Behind The Scenes: Arriver - Carrion Sun (Official Video)

The second video from our new album AZIMUTH is for the song "Carrion Sun". AZIMUTH employs a narrative arc focusing on the journey of a protagonist, Halon Hong, who abandons his home and the conflict therein in search of transcendence and unification with The Beyond.

The story pivots dramatically on "Carrion Sun": it is here that Halon Hong confronts seemingly insurmountable challenges in his quest and perseveres. The heavy, driving rhythm of the opening riff and barking vocals give way to a cathartic instrumental release. This song is immensely fun to play live with the audience fully immersed in the journey. As such, the obvious choice was to build the video around concert footage of a particularly searing performance.

However, the music one hears in the video is the studio recording, but live the band purposefully takes liberties in the second half of the song, deconstructing the rhythms, harmonies, and textures, embracing spontaneity and inspiration rather than a strict arrangement. It is the one place in our set where we allow ourselves the space to play it differently every time. We entrusted the task of syncing the pre-recorded music of the album to a somewhat different live version to our friend Lee Diamond.

Lee is a fan and an accomplished musician (drummer), and was very fired up to create something unique from the live footage we provided. Lee also has experience creating and editing videos as seen on his youtube channel, and his production quality is always top-notch. see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/@leediamond5318/about Some one hundred edits later, he managed to seamlessly sync the drum fills, pick slides, and vocals of the video with the music.

With that accomplished and some input from the band, Lee combined public-domain photographs and film of planets, stars, and other cosmic imagery, layering them with the live footage provided. ARRIVER applauds Lee’s resourcefulness and ingenuity in creating something fresh and exciting while respecting our modest budget!

Critically, the footage was artfully captured by our pal Mike Rataj (another drummer/video producer, check him out in Mine Collapse and Suns of Rah) at one of our favorite venues, The Burlington.

Meanwhile, another ARRIVER video is in the works, look for “In The Only” later this year… more soon…