Track By Tracks: Grey Czar - Euarthropodia (2025)

“Euarthropodia” was started as a concept of a dystopian world, in which a disbalance of surviving creatures leads to the rise of an insect empire. This main idea has built the foundation for the textual and musical work on the album. We tried to sketch an evolution of a world, which falls apart, builds up, and crumbles again, to be built up elsewhere. It shows parallels to a common behaviour of humankind and symbolizes life as an endless circle-like building, trying to balance its disbalance. The whole story is like a fever dream, shifting between science fiction and reality and the possibilities of an exit scenario, or oblivion. We have tried to make sure that this evolution is reflected throughout the arc of the album and are very grateful for the way every piece falls into the right place during the whole journey, to build a consistent, homogenic flow, tying it all together.

Musically, we tried to build up on our main idea and catch a certain vibe that goes along with the contextual level of each part of our story. This led to a mixture of filigree intros and song parts, that stand beside more brutal or intense riffage. One of the main characteristics of our music is the use of polyphonic singing. With “Euarthropodia” we became a bit more melodic overall than on our previous records and we tried to exploit our harmonic possibilities in the multitrack process. We would describe the result as a mix of heavy rock with prog elements and a 70s vibe. Overall, a lot of influences have been processed unconsciously that lead to our specific sound. We never intended to sound like anything specific.

We started writing right after the release of our last record, “Boondoggle” in 2018. Two of our four band members went abroad and we came up with riff-ideas, text wor,k and song titles mainly as a two- or three-piece, which was a new experience and led to a different approach to songwriting for some of the tracks. Also, huge personal changes in life, Covid, and everything else that came up, had an impact on the process till the final release of the album. The whole thing was recorded in our rehearsal room and mixed by our bassist Wolfgang (s’Woifal). We tried to create an intense and dense sound fabric, moving away from the purist approach of our last albums, where the instruments were recorded in the session and only vocals and solo parts were overdubbed. We worked hard on the pace of each part and lost ourselves in endless tracks. It was quite a long way, but “Euarthropodia” finally made its way to the finish line!

Track by Track (Lyrically & Musically)

 

1. Eschaton – 04:04

The first track starts with a distorted synth sound and a delayed bass intro and is mainly straightforward midtempo rock. It marks the beginning of world's end. It transports a vague idea of the exploiting nature of human beings led by envy and greed. It refers to all humans who abuse their power by using their force to take what they want, without thinking about the suffering caused and the resulting consequences. They are riding everything down to the end.

In a way, it also describes a constant inner turmoil inherent in existence in our western civilization. A world in which all our actions have an impact on a global scale.

2. Withered World – 04:20

A pulsing bass introduces a barren soundscape with the beginning guitars and flute synth. A turning point in a dystopian wasteland. A harsh planet where only a few creatures have survived. A few beings survived, breathing caustic air and trying to propagate in a world without a future.

And manifests the rise of “Euarthropodia”, a dystopian world populated by an insect species. The lyrics mainly describe the struggle to survive in a race for resources and soil.

3. Insects Took Over – 04:14

Introduced by a delicate, floating interlude with guitar and piano, the third track manifests the rise of the insect species. The lead guitar sears through the idyll in high frequencies and initiates the insects’ invasion with a thumping marching rhythm. The song creates an image of uncertainty caused by the invasion of a host of small creatures, darkening the sky with shifting forms.

4. Trooping For Euarthropodia – 04:51

As an allusion to trooping the colour of British monarchs, the insects stomp for their glorious hive queens and the whole of Euarthropodia. The seesawing rhythm mimics the interlocking pace of all the various arthropodal species like a dance, an insect walz. The ballroom is a rotten planet.

5. Ballad Of Propellerheads – 04:28

In a moment of relief, the spotlight falls upon the downtrodden leftovers in the shadows, the bizarre propellerheads. Creatures staggering through the skies like sad jesters of yesterworld. Supposed to pollinate, their work is for nought.

6. Queens Of The New World – 03:52

What remains is a scarred planet, a lackluster jewel, that’s stripped of its resources, providing a final bastion for a rising new empire.

7. Nutritional Protocol – 03:47

The planets’ resources wane under the cumulating weight of the arthropodan mass. The queens send out their craftiest gleaner swarms to gather the fleeting remains of sustaining organic mass. But ultimately they can’t sustain their growing population and so their queens have to initiate the nutritional protocol … a cannibalistic law that allows to unleash their hunger upon themselves.

8. Arthrobotic Liberty – 03:44

Those who remained existed from a collective memory of a peaceful, safe environment. And from this memory, an inner need is activated to regain this lost reality. Out of a seemingly hopeless scenario, thoughts blossom that lead them to distant galaxies.

9. Aeon – 04:54

In the end, the planet is left behind, and the insects leave the broken sphere. They are carried out in an ode to space, into a new beginning that closes the circle again.