Track By Tracks: Ante-Inferno - Fane (2020)

1. Oath:

When writing this song, I would think of the wilderness that surrounds us: the moors and the woods, the bleakness of those places where few human beings would ever tread. I would imagine that in those places was an evil that could never truly be seen, but sensed, especially when alone. In the song, the narrator makes a pact with a black goat that resides in the wood, and lives forever as a result. Robert Eggers’ film, “The Witch”, resided in my head as I penned the words.

2. Passing:

The song concerns the haunting of a young boy, on the brink of death, by a demon that never speaks a word but merely watches. Years later, when the boy grows older, the demon returns. The man knows of the eternal torment that awaits him. It is unavoidable. And still the demon never speaks. Inspired in part by Marlowe’s “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”.

3. Return:

The actions of our ancestors reverberate around us, always. To stand amidst the emptiness of the universe and feel the density of time passing through you, is a beautiful thing. What happened there, in days become old? Only the trees, the sky and the soil remember. We can but glimpse into the past; one can never stare headlong into that abyss.

4. Worship:

The ending of the world. Civilisation gone. The sun about to die. Only a bleak, urban wasteland to walk amongst eternally. Only dreams of death and the memory of loved ones lost. Of these things, the song relates.

5. Fragments:

We end as the album began – with the idea of selling one’s soul for a portion of that which is denied us in life: intellectual and bodily freedom. But it never ends well. The narrator is rent apart and dragged into the underworld. The ground swallows him, and that is the end of his time on the earth.