Track By Tracks: ROT - Yomi No Kuni (2022)

Yomi No Kuni is a very implicit concept album ... It is not presented as a story with the chapters and events told by a narrative. it's a journey yes, but it must be discovered through the various clues scattered between the songs ... As if it were the lore of a video game but there are no cutscenes hahaha.

The journey will be told through the emotions of the protagonists who will be wrapped in their thoughts.

Yomi is the land of the dead in Japanese culture and we have told it as if it were a divine comedy a little fantasy or a little anime ... We will know the various sins and will be told in the first person by sinners.

1. Yomi No Kuni: 

It is the beginning, the dark atmosphere represents exactly the entry into the Yomi, slowly the song evolves and explodes when the listener realizes that he is in an immense and dangerous place.

2. KURAMA:

Here we get to know the first character, not that door opener of the Yomi ... We have imagined a Japanese version of "minos" (which in the divine comedy sends sinners into their circles via its own tail) ... That is " KURAMA "or the nine-tailed fox of Japanese culture, known as Kitsune, we chose the name Kurama because in anime it is often called that (Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho). Kurama is a huge 9 coed fox (you can admire it in the album artwork by Giulio Sciaccaluga) who will judge the sins of the dead and send them in the various "circles" with their own tails. Furthermore Kurama explains to the listener a little more about Yomi and sins.

3. KAMI:

In this passage we find the first area of sinners, people who raise themselves to divinity and claim to be venerated as such ... They are all the people who have created disasters with religions and wars of faith.

They have deluded thousands of people and in this place, they will be deluded ... They believe that by reaching a light that they can see in the distance they will be saved from the Yomi ... But they do not notice that they are kept on a leash by a Yokai (folkloric spirit Japanese) and that light is just an illusion ... So they will chase something that doesn't exist continuously.

4. SORA:

The next area is the one dedicated to the people who destroyed the dreams of those who had them, they are those people who try to dismantle your dreams by deluding yourself that following the system is the best thing. They do it because I want to have full control.

Their punishment is to wander eternally inside the stomach of Baku (Japanese divinity who devours dreams) ... Baku's stomach is completely empty and they will see nothing but emptiness forever and will continue to explode and recreate themselves. continuously, suffering for life, and remaining isolated in the void.

5. TENTACLES:

This is the most macabre and strange text ... It speaks of the area where rapists, violent, and pedophiles are punished. They rejoice wrapped in the tentacles of octopus-like creatures that eternally overwhelm them with their huge tentacles, destroying their bones and organs from within (a reference to the Japanese fetish of the Tentacle Rape)

6. LIFEBLOOD:

Here we meet the people who have contributed to the destruction of our planet, through pollution and radiation. People who have deluded themselves are allowed to destroy nature.

Lifeblood is dedicated more to the planet than to the torture of these people ... But anyway their punishment is told briefly ... Corrosive and harmful substances are injected into the veins of sinners that consume their bodies causing pain and paralysis, and they are intoxicated with poisonous gases but they cannot die because they already are, so they will suffer forever.

7. IN VAIN:

From here on the album will become more introspective and there will be stories in the first person, it will be the sinners who speak or reflect on their mistakes.

In vain talks about revenge ... the futility of revenge, but also explains how it can be unleashed.

The protagonist tells of his own disadvantaged life since birth, he has always been alone and has not been accepted even by his family. He wanted to commit suicide but he knows a girl who becomes very important to him, he feels loved for the first time, this girl becomes everything to him... Until during a robbery she is killed... The protagonist's world collapses, it no longer makes sense now.

He wants to take his own life but before doing so he wants to take revenge in anger...

He manages to enter the murderer's house and brutally kill him... But at that moment the murderer's son returns home, an innocent child, who has nothing to do with that story, and even lost his father in front of him. in his eyes, in front of a scene that has ruined his life forever. Thus the protagonist realizes that he has caused that child the same harm that the killer caused him... thus becoming a sinner. In the Yomi he suffers because he knows he was wrong and he knows that he will not be able to do anything to remedy it.

8. Pretending To Live:

This song is about how a person attracted to futile values like money, drugs, and fun ends up ruining their life and destroying the hard work they have created.

Once he is dead, he realizes that he has neglected the people he loved and that he has corroded himself.

9. Step Back To The Future:

In addition to being a small reference to Berserk's Griffith, the song talks about this person who did everything to pursue his dreams, ending up sacrificing and killing his fellow travelers to obtain his goal...

But despite this he does not deny anything of what he did... he knows he was wrong but accepts his fate, remaining in the Yomi, tortured forever by the Yokai.

10. MIRAI:

This song seems almost the opposite of the whole album, finally, peace, tranquility, the journey to Yomi is over, now you can appreciate life differently, you understand better the value of everything, it is the light that makes us understand that we are returning to life.