Track By Tracks: MEDUSIAN - Library (2025)
1. Facestealer:
Starting out the EP in a very dark tone, Facestealer is the story of a character who survives an attack by a creature that steals the faces of its victims. The story actually begins long after the attack and speaks more to the feeling of what cost comes even when the person has survived. The opening lyrics of “every night I’m abducted in my dreams” is a reference to recurring nightmares. Later discussing the state the character is in with lines like “I remain as a shadow of what was, bastard son of severed ties and a fate that was undone”. Ultimately, the character commits to killing the creature in vengeance and rage, and in the end, finding their suffering remains the same, the nightmares do not end, they are fundamentally broken even after the death of the creature.
The song is rather self-explanatory in its themes of survival, the cost of moving on in life, the idea of events that fundamentally draw a line in a person’s life, and that person’s life can only be viewed as before and after that event. It’s the part of the horror movie you don’t see when the cameras shut off and the final girl goes home after all her friends had been butchered in front of her.
2. Bull of Crete:
A short summary of the myth of the Minotaur; The king of Crete, Minos, was required to sacrifice his biggest bull to Poseidon. He tries to keep his bull and sacrifice a lesser one. In Greek mythology, this is usually considered a really bad idea but you know how that goes. Poseidon curses not Minos, but his wife, Pasiphae. She is to fall deeply in love with the bull he chose not to sacrifice. The child of Pasiphae and the bull is Asterion, the Minotaur.
Bull of Crete was a fun song lyrically and vocally because I generally tried to change how I did my vocals depending on what character was speaking. Mid-range normal screams in the beginning are the narrator, low growls and clean singing is the Minotaur, and high screams are King Minos. Our guest vocalist, Mina, sings for Pasiphae. Lyrically we tell the story from the perspective of Asterion and Pasiphae, victims caught in the middle of the squabbles of arrogant kings and vengeful gods.
3. Bottom of the Well:
This song is a long metaphor for the darkness of the human heart, and the fear that there truly is no end to hate or darkness. Maybe it’s in everybody, maybe it’s just in me, or maybe it’s not like that at all, but can you ever know without risking falling victim to it?
The story tells of a man who sets out to find the bottom of the well in his village. The entire set of lyrics expresses what he’s thinking and experiencing, feeling there is more to the well that he’s exploring. I also wrote the chorus to sound like something someone would sing to themselves when they’re doing something, not thinking about it.
I did add one touch to the Bottom of the Well I want to emphasize, in the verses, if you hear a whisper in the background, that is the Well convincing him to think that way. “I trust you”, and “I’d rather die here”, are thoughts that are pushing him forward, the well, the darkness of his heart, WANTS him to continue. With this in mind, you can find where the character’s mind is in the beginning, and how it changes, with the biggest changes being the thoughts he’s compelled to think by the Well.
In the end, he finds he would rather just stay down there, he’s committed to the hate and darkness inside of him. He learns that he’s hated everyone he has ever known, and that is fundamentally who he is. The song starts so soft and clean, mysterious and unnerving, then finds its way to the most brutal sections on the EP as the hatred and spite are let loose. The whole song makes you wait and trusts you to be patient, and I feel it hits so much harder thanks to that buildup.
4. Toymaker:
Toymaker is about a man who has committed his entire life to making toys, developing his craft, and chasing his masterpiece. A constant cycle of self-improvement. In the story, he chases his vision of his next work, and upon finishing it, places his latest piece on a shelf to view it with pride. But in order to make space for it, he throws away an old toy he made, locking it away in a box in the attic. The story then shifts to the perspective of the toys that he has thrown away in shame. The chorus is a choir of the toys singing about their abandonment, that they were once pieces of art he was proud of, now something he is ashamed of. Lyrics like “We were called symbols of your cause, but we know we’re just toys in the attic to you now”
As the perspective shifts to the toys, the story moves forward and begins to “diagnose” why the toymaker is ashamed of his old works, and why he cannot accept that they are not perfect. Lyrics like “you don’t hate a single work you do, you hate the image of yourself that’s staring back at you”, and later on in the bridge, “we were born with the anguish that you couldn’t bare, and you dare to call us meaningless”.
The meaning at this point I think is clear, this song is about songwriting, and the struggle an artist goes through to accept their own limitations. It simultaneously expresses the value art has in being an outlet for all negative aspects of life, and therefore, even if the art is flawed it is deeply valuable in that regard alone. I learned a lot from writing this song, and I grew a lot. Most important song on the EP to me personally just from that.
5. Library:
The title track is closing out the EP. I wrote this one last time, and it’s a re-imagining of a song idea I had when I was 19. It feels fitting that after Toymaker, I decided to dig out an old idea, an old toy from the box in the attic. Feels like progress, in a way.
The story tells of a man who has locked himself away in a library in another dimension for his entire life. He has filled the shelves with books he has written himself, his life is writing and rereading his own stories. The chorus lyrics “realm beyond sight, sheltered mind, soul’s refuge, the library” explain the metaphor of the library as a place in the mind where someone hides away from the rest of the world.
Eventually the lyrics “for the first time in ages, I wonder why this place exists, the comfort it has given me, but surely it is more than this” expresses the discovery that this space can serve a greater purpose, the stories can serve a purpose beyond just comforting oneself.
On the bridge, the man in the library decides to open the doors again, wondering if there is a world on the other side that will accept him, unlike the world that he closed the doors to long ago.
In the most important set of lyrics on the EP, it’s revealed the first 4 songs of the record are stories written by the man in the library. These are true expressions of himself and honest representations of who he is that can allow him to connect with the world outside the library.
This concludes the story and the metaphor of my stories that started as fun ideas in my head and found their way into a full EP of music I can use to connect with the world as the truest representation of myself. Thank you for reading, you rule!
No hay comentarios