Track By Track: Alms Of The Giant - Meet The Abyss (2016)

We are Alms Of The Giant, a Mathcore band with a Post Rock/Progressive influence. Our first record “Meet The Abyss” is a small attempt to describe the noise perceived in our lives. Born and raised into the shades of northern Italy, we started the band in 2012, but only after reaching a stable line-up we managed to record our first EP. Our name is inspired by a famous philosophical motto, the metaphor of “ dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants ” which expresses the meaning of "discovering truth by building on previous discoveries". We wanted to thank every single person who had a role in developing this record, so we made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2U2KXKmKRQI We are: Federico (guitar), Marco (voice), Fabio (bass), Luca (guitar), Fulvio (drums).

1. Meet The Abyss:

We often use this track as opening theme for our shows, in this track we used a sample taken from the first season of True Detective, one of our favorite TV-series, where one of the main characters gives his personal opinion about religion. This track was realized with the help of our friend Luca Fumagalli.

2. Marble Thoughts:

We wanted to start the record with a groovy song. In this song we talk about white lies, and how they can be dangerous if you grow up without developing a sane sense of doubt, because you cannot simply accept everything someone tells you to do without asking yourself if you are doing the right thing or if they are using you for other purposes. The sense of doubt opens your mind and helps you to understand the real nature of problems.

3. New Kaledonia:

This track describes metaphorically the hypocrisies of our country, where the mafia hides dangerous and toxic waste under the soil of our crops, making profit from it and intoxicating us with polluted goods. We also criticize the weight of catholicism in our society which has lead to the creation of legions of believers, not to intend only in a religious meaning, waiting for someone (Jesus? Godot? Dr. Manhattan?) that will solve magically all the social and political problems of this country, but we are pretty sure that it's not going to happen. In fact we agree with one of the last statement proposed by Mario Monicelli, one of the greatest film director of our country: “Hope is a trap. It’s something vile invented by those in command.”.

4. Feel Lost:

In the last track of this record we decided to put a speech taken from Cloud Atlas, one of our favorite movies, where one of the character gives his opinion about life and reincarnation. The purpose of this song is to describe the feeling of disillusion created when you start doubting the existance of god and the classical idealization of catholic afterlife exposed in the images of heaven and hell. We weren't able to sample the speech directly from the film so it was recorded by Carlotta Limonta,our singer's vocal coach. We would like to thank all our friends for all the support they gave us, without you we are nothing.