Track By Tracks: AETHERIUS OBSCURITAS - A Sors Szurke Pora (2023)

1. A sors szürke pora:

The title track translates as ‘The grey dust of predestination’. AO often deals with subjects like destiny, sometimes the whole theme is around the subject, while it only emerges in a couple of lines in other lyrics on the other hand. Human nature, destiny, and the undoable effect of our actions and decisions on our lives. It is an inexhaustible matter, and well fits in black metal, in my mind. You could hear ‘Ilyen a vér’ (Blood is like this) and ‘Destiny: Unknown’ from the previous album, “Mártír”, which are on the same ideological level.

2. Álom: 

It is an old track, it was first recorded in 2004, and because of its simple structure it works well on stage - the audience can easily digest. Although not the most musically challenging piece, this is how it could ‘survive’ throughout decades. At that time, in 2004, I had little understanding of what makes a song great, or what makes it ‘work’. One may call it ‘a good recipe’, but I don’t like that word, because it implies one size fits all. It is not the case, of course, and after time, I realized that this song still has qualities and still has sides that had not been shown. Hence I completely reworked it, it is not merely a new sound, but a slightly new structure, new elements, and a new dimension.

3. Cloak of Wolves:

This was the first new song for the album, this is how the whole thing started, and this was actually a trigger to build the whole material to a whole. The songwriting was very smooth and quick, I had almost all pieces in a polished, final state before the recordings.

There aren’t any deadlines for AO. 5 years were gone between ‘MMXV’ and ‘Mártír’ (2020). It is unsure when new material would come to light, and I had no idea or plan to release anything like the new album this soon. This song is a social critique, about how the child leaves the parents, the apprentice the master, often without understanding the history, growing unconsciously, and unregulated, and great values and lessons are lost as ‘…generations rise silent and hungry…”.

4. Súlytalan:

This translates as ‘levitating’ but a straight translation would be “without weights”. It is about dying, and the afterlife, starting very bright and peaceful, and turning into a 280BPM storm, then concluding as a peaceful tone, again. This pulsation represents the circle of life and beyond.

5. Sweet poison:

It was the other song that came in the beginning. I have always wanted to write a song in the mood of Marduk’s Opus Nocturne and Dimmu Borgir’s Rite of Passage but on my own style. When I started writing ‘Sweet poison’, I had no idea about the outcome. The themes came in the very order those are recorded, and when I finished recording the second part of the song, I realized this was it… The mood, the piece of song I had been waiting for. It is very much different from the aforementioned two songs, of course, primarily because those are one single unit, opening up, and both are instrumental. While Sweet Poison remains a true Aetherius piece. I am not sure anyone realizes such parallelism, but it is there for me.

This track is about ‘life as is’ - ‘… sweet and bitter minutes of life…’. And it is about accepting that there are highs and depths. If you cannot understand this, and cannot cope with it, and cannot embrace pain, unfairness, and changes, you are wasted. These ‘echoes and sharp lines’ make our lives, memories.

6. Murderers:

This is the mental atomic bomb that explodes at the end of the track. ‘Murderers’ is about the long-term, irreversible effect of covid lockdowns, all the mental illnesses that flourish, and the generic depression, in the wake of the decisions in the name of safety. There hasn’t been such a war-like situation and global lockdown cases for long decades. This is not only a judgment but the helplessness caused by imbecile incompetent leaders and functions. It has nothing to do with covid or any other actual issue, it is about the people who are in charge and are supposed to get the world prepared with bullet-proof, real-life processes and protocols. Masses do not suffer because of a virus (in this case). Masses suffer because of the lack of competency. Our world only seems to be operating well, functioning well. Even a chariot is a decently smooth ride on a perfect road, the truth gets revealed on a bumpy curvy road…

7.Valcert járnak a végzet táncosai:

This translates as ‘Dancers of fate are dancing waltz’. This is the only instrumental track on the album, and even though it has two lines in Latin which are like ‘we are the air, we are the wind’, i consider this to be instrumental.