Track By Tracks: Ciminero - Shadows Digging The Grave (2022)

About the album as a whole

What a ride! It took a lot of effort to get the album finished. Soon after the release of our debut album in late 2019, Paavo joined the band as a bassist and we did pre-production demos for this album in early 2020. Soon after that lockdown things started to happen in Finland, we had our studio booking cancelled and our original drummer left the band. Luckily we found Waltteri to fulfil the task, however, the search lasted about 8-9 months. During that time we rehearsed and tried different drummers. When Waltteri joined the band, we also used the time to polish the details before hitting the studio finally. Now two and a half years later it is such a great joy to release the album and play the songs live!

The lyrics are intertwined with each other. The theme for this album is definitely more psychological and human compared to Subterranean Awakening. We cover traumas and pain, all sprinkled with tarots, and astrological and astronomical references. Somehow the lyrics might find you at your lowest and want to help you rise, to be your best self, especially through healing and self-knowledge. On the other hand, the songs focused on tarots, witchcraft, and astral realms want to give a lighter, more enigmatic point of view that keeps the listener wondering.

1. Invoke Me:

Invoke Me is one of the first songs we wrote for the second album. It was ready with the original lineup but later we came up with a few juicy hooks in the arrangement while preparing for the studio. Lyrically speaking, the song is a motivating hymn.

2. Torment:

Torment tells about oppression and the misery that comes from it. When you know who you are, it's hard to grow up in a cultural reality that doesn´t represent you, feeling oppressed by judgement, hierarchical cults and constrained religion.

3. Ring of Perpetual Insanity:

Ring of Perpetual Insanity was heavily influenced by “Il Sentimento Non è Amore” by Cripple Bastards. It condemns narcissistic people, who build fake relationships and empty love for the sake of pride, people's consensus and to validate insecurity. As a composition it was an interesting challenge, the song has a lot of rhythmic variations and we made it feel cohesive by heavily modifying only two different riffs. The dynamic alterations of the song make it really enjoyable to play live.

4. Yearning and Insurgency from the Empyrean:

The composition is inspired by benevolent witchcraft. The lyrics came out effortlessly! The fast pace of the song made me think of everything astrological, space and some tarot quotes here and there. Astral riot, start!

5. Deep Red Forest:

The idea for this composition started with a clean intro that turns into a similar distorted chord progression. The song has a strong feeling of going a full circle and it's one of the most doom-inspired songs on the album.

Heavy feelings surely resurface with Deep Red Forest. The name surely took inspiration from Dario Argento´s movie, even though there is no correlation. Plus, the colour red wants to symbolise the pain. In a way, this song is a continuation of Ring of Perpetual Insanity. Deceit and hate may come from people close to you.

6. Inner Child:

The first version of Inner Child was significantly faster and was heavily reworked before Waltteri joined the band. Inner child talks about our own subconscious child, our first memories, innocence, playfulness as well as traumas, fears and demons. It is an encouragement to heal and leave the painful past behind.

7. The Leaper:

The theme riff of the song was written somewhere around 2017 so it’s actually older than the band, but for a long time it was just a fun riff to play with an amp set way too loud. We tried quite a bunch of different arrangements around it, but it found its final form in a way that has a lot more heavy metal influences than an average Ciminero song. As this is a “different” Ciminero song, the lyrics are light compared to the rest of the album. They are similar to Invoke Me in a way, with plenty of tarot symbolism, while encouraging people to take a leap of faith. The name is inspired by the tarot card of The Fool, but I didn't want it to be so obvious: it became the leaper.

8. Nettare d'Estasi:

Sometimes finding a good structure for a song takes time as mentioned in "The Leaper", but sometimes all it takes is a lazy weekend morning and a cup of coffee. At that time our guitarist Jukka didn't have an amp at home, so it was quite natural to jam clean chord progressions instead of dealing with low-tuned heavy riffs.

Nettare is such a melancholic song! The lyrics are very deep, in Italian, about the mother and child relationship. As every song is somehow connected to each other in the album, this one is close to Inner Child. More people than you think have a difficult childhood, and the relationship with parents might not be supportive. Growing up in a dysfunctional family surely leaves a mark and this is a common topic when healing the inner child.

Nettare (nectar) is used as a metaphor. It could be interpreted as the water you crave when you are thirsty, so the nectar to reach ecstasy is the mother's love. Everyone needs water to survive, just like love.

9. Underworld Coven:

This song was written at the same time as Invoke Me, with the old lineup. It has an interesting dynamic, much happening with instruments and voice.

The lyrics are pretty cliché, chanting about witches and witchcraft, who doesn’t love that?