Track By Tracks: Punks Of The Empire - Gehenna (2024)

Here is a little background on us and the band:

I've been in thrash and metal bands all my life. Magni is probably Iceland's most known Pop/rock musician in Iceland, but he grew up listening to everything from Metallica to Pearl Jam, so we have a pretty similar background. We have been doing music together since 2017 and when we started Punks of the Empire we had a simple idea. We blend our influences with open minds, ready for experiments.

I would write a thrash prog death metal song and present it to Magni and he often shreds it down and rearranges it into the more popular model.

I reckon that's how all good production is supposed to happen.

So in short - The songs are driven by the idea of writing death metal songs and then

Magni approaches the songs with his strength and might

Since this is a concept album I'll discuss the storyline in the lyrics

1. Drowned:

Intro to our album and an entrance into our story. The concept is grief and anger. In this case, a very unstable atheist who cannot accept the fact that someone he loves so much is gone and with no afterlife or paradise for them or for you to join them later. I'm trying to imagine the horror of outliving your child or losing your best friend or love helpless and sad. Death is the final goodbye... memories hunt him. The song is different from the others but heavily builds up toward the next song which is a love song...

2. Beneath the Scarlet Sky:

This is our love song. The pure feeling of ownership and jealousy, violence, and fear describe this feeling he thinks is love, and when that is suddenly taken away from him he feels broken alone, and remorseful.

3. Rage:

Not coping with reality and the loss, he tries to get along with everyone around him. Smiling and trying to cover up his sadness with pretentious interest in others, he starts to imagine and daydream about life in a very violent way. He's reliving reality changing it into something else

4. There May be Dragons:

All my life I've been watching television, surfing the internet, and later sucked into social networks reporting hate, suffering and mass killing, and genocides committed by racists, fascists, religious and political forces with very self-centered narcissistic agendas.

5. The Path:

Back to our little love story. Repeating in his head is a song he had with his loved one ... but also the arguments and his insanity. This song though - an anthem of love and loss .. keeps humming in his mind as he crosses the threshold into complete madness.

6. In the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom:

The Valley of Hinnom is in Israel and long before Christ, there was a religious group that worshiped the god Moloch. In Moloch's pit, they would sacrifice their children in the flames.

7. The March of the Tyrants:

The reality: Hopeless mass murdering of civilians in the name of democracy, growing hate towards our fellow humans, sad and horrific violent crimes, and the totalitarian mindset towards our brothers and sisters. His weak mind is affected by populism and he marches into a bloodbath proud to have some purpose in this fucked up reality life can be.

8. Reckoning:

Alone, stripped and beaten. Criminal, a murderer, a racist, judged and sentenced. Promised once again the afterlife, God, and peace of mind if he kneels towards a god. He learns that when all is lost, Death is the only certainty in life.

9. Chorus:

Unfortunately, as we try to move forward we find our civilization in the same trenches again and again. Totalitarian brutality and religious spite toward others are constantly repeating itself. States of capitalism, communism Christianity, Islam, and Judaism continue to commit mass murders and wage wars in the name of peace, freedom, and stability. It is a Chorus of generations in an endless song of love, hate, and war. I thought it suited the concept to have the first demo I recorded of Drowned to rewind the story to its beginning.