Track By Tracks: Sublation - The Path To Bedlam (2022)
1. The Sectioning:
This is an homage to my favorite album trope: Albums that start with rain. Black Sabbath by
Black Sabbath, and In Hell Is Where She Waits for Me by The Black Dahlia Murder were
obvious templates. Compositionally I was trying to write something that sounds like it would fit
on a Dimmu album in the 2000s.
2. Trepanning of the Evangelics:
We wanted to start off with a bang, so this is one of the fastest and most intricate songs on the
album, and it features faster vocal flows than I’ve ever attempted before. The lyrics are about an
alternate timeline where religious individuals are considered insane and are lobotomized to
“cure” them of the ailment of faith. It’s angry, it’s relentless, and it has the hardest guitar solo
I’ve ever written on it.
3. Let the Fire Burn:
Let the Fire Burn is about academia’s history of acquiring human remains in unethical ways. It’s
a midtempo banger with a beautiful acoustic guitar solo provided by a longtime friend of the
band, John Norcross of Coffin Dust.
4. Hypnotic Regression:
Hypnotic regression is about a hypnotic regression therapy session that awakens both a literal
and figurative demon of the patient’s (played by Rocco Minichiello of Release the Blackness)
past. The song is fast, brutal, and overall exhausting to play.
4. Black Monday:
This whole song can be summed up by the prechorus line: “Capital will be your grave, on debted
land I provide”. Dominik Winter of the incredible post-black metal band Frigoris reads the Karl
Marx passage in German during the breakdown. It’s the anti-capitalist hit (can there be hits under
capitalism?) of 2022!
5. The Alchemist:
The Alchemist is a perfect distillation of us as a band. The music was written by both of us
equally and lyrically it’s imbued with some of my favorite things; William Blake, Contractualist
ethical theory, a third thing. It’s got riffs, it’s got solos, and it has bass bombs like it’s still 2010.
6. Haunted Shores:
This song is a perfect platform for Danny to let loose on the drums. The pre-chorus drum
sections are chaotic and right after the guitar solo, there’s a drum solo blazing against massive
chords and high shrieks. It’s about losing your memory when your memories are all you have
left. Fun stuff.
7. Evoked Through Obsidian:
This song is about John Dee and Edward Kelley’s sex magic ritual that broke their partnership.
To learn the angelic language, Kelley convinced Dee to perform a ritual where they’d have sex
with each other's spouses. I really wanted to take part in the age-old metal tradition of writing
metal lyrics about cum: “In you my seed must grow, Ingest what stains the throne”.
8.Eulogy:
This song is about not being able to watch anymore as someone actively takes attempts on their
life while the medical system fails to help them. It’s about Eulogizing someone you love while
they are alive. There’s hatred, there’s sorrow, and there’s a slam section.
9. I Will Show You Fear In a Handful of Dust:
The final track is a heavy epic about the multiple suicide attempts of Osamu Dazai. The lyrics
focus on how ideation and action become a cyclical trap of obsession. These themes are mirrored
in the composition which takes musical motifs and repeats them in varying contexts and time
signatures.
No hay comentarios