Track By Tracks: Embers Ignite - Visions Of A Dying World (2023)

1. The World Burns:

I wrote the riffs for this whilst I was in immense pain with dental issues I was having at the time (I got something called "dry socket" following the extraction of a wisdom tooth - the worst pain I've ever had). The music was fast and furious and unrelenting (much like the pain I was in). When it came to putting the EP together, I knew I wanted this to be the opening track – straight to the point, in-your-face metal setting the scene for what is to come!

Lyrically, as you can probably guess by the title, it is about the world falling apart around us and us doing nothing about it. A song about the lying, deceitful, greedy governments of the world not listening to the people, not caring about the people they stand for, and not doing enough to stop the destruction of the world around us... “we leave a legacy of destruction, condemned by our own corruption….”

2. The Prophecy:

I wrote most of the riffs for this during the recording of my first EP. The progression used in the song’s chorus, along with the guitar melody, was originally written for the track “Into The Darkness”. I was trying to come up with a key change during the solo section to offer a contrast. In the end, I felt it suited the song better leaving it the minor key throughout (especially as the track was about the fall into depression) but I liked the parts I wrote and I ended up writing the rest of this song around it.

Lyrically, this song is an old one. I wrote it for my last band in about 2010 and it was about the Mayan prophecy of the end of the world which was predicted for 2012. I’ve always loved the lyrics and the imagery of this one and they fit the new music perfectly so I decided to use it (after all I wrote it and it seemed a waste not to revisit it). This is the point when I realized there was a theme beginning to emerge around the lyrical content of this EP.

3. Humanity Crumbles:

Musically, this one came out of me messing about on my guitar one night, just noodling around. All of a sudden, I had the intro and chorus section written. I started recording and playing around with a few ideas and then I had the verses and middle section too.

Lyrically, this one is again about humanity crumbling. This song is more aimed at people's view that everything is messed up in the world, but also the view that one person can’t make a difference so why bother changing? Then they get more and more disillusioned by the lie that they tell themselves every day that "everything is ok", and then they fall deeper into that lifeless void of depression, hatred, and self-loathing.

4. The Aftermath Part 1 – What We’ve Lost:

After I had the other songs laid out with the theme running through, I sat there with my guitar feeling pretty down about the state of the world I’d written about, about no one doing anything about it, and feeling sad that there are some pretty awesome things in life that I would miss if the world as we know it did end. This instrumental piece is a sorrowful, mournful look at the aftermath left behind. The crumbled civilizations, the ruined natural habitats, and the scarred landscapes left behind.

5. The Aftermath Part 2 – A New Beginning:

If part 1 was mourning the destruction of the world as we knew it, then part 2 was the anger of how we’d let it come this far, the guilt and the pain of doing nothing about it, and then the determination to try to survive in the new world. The chance of a new beginning. I started writing this one after listening back to a rough demo of part 1 – it's essentially the same musical parts just faster and heavier. All my songs start life as instrumentals and the lyrics are always written after, but I never wrote anything that I liked for this one. After a few listens I decided I liked it as an instrumental so I left it that way. I’ve always been a fan of instrumentals when they can tell a story and don’t need the lyrics so I hope the story and emotions come across. The other half of me feels lazy that I didn’t finish the song!