Track By Tracks: Fall Of Earth - From The Ashes (2023)

1.Medusa:

Medusa breaks down the Greek lore. Viewing the multiple perspectives of a heartless and jealous Athena, a wicked Poseidon, the oppressors of Medusa, and Medusa herself. To bestow an unjust punishment, and face the consequences of another’s actions. Enough to turn even the purest of hearts.

Our second longest song, and a pounding heavy track, Medusa explores some highly technical musical sections that sound both evil and chaotic, while having some melody that wraps it all together. This track has an ambient intro and a beautiful acoustic section later on that keeps the listener on their toes.

2. The Dead And The Soon To Be:

Some live life to the fullest, while some live life just to die. The clocks always ticking. How wisely do most use that finite time? Is it fulfilling? Did you do something meaningful? The walking dead roam the earth.

Wasting your time means you might as well be dead already.

The instruments for this track are definitely centered around the chorus riff, which is a very simple yet powerful progression. Everything else bloomed from that part to cover many other angles and directions that were made possible. This song utilizes a soft verse and epic bridge which serves as the pinnacle of the track.

3. Block Out The Sun:

Block Out The Sun was written during a seasonal depression with Covid 19. Sick and isolated, Alex did what he does best in a sour mood- Writing music. It started off sad, but slowly his core belief took over, and soon it transformed into an uplifting reminder that when you’re down you can always lean on others to rise up and shine together.

Block out the Sun is both the shortest and most accessible track off this record. It captures a positive uplifting mood, while still having some grit and intensity mixed in. The lyrics and vocal melody were written first, so all the instruments were written to emulate the message of the song and deliver a similar emotion.

4. Path to Self Destruction:

This is definitely a dark and personal track, written about somebody very close to me who continues to suffer from a serious and crippling drug addiction. This song expresses how I felt watching somebody I love throw their life away and turn into somebody I couldn’t even recognize anymore. Drug addiction is a very serious disease, and I hope this song could speak volumes to people who are going through a similar situation. This song could also be seen from an inward perspective of someone’s own addiction.

The opening section of this song was written for drums first, so the other instruments naturally orbited around it. This song contains constant key changes and mood shifts and harnesses anger and intensity while being eerie and fast-paced. Specifically inspired by Death with the motifs and style of riffs we use in this track.

5. Cross Roads:

The events in our lives come with many decisions. Each is an intersection of many multiple roads, and there’s no going back. A leap of faith is all that’s needed, to take control of one's own life, or succumb to its weight. Cross Roads are at every little decision, every commitment, and every resolution.

This is our longest, most progressive track yet. Clocking in at nearly 10 minutes, we designed this song to be an entire experience. This song does ride the idea of being uplifting and positive, but unlike Block out the Sun, it holds a more serious and urgent connotation. This is the first track we have ever faded out, we decided on this ending because we found a closing section that was too epic to stop suddenly, so the song fades away with those feelings it gives you.

6. From the Ashes:

From the Ashes speaks levels on childhood abuse, reclamation, and metamorphosis. Rising from the ashes like a Phoenix, All people are capable of rehabilitation, and recovering from trauma. Neglected and beaten as a child and into early adulthood, the character of this song resists their oppressive parent and chooses to rise above the smoke (uncertainty) and evil of their past.

This track is practically death metal and is incredibly fast and heavy. It jumps into the evil riffs right off the bat without warning. You can’t put the brakes on this song, it just rips all the way through and also contains our first-ever breakdown to finish it off.

7. Shore of War:

War is hell. Shore of War speaks on the historic events of D-Day during world war 2. None of us could imagine the trauma of fighting in a war, and watching our brothers and comrades die before our own eyes. We do our best efforts to detail the experience of such a nightmarish circumstance, both from a soldier's perspective and a societal perspective.

Starting and ending with the use of chromatic music theory, and percussive riffs across all instruments, we feel as if this adds an element of chaos and uncertainty. The underlying tone of the music itself is to emulate impending doom and sheer panic. Yet there is an eb and flow of unique grooves that somewhat makes this feel cohesive.

8.Purgatory:

A recently passed man observes how quickly he is forgotten in the world of the living. With his memory fading from existence and the ones he thought loved him continuing their lives effortlessly, he must wander in a state of limbo. Not being able to accept the harsh truth, the man is left to explore purgatory for eternity without passing on to a heavenly afterlife.

We start off this track with a melancholy bass intro, in a strange time signature of 13/8. The song builds off of this section piece by piece, becoming more full up until the verse where it takes off and comes together. There is an interesting mix of despair and realization within this composition, highlighted by the contrast between sections. I personally think the pinnacle of this song is the first bridge section, where we lay down a heart-pounding, groovy “Gojira” style riff, and eventually bring it back to an alternate chorus to tie all these dynamics together.

9. Into the Woods:

Into the Woods is album 2’s “Fall of Earth”. Touching again on topics of climate change, rising sea levels, increased natural disasters, and extreme weather. The signs of our dying mother. While we are hopeful that as a species we will pull together and fix the wrongs we’ve done on our precious and only home, This doesn’t mean we are in the clear. Although we have made great progress and humanity seems to be on a path where we will survive- Many issues need to be addressed. Actions need to be taken. We must move faster to protect our Mother Earth and its children. “Through the trees, a wind of whispers lost connection to our ears.” We must reconnect to our bond with nature.

With this track being the official ballad off of our sophomore record, we did take an entirely different approach to its song structure. With the exclusion of the intro and outro of this song, we laid out a few solid sections including a definitive chorus, and repeated it a second time to reinforce these moments. There is a melodic, tasteful solo in the middle that acts as a clear separator. This is the same formula that Death would use in most of their discography. As far as the beginning and end of the song go, the intro embraces a soft, mysterious foreshadowing of the epic sequences to follow, using clean ambient guitars, acoustic guitars, and bass accents.

The outro is very similar to the intro but recaptures the section on a lonesome acoustic guitar instead. This ending alone is what made us decide on closing our album with this track.