Track By Tracks: Abstracted - Atma Conflux (2022)

First and foremost, Atma Conflux is a concept album consisting of seven tracks that blend the whole spectrum of musical influences that we carried along for this piece. That being said, the lyrical content is interconnected, bringing lots of esoteric concepts which we found interesting to build lore upon.

Our references for this album, lyrics, embrace concepts from Tibetan Buddhism, Gnosis, Hinduism, and many more, so let's talk a little about the tracks themselves:

1. Introspection: Ego Death:

Introspection is the opening track for the album, which we decided to bring from a more traditional progressive approach. It's a long track that starts with a neat acoustic guitar counterpoint that slowly evolves into a 90's Prog Metal bridge with melodic vocals for the verse.

This one has a catchy chorus influenced by bands such as Evergrey and Ayreon, i'd say. From this point on, the song falls into heavy sections more modern metal oriented, blending a little bit of Death Metal in it that we very much appreciate.

The ending solo was played by the great Levi Dale from the Australian Prog Death band The Ritual Aura, which brought to the table an amazing solo, that we almost fell off our chairs when we heard it!

This part of the concept of the album brings the Nameless Protagonist to a quandary whereas he's deciding to take his own life and is visited by what Buddhism calls "Tulpas" that start to struggle, one to convince him to deliver himself to the death of self and the other one trying to pull him to ascendancy.

2. Wither to Dust:

Wither is an old song we composed circa 2013. We are a bunch of young dudes that fell in love with Tech-Death at the time, but we didn't know exactly how to do it at the time. After revisiting old material for the compositions of the album, we found out that Wither had potential, and we decided to rework it to fit a little more on what we were envisioning for the album. This song maybe will resonate more with the old school metalhead, because it has a thrashy vibe. Straight to the face, sharp, and very fast.

3. A Whisper Into the Void:

Similar to Wither, we composed this song a while back, around the same time. But differently from Wither, when we heard it, we decided that the song was good to go from the moment we heard it.

It's a very interesting song that changes the vibe constantly, starting with a very heavy riff, followed by blast beats, then it goes into a fusion-esque session full of weird chords and such.

There are some neat elements that blend together to bring layers upon layers of information. The beauty of this track is that it mixes up very calm and happy sections with some heavy ones altogether. This one will resonate a lot for those craving for some weird instrumental stuff we hope!

4. Between Samsara and Samadhi:

The song that we shot a music video for! It has crazy western vibes and some weird time signatures. It's a moment of the story where the Nameless Man is upon two different paths: damnation or ascendancy, which he needs to choose between the chaos brought by the so-called "Lunar Body" or the order offered by the "Solar Body".

Its ending follows a more melodic vibe to contrast with the harsh heavy music brought so far. Kinda fits the theme of the song of duality presented by the two entities that follow the protagonist throughout the story.

5. Eightfold Path:

This track is a long one also. This one was probably the most experimental and crazy one off the album! It's a very modern metal-oriented track, so it was the track that was written while we were recording the album, the last one by the way. It's divided into eight acts, each one symbolizing a part of the Eightfold Path proposed by the Buddha, that the protagonist decides to practice in order to achieve enlightenment.

Each part of it brings a very different musical vibe to it. It even has an electronic instrumental part in the middle of it followed by an almost victorian waltz melody and the ending brings a breakdown followed by an Opeth-esque acoustic guitar. It's a song of contrast for sure!

6. Decree of Sunlight:

Decree has some cool fast parts that kick in from the moment it begins to the last parts of it. It has a more traditional Prog structure to it, I feel it's the song with more "movement" of the album. Everything on it is very intense, even the melodic parts feel more "melodic" in a way.

For those craving a cool Technical Death Metal song, I believe Decree has something to offer for sure! The clean vocals at the end were sung by the amazing Mike Semesky that worked with acts such as Interloper, Intervals, and The HAARP Machine. He captured straight ahead of the vibe of the song and enhanced it to the next level. Thank you, Mike!!

7. Prospection:

Ethereal Rebirth: Finally, Prospection! On the last track, we tried to emulate the summing up of all the previous steps of the protagonist's journey so far, from the music to the lyrical content.

That being said, the entire song has references to the previous songs so far.

The cool thing about Prospection is was written like a "fragmented" song on purpose. It almost sounds as if it is a compilation os various songs that converge into a same piece of music.

We tried to pay homage to everything we liked musicwise. There are fast parts, progressive ones, slow acoustic parts, clean, thrashy, scream vocals. I hope it resonates with everyone in some way or another!