Track By Tracks: Murmur - Red Hill (2025)

RED HILL I: THE DEAD:

This song works as the introduction to the album and also as a song itself. The very first ambient track was recorded in the same place where we did the official photoshoot for the album, very close to El Cerro de los Ángeles (a hill that previously bore the name Red Hill - Cerro Rojo). Symbolically, at the beginning of the song, you can hear the sound of the storks that live there today, reminiscent of the gunshots of the Spanish Civil War.

The introduction was the most difficult part to create of the whole album. We had a previous version, but we felt like it wasn't working, so we decided to start over, changing the original tone and the time signature. We are very happy with the final result; it really has the energy to launch Red Hill.

To be honest, this song is one that was composed a long atime go, but we ended up modifying it a lot for the finished version. The first verses are probably the ones we preserved the most from the original idea. In the middle, there is an acoustic regression to let the tune breathe. Here we find that “folk” intention in the album, something we consider mandatory if we are talking about our land and our history. The last part is the most intense and emotional, ending with the same riff as the beginning but in a slower tempo.

Regarding the lyrics, this song is the most mystical one. We could say Red Hill follows a chronological story, and this one takes place in a more ancient time in history. We talk about the passing of time and the different cultures that have witnessed Red Hill: the Roman necropolis, the Muslim heritage, medieval landmarks... There is also a moment where we bring back all this alchemy from Pvtrefactio, our previous work, mentioning the “Serpent River,” which crosses the area. The serpent is a symbol of the sempiternal, the never-ending of things, and the feeling of grief and loss that Red Hill transmits to us is exactly like this; it will never stop.

The final part talks about oblivion, also a central concept in the whole album, all the richness and all the pain that people here seem to have forgotten. This part, in a way, introduces what is about to come in the following song, Part II, when it mentions the common dreads, a real symbol of the Spanish dictatorship that lasted more than 40 years.

RED HILL II: THE EXECUTION:

This is probably the central piece of the album. It has the most accurate historical context of the three, set exactly in November 1937. The Spanish Republic took control of the hill and then called it Red Hill, but the rebel troops would launch a counterattack in the following days. The result was a long list of deaths and casualties. During the events at Red Hill, Republican troops destroyed the monument of Christ at the top of the hill with hammers, rifles, and dynamite. The final look of the damaged sculpture is the image we are using for our merch, on the back of the T-shirts, because of its symbolism and shocking effect. This is a more warlike theme. The riffs and drums are more aggressive; some parts of the bass are even more hardcore, and the choirs have a strong presence throughout the song, adding a feeling of constant agony. This is a song to fire at will, we talk about the uprising, the attacks by foreign troops, the Church and how it collaborated closely with fascism, and also about the abandonment Spain suffered from the rest of the European democracies. There is a big space for a new acoustic part, almost like an elegy, before proceeding to the most epic part of the whole album. We didn’t have the ending clear at all when we were in the studio, and we created the time regression there, in the moment.

We think this is the most elaborate track in terms of postproduction, because we added a lot of elements: choirs, an acoustic part with three different guitar lines, voice material extracted from real documentaries, and one of our favorite moments; the chants in crescendo that can be heard very subtly in the “Christ is dead” part, along with the gunfire. We really enjoyed making this piece in the studio, but it was also one of the most difficult songs we have ever recorded.

RED HILL III: THE CALLING:

This is the longest track we’ve made so far. In this case, we opted for a very doom-inspired introduction, giving the sensation of someone crawling, lost in the forest of Red Hill. This makes sense because the original idea comes from the bassist, who spent a night alone there, surrounded by silence except for the terrifying moment when the temple bells tolled. We were very clear that the beginning had to be a narrative part. Kyle, the drummer, added more rhythm throughout the song to make it more dynamic. In general terms, Red Hill III is the song in which every member added more of their personal touches. Fran bet on more aggressive riffs, closer to black metal classics. On the other hand, Igor really focused on recording all the rhythm guitar parts, as well as some solos and arpeggios, recording them over and over again in search of a very clean sound.

The bass parts were also a bit conflictive as this song has the most experimental lines and they were hard to align with the rest of the instruments. Something similar happened with the vocals; it was a difficult exercise to set every pulse in the right place.

We think this song is very enjoyable because the way it starts and the way it ends are very different, so you have to listen to it many times to catch up with the structure. This time, the lyrics move to a more present moment, and you can feel it in the change of tone after the intro, from C to D. The music starts to sound different, and the point of view also shifts. This is not the first tune we have out of C tonality, but it wasn’t easy adapting a long piece in D, because you can’t use open strings that often.

Towards the end, we again keep the alchemical sense with the lyrics “what is above, so is below.” There are many more curiosities here, for instance, it’s true that the statue of Christ in Cerro de los Ángeles is elevated 666 metres above sea level, and the final mass that closes the album is a real mass celebrated in this temple in modern times. Before this, we can hear Beatriz singing in Latin. We tried it in Spanish previously, as we wanted to include some parts in our mother tongue because of the album’s meaning, but Spanish doesn’t fit well in our lyrics; it’s very complex. So we can almost consider Latin as a mother tongue too, and it’s the representative language of the Catholic Church.