Track By Tracks: AGATE - MONOCHROME DAYS (2026)

1. UNLIT:

This instrumental track serves as the opening statement of the album. I wanted to translate the image of a dark and cold world, drained of color and fading light, into sound. Built around restrained and dry synth tones, it creates a strange sense of tension through the shifting rhythm in the middle section, leading into the next track.

2. MELTDOWN:

This is a metalcore track that erupts violently out of the lingering tension created by the intro. It expresses the pain and collapse of the mind when the things I had devoted myself to with passion suddenly begin to lose all meaning and value in this dry, lifeless world.

3. PIECRUST:

This song compares the fragility of trust between people to a thin pie crust that can break apart so easily. At the same time, it carries not only grief over that kind of collapse, but also an extreme hatred toward the one who caused it, as if they too should be shattered just as easily. It is one of the more deathcore-leaning tracks on the album.

4. ECHOES OF FOSSILS:

There was once a time in my life when I truly felt happy, radiant, and genuinely alive. This song reflects the state of longing for that time so deeply, wanting to return to it, yet being unable to do so and remaining unable to move even a single step forward in the present. It is also the lead track of the album.

5. BE LIKE THE WHITE:

This song is about disgust toward a system that forces cleanliness and beauty as virtues, while mocking the absurdity and corruption hidden behind it. At the same time, it also reveals self-hatred and bitterness toward my own weakness for being unable to completely reject that system and only managing to submit to it in a passive way. In contrast to its message, it is the most rhythmic and groove-driven track on the album, and it was released in advance as the second single in September 2025.

6. OCTOBER:

This song reflects the atmosphere of a season in which I was physically and emotionally exhausted by many things at once, including parting from someone I loved, beginning again in an unfamiliar environment, and feeling betrayed by something I had once firmly believed in. It is the only openly lyrical and mellow track on the album.

7. THE QUIT:

Like “MELTDOWN,” this song begins from the collapse that comes when the things I devoted myself to reveal themselves as meaningless and worthless. From there, it becomes a declaration that I can no longer endure any of it, and that the ending will come through withdrawal, abandonment, and giving up on everything. The peak of the song comes when its dense triple-meter drive suddenly stops near the end of the bridge, leaving room for about seventeen seconds of explosive screaming that delivers that declaration in full force. It was the first advance single, released in April 2025.

8. CHARRED:

This song expresses a version of myself wandering through this faded world as if covered in ash, scattered by countless losses and pain. Heavy grooves and sharp momentum collide throughout the track, while apocalyptic chord progressions briefly create space to breathe before djent-style riffs rise again. Through that unpredictable structure, I wanted to convey a chaotic and destructive atmosphere as clearly as possible. It is the heaviest track on the album.

9. DOK BAEK(Inner Monologue):

The title “DOK BAEK” is an English transcription of the Korean word 독백, which means “inner monologue.” It literally refers to words spoken to oneself. You could understand the title like this: in a dazzling world enjoyed by others, my thoughts and cries from within this faded world will never truly reach anyone, so I deliver them instead through a monologue to myself. In many ways, this could be seen as the true title track of the album. Within its eight-minute-plus running time, I tried to gather and reorganize the feelings of loss, inner fracture, anger, and determination that appear across the rest of the album, arranging different elements and moods together like blocks being assembled into one structure.

10. 3:58 AM:

This is the closing track of the album, one that carries the lingering aftertaste of everything before it. The song was inspired by a moment when I was unable to sleep because of so many thoughts, and when I happened to check the clock, it read exactly the time that became the title. I wanted to end the album in a relatively calmer way, almost like the background music that plays over a film’s closing credits, which is why I placed this more standard metalcore/alternative metal track at the end.

11. (Hidden track) SNS:

This is a CD-only hidden track that does not appear on the online streaming version. Since it was meant to be hidden, I approached it as a more experimental piece and shaped it in a grindcore style. The mastering was also handled in a rougher and rawer way to match that direction. The title “SNS” stands for “Sex and Stage,” a blunt expression of the desires I felt most deprived of at the time I wrote it. So for now, I chose to keep it hidden.

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