people's houses in the distance were dancing back and forth through the trees as well. The type of night you don't forget."

          

7. The Grieving:   

           

"This is the oldest track on the album as far as music goes, with the main chord progression originating in March of 2018. It follows on from other ideas expressed in the other songs so far. One overarching mental image I have is from a cold, rainy winter night. A traumatic event had happened and I drove to my parent’s house. I stood out in the rain and embraced my father, just crying my eyes out. They have a light pole in their front yard and I remember it's almost surreal look it had, as I stood there in the cold rain clinging to my dad for comfort." 

         

8. The Arch of Time:

             

"This song is more of a Theological study of Man's life on this earth, with touches of self-reflection for my own life. The Arch of Time refers to the idea and feeling of how the events God has ordained and allowed to happen, are as far above our searching out as is the Arch of the Sky. That Arch stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, and then goes out of sight, so how can we know what will happen, or truly understand what has come before?"

         

9. The Verge of Annihilation:

           

"We approach now the top of the mountain, so to speak, of the culmination of events that had been happening over a month’s long time period. Just when you thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, they get exponentially worse. Things are fixing to blow apart like a pressure cooker and explode." 

       

10. Obtaining Tranquility:

            

"The lyrics for this song were written primarily by ASAPH, who himself had had plenty of traumatic events happen to identify with the previous lyrics that I had written. This is truly the finish line of the album. You are standing at the end, feeling as though your next step is off the edge and it will be over. But then at the last second God steps in, and in His Providence He saves your life in a way you never thought could happen. Interesting footnote to the Choir section of this song. Those words and their melody came to me one night as I was walking around at work, the entire thing, and I had to run back to where I could record them on my phone so I wouldn't forget. Also my mother is within the Choir of voices, the first and last time she was able to be on a Symphony Of Heaven track, as she passed soon before this album released. So this album has so many meanings to me in so many ways."