Behind The Tracks: Gromadah - Conscience (2021)

The idea of ​​the song (words and music) belongs to the bass-guitarist and vocalist, Oleg Shpakovsky. He wrote the first edition of the song back in 2007, having recorded the instrument parts in a GuitarPro file.

The lyrics of the song are saturated with personal pain on the basis of life's difficulties and attempts to firmly stand on their feet and achieve social success.

Combining night work shifts in intensive care, studying at a medical university and musical activities, the songwriter had to take responsibility and obligations for the family and his newly born son. These difficult circumstances prompted him to throw out the accumulated negativity into the music and lyrics of the song Conscience. Perhaps this creative therapy then saved his life.

The lyrics of the song describe the inner dialogue of a person with his conscience. Conscience addresses a person with the voices of all people who, from early childhood, oppressed, reproached him and forced him to do the “right thing”, in accordance with traditions and the established order in society. Conscience asks him tricky questions and casts doubt on the meaning of his existence in the form in which the person himself wants. The internal conflict of a person endlessly tortures him and leads him to collapse.

As conceived by the author, a person dies. But it is not completely clear whether he dies, loses his mind, or goes into another state, having lost his former personality.

The musical component is inspired by listening to the music of Protest The Hero. And the poetic style of the lyrics is sustained in the spirit of the author's favorite underground rock group, which in the post-Soviet space is known as DDT. The final part of the track was inspired by the then fashionable heavy nu-metal bands. The author wanted to show the most depressed state of a person who is under pressure from society and can barely cope with the elementary duties necessary to ensure life. So in the second half of the track, the music becomes calm and ambient, as if demonstrating by this that a person has reached the limit in which he does not care about anything, not even his own life. And after that the darkest heavy final part of the composition sounds. This part is designed to convey the mental anguish of a person dying under the incredible pressure of society. Symbolically, this state is experienced by any person in his life, when, with experience, he moves from a state of childish joy and admiration for life to a state of persistent resistance to life's challenges.

The first composer's edition plunged the musicians into bewilderment. The guitarist, Dmitry Chernichenko and the band's drummer Vitaly Beletsky did not understand how to play it. The musicians of the Gromadah decided to jointly edit complex parts so that it would be technically possible to play them live.

And after a couple of years, this was achieved. The song was rehearsed and played live several times.

In 2011, the song was recorded for the first time in the studio, but the final version did not satisfy the group. And this song was gathering dust in a box until 2020. Then it was rethought through the prism of the accumulated musical experience, reworked and recorded at NRQ's studio with the professional assistance of a recording engineer, Nikolas Roy Quemtri.

After that, a friend of the Gromadah, who was imbued with this song, drew an illustration for the cover of the single. The artist tried to depict the conflict heterogeneity of a person, which with the power of a cosmic scale can destroy the personality and distort the external appearance. The song itself has undergone three revisions, like the hero of the same song. And in the end, having gone through creative hardening and grinding with painting, she saw the light and impressed the world with herself.