Behind The Tracks: The Human Veil - My Own Hell (Single) (2024)

I’m a big fan of some of the older survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I grew up playing those games on PS1 when I was a kid. Not only were they terrifying but they stuck with me over the years because the sound design and the scores were beautiful. Sometimes they would make you feel sadness or happiness, other times they would make you feel unsettled and uncomfortable. Akira Yamaoka was always a huge inspiration of mine and I used to stay up until daft o’clock in the morning, hoody pulled up around my headphones, messing around with creepy synth sounds to try and replicate what he does. Years later I played ‘PT’ the Silent Hill demo, where the sound design filled me with so much fear. It blew my mind how powerful it was. The addition of ambient noises, foley, etc. In my own hell, I took influence from ‘PT’, using a lot of cinematic sounds, sound fx, and samples to create a journey through the song. If you mute all of the core instruments, it’s like you’re listening to a score from a horror game. It’s full of creepy sounds and Easter eggs. The idea was to have something subliminal sitting with the listener through the entire song that made them feel constantly on edge and unsafe.

We have so much material we’re sitting on but decided that this track warranted aggressive riffs and heavier-hitting breakdowns than our previous material. Adam sent me a demo that he had been working on, which had a completely different feel to it but the main riff was a show-stopper. We decided to use that riff to play about with it and edit parts but in the end, we used the entire riff. The gross ‘Silent Hill-inspired music that I had been working on pieced together perfectly with the riff and the song basically wrote itself. Some restructuring and extra sections later, we had a full instrumental.

The process for writing a song is different every time but when everything comes together within a few hours or the same day, then it’s usually those tracks that are the special ones. Other than ‘8612’ from our Fractures EP, this is the only other song we have ever released that only has heavy vocals with no singing.

When it comes down to it, the lyrics in the song are a metaphor for isolation and self-destruction. The lyrics describe a ritual of self-sacrifice and praying to a God who can’t hear you. A metaphor for being trapped in your own head and crying out for help. I didn’t want to make it a sad song. Instead, a harrowing song that fills you with dread and leaves you feeling doomed.