Track By Tracks: Ancine - Death Hymns: Book Of Desolation (2024)

1. Ars Deicidium:

It’s the intro track that samples Vincent Price as the character Prospero from the Movie Masque of Red Death. It perfectly sums up my outlook on life and sets the tone for the bleakness and pessimism that permeates throughout Death Hymns.

2. Barn of the Naked Dead:

I got the name from an alternate title to a movie called “Terror Circus”. The song has nothing to do with that movie though. It's a classic love song/murder ballad about a jealous man who was turned down by the woman he loves so he kills her and buries her in his property. Nothing too original. The twist at the end is she comes to haunt him every night so he can never sleep.

3. Like Shooting Locusts in a Barrel:

A man hears the insects from his cellar talking to him. He feels like he’s been chosen as some sort of prophet and will do anything they ask of him. It's unanswered whether this man is delusional or if he really has been chosen to usher in the era of the locust.

4. Cemetery Without Crosses:

Another title I got from a movie. Musically and story wise it's influenced by Spaghetti Westerns. A man calls upon Cain for the power to track down and kill the man who slaughtered his family.

5. The Undertaking:

Musically, this is a standard blues song but done with minor chords. It’s about a gravedigger who is battling with regret because of his line of work. He promises himself this will be his last job, but he finds something unsettling when he opens up his last casket. The song could be supernatural or it could also be hallucinations brought on by guilt, which is a theme I explore a lot. Is what's happening truly supernatural or is it guilt, depression, isolation, etc?

6. Crowhaven Blues:

And yet another song title I stole from a movie, Crowhaven Farm, that has nothing to do with the movie. This is from the point of view of the last surviving member of a small town that’s been totally decimated by plague.