Track By Tracks: Evoking Winds - Bald Mountain (2023)

Artyom Prishchepov, composer and leader of Evoking Winds

The freedom to be tempted rarely comes with the freedom to decide. Bald Mountain album dives into the ancient European myth about the Wild Hunt, a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by a ghostly group of hunters engaged in pursuit. It tells the story of a man who answered the call of his leader and joined the Hunt to gain absolute power and freedom from the society he lives in. The album raises the topics of choice and freedom, power and its influence on people's deeds, betrayal, and inner change. The artwork echoes this story - it is made by German artist Nele Diel and shows Bald Mountain as well as the Wild Hunt in the skies.

Summoning Calls (Introduction):

Our story begins with the image of the Wild Hunt approaching the town and luring two friends to join its endless run. It can give power and limitless emotion compared to the boring life of a simple man. And the men who were made exiles by the society they lived in accepted the call.

The Wild Hunt:

This track continues with a feeling of broken chains and almost besotting freedom of living life breathing with a full chest. All the people who showed them their place all life are now so insignificant, like cattle compared to them, who joined the legendary immortal hunt.

Bald Mountain:

In the track, Wild Hunt approaches Bald Mountain - an ancient place where natural deities, witches, and ghosts gather to welcome the one, a King of Wild Hunt. They tell their loyalty oath to him in return for the power to rule everything they were part of. They need to prove themselves and the King would guide their ascension to a godlike level.

My Throne:

This track shows the dark deeds one must do to prove himself worthy to the King. Poisoned prongs bring cold from graves, teaching us their ruthless arts. Two friends hungry for power ascend making their souls rough, until one of them understands that the other becomes just a mere obstacle. The one ascends, the other pays the bloody debt - and in the end, is sacrificed by his former friend.

The Oath:

Killing his friend starts to disturb the main character. During his service to the King, he has to march through the towns he once lived in and slaughter the people he knew. At first, he felt the revenge is done, but as they united to resist him and the horde - he understood that he would not be able to stand or speak with them anymore. Former allies unite to fight him, and though he fully understood and desired it with full passion, he ended up not ready for this. All of this became not the life he wanted.

I Remember (Introduction):

This track tells the reflection of some new thought in the mind of the main character - random old memories he didn’t think he remembered.

When I Died:

This track symbolizes the inner death of this man, with an understanding of all being senseless. The inner explosion that makes people different.

In the Whispers of Stars Far Away:

This track is full of regret. The understanding is that the steel collar on the neck is so heavy that is literally breaking his neck. He reached the bottom he could ever recover from - and now after the inner death, this is the road towards the actual end of his existence. The question is how? Would he like his neck to be finally broken by the steel collar of the King of Wild Hunt? Or he can fuck it, and go stand with his sword against the king with former allies he betrayed, once again before the last breath? He choses the latter - not for being good, but for understanding the trap he wishfully went into breaking his life.

Ashes:

This track is about the total mess of fights, where you no longer understand who is who, who are you and who are they. Sort of the fight which destroys every single kind of thing, bringing the way for the new to have its birth.

Night of the Elders:

This track is about a sense of freedom. We all want it and cry for it. For some of us, the freedom to follow the vice makes the heaviest collar which breaks the neck and gives the endless pain. For others, fighting for the freedom to decide and have their own path means also going through the fields of endless pain. In some sort, this pain makes a brotherhood among all of us, as the dialect of pain is the same in any language.

The Seer:

Of course, we couldn’t omit writing the outro! Man, this is our favorite part - the Seer track says that it all happens over and over again, all have been seen, all has been done, and will be - countless times until the human being is on the planet.

This album as you might have understood already is really about addiction. I had complicated relations with good old spirits in the bottle and in some sense, it’s autobiography, with the only difference I’m alive in the end. But a lot of those I knew on my path - are not.

Beware, my friends, the freedom to be tempted rarely comes with the freedom to decide. Drink responsibly.