Track By Tracks: Plague Of Stars - Extinction (2025)

1. Vain:

This song is all about shitty dudes doing shitty things to women. It’s actually based on a crazy week I had a few years ago. It started when I brought my car to the shop and they wanted to charge me over $100 to change a few filters/light bulbs on my car. I told them to just tell me which and I could handle it and the mechanic double-checked with me and then said loudly “Oh, we got an independent one over here!” To which I replied, “Yeah, it’s super hard to change a lightbulb.”🙄🙄 Later that day, I went to the auto parts store to fix said thing and was wearing a sundress. As I was changing them, a car full of dudes pulled up and started cat-calling me and insisting to help me. I felt super uncomfortable to the point where I stopped and went home to finish the job. The next morning I was out in my front garden, in shitty gardening clothes covered in dirt at 8am, and a car drove by, slowed down, and then whipped around on my street just so he could stop in front of my house to cat-call me. All of these took place within less than 24 hours. I was livid and this song came from that and the millions of similar experiences that women deal with every day due to shitty “men.”

2. Gods of Old:

This song is about when Christianity came in and took religious control, forcing people to choose between converting or, in most cases, death. As the song progresses, it tells this story and towards the end it comes full circle with the large populations of people turning away from organized religion today, essentially erasing “their god.” Pretty much summarizes how we as a band feel about organized religion.

3. Extinction:

This song is one of my favorites on the album! This song is a conversation between Mother Nature and mankind, and how even when mankind eventually kills themselves off, the following 100 years will be even more destructive due to all of the unmanned nuclear power stations that will fail, essentially causing nuclear winter. Ultimately though, Mother Nature will reclaim the planet, like she always does, and we will be just a memory. Due to this content, we were able to use many different styles of music to help illustrate this conversation.

4. Shift:

This song is kind of the “Frankenstein’s Monster" of the album. The song was originally over 8 minutes long and we chopped it up and sewed it back together in what you hear now, which turned into almost an angry jazz tune about climate change. I wrote it this past winter (Feb. 2024) when Minnesota had one of the warmest and driest winters on record. We got almost no snow, which is bizarre, and the temperatures were so high that trees were budding and flowers spiking through in February (which doesn’t typically happen in MN until April/May). It was very concerning to me, especially as a gardener/nature lover, so I wrote this song about those feelings and how my garden is what gives me peace and a bit of control in a changing climate.

5. Corporotocracy:

A lot of the musical material had already been written by the time I joined the project. “Corporatocracy” was actually completed and released as a single in between albums, and was originally released with Melissa Ferlaak (previous vocalist) on vocals. We then decided to re-record it with me on vocals and include it on the album. It’s definitely the most “thrashy/power metal” song of the album.

I didn’t write the lyrics, but what I understand is the whole song is about how we are letting corporations control us, and are willing and freely selling and giving away our personal information and freedoms for convenience and “safety.”

6. False Reality:

Simply put, this song is about our addiction to our cell phones and technology. I struggle with this just like everyone else. It hurts our relationships and pulls us from our friends and family.

7. Sentinels:

This song is about trees! Sentinels are guardians and that is how I feel about trees, they guard Mother Nature and take all the nasty gasses and turn them into oxygen for everything. It’s also inspired by all the research and new science coming out about the sentience of trees and plants, which as a crazy plant lady I find fascinating!

8. Akerra/Akelarre:

“Akelarre” is hands down my favorite song on the album! It took me months to write this one and get things just how I wanted them. It translates to “The Witches Sabbath,” or more literally “a diabolical assembly.” It’s essentially a feminist anthem, dedicated to all strong women who live life how they choose to.

Hundreds of years ago, people would accuse women of witchcraft for being strong-willed and going against the norms of the community. They were often referred to as an “Akelarre.” This song is about the misconceptions of these women and how many of them chose death over conversion, as you can hear in the last lines of the song: “Standing before their god with my back turned. Surrendering myself to the flame, to nourish the Mother once again.”

“Akerra” is the male goat that oversees the Akelarre. I chose to name the intro of the album after that, as it oversees the whole album, and then Akalarre tied back into it with that familiar theme.