Track By Tracks: Hunter Omega - Lake Of Death (2026)

1. Ghost of Anarchy:

The lyrics for this started with sounds that fit the riffs and the feel of the song. I think I heard "unleashed into the night" and "sacrifice your name" in my brain, and I had to mold an entire story around those two sentences that didn't make sense. A vision started forming in my head about a creature locked up in a tower. In hindsight, maybe it was inspired by Lovecraft's "The Outsider", maybe by Alice Cooper's "Former Lee Warmer", maybe both.

2. Lake of Death:

I wanted to write about my favourite cemetery in Gent (de Westerbegraafplaats). It is so gothic; if this doesn't inspire a dark wave or metal band singer, you're in the wrong genre. The protagonist follows a cat to the grave of a loved one, and then sleeps on the tombstone. I took the first line from a poem by Amy Lowell ("The Garden") and everything else came to me. The chorus is really about mourning: you can no longer feel the warmth of a simple embrace. The rest of your life will feel cold like the winter season.

3. Knight of the Black Rose part 3:

This one is simple. I started retelling the story of Lord Soth, the deathknight from the Dragonlance book series two albums ago (if you're interested, this is a fantasy series that started in the 80s, written by the duo Weiss and Hickman). This is the finale. This is about how his castle is cursed and burned, and for the rest of his life, the banshees will remind him of what he's done. How he's plotting for revenge and goes completely insane. The end is a crazy man's explanation of why he could kill his son, and I think it's every parent's struggle at the same time: usually parents don't want their children to make the same mistakes they made. Which is not a bad thing, but we should still accept that every human is different and has feelings and ambitions of their own.

4. FAFO:

I thought an aggressive rock 'n roll song needed aggressive lyrics. I tried to fit the chorus words "fuck around and find out" into the chorus riff and started thinking about what led to this. I am personally literally "not much of a fighter," and if I were to swing, I would actually miss. So the first verse really is what a fight with me would look like: hilarious. So that verse is honestly me: I'm not a big guy, I'm not a fighter, but I speak up. And then I wanted to sing about "talking back," and that triggered the 1958 Elvis song "Trouble" in my head. (The one from the movie Kid Creole.) It's one of my favourite Elvis songs cause it's so brutal and mean. So I started thinking about a lot of rock 'n roll clichés, and that's what I sing about. I was born talking back. I'm bad to the bone. If you're looking for trouble, don't come alone. These are all lines we've been singing for a hundred years. Then in the last bit, I admit I'm so bad at picking fights that I'll probably die. That's the long black limousine we all get to ride at the end of our lives (if we can afford a funeral). Another reference to an Elvis song.

Support independent metal journalism — Visit the official BTC store