Track By Tracks: ANUBIS - Dark Paradise (2024)
1. Venom and the Viper’s Kiss:
So, we’re actually starting the album off on a somewhat dour note… this song is about an
unbelievably upsetting police killing from 2016 that, of course, went completely unpunished
and criminally under-reported-on. So do yourself a favor and, rather than Google “daniel shaver
killing”, donate directly to Laney Shaver-Sweet’s GoFundMe:
2. Heartless:
Musically, this song was a collaboration between us and our former drummer Paul Gehlhar.
Lyrically this song deals with megachurches and the Prosperity Gospel, which is a theology that
teaches that extreme wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and a reward for being adequately
religious. This song is NOT anti-religious, it’s against the specific breed of preachers who urge
terminal cancer patients to spend their last $500 on donations to the already-wealthy
megachurch rather than on health care for themselves.
For a more humorous and informative delve into this particular subject, watch the John Oliver
segment on “Megachurches”.
3. Priestess of Dark Paradise:
This is about the idea of the “one who got away”. Ie; the horribly toxic relationship that takes all
of your strength and willpower to get out of, and that you spend the rest of your life trying to
recapture. However bad and however destructive it was at the time, in retrospect, it always
looks like a “dark paradise”.
4. Fallen:
So, here’s one for my fellow Norse mythology nerds.
This song is about the Ragnarok myth – specifically, it explores the academic interpretation that
says that Ragnarok is an extended metaphor for the supersession of the old Pagan beliefs with
Christianity and monotheism.
At the time I wrote these lyrics I had been watching that Finn McKenty video where he argues
that “Emo Rap is the new Rock”, and was sort of mentally preoccupied with ideas of death and
rebirth, old paradigms dying out to make way for the new, etc, etc. Since I process almost all of
my thoughts and feelings in Norse mythology terms, this was the result.
5. Devour:
The version of the song that appears on the album is actually a remake of a song from our very
first EP. It’s more or less the same, I just felt like this song needed a remake, because my singing
skills at the time were abysmal, and I felt that this song was strong enough to where it needed
to be heard *properly*.
Lyrically this was inspired by the rise of religious nationalism and far-right cultural movements
all across the globe, populated by people who see themselves as “holy warriors, into fire we
ride”.
6. The Uncreated:
This song is about the book “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman (the BOOK, not the shit-tacular
miniseries). Specifically, it explores the underlying theme that big, cultural paradigms never
actually change, but rather reappear in superficially different but equivalent forms.
The story in the book focuses on a war between the New Gods and the Old Gods, but in the end, it’s revealed that the war is a deliberate misdirection, that these two factions have never been
at odds with each other, and that the entire premise was manufactured by forces that draw
their strength from sowing cultural discord.
7. Symbolic:
“Symbolic” by Death has always been an extremely important song to me. Apart from being
ARGUABLY the first Death song that’s completely separate from the “Scream Bloody Gore” days
and to deal full-heartedly in philosophical and psychological subject matter, it was also the first
metal song I ever learned to play with other people.
There have been a lot of “clean vocals-to-death metal” cover songs, but almost no “death
metal-to-clean vocals” cover songs (off the top of my head, Sabaton’s cover of “Twilight of the
Thunder God” may be the only one). And while I feel like it’s possible not everyone will dig what
we’re doing with this song, I hope everyone at least recognizes that it’s done in good faith, out
of a love of Chuck’s work.
This is something I’d like to do more of in the future – there are tons of songs by Morbid Angel,
Suffocation, Krisiun, Vader, etc., that I think would sound awesome with the melodic metal
treatment.
8. Strife:
This song was written with a different lineup, some members of which brought a more
metalcore flavor to the writing process, and the result is a song that was out of my personal
comfort zone in a lot of ways. Lyrically this is a fairly standard song about betrayal, rejection of
social norms, affirmation of the individual, etc.
This song is not what I’m used to writing, I obviously have questions about how people take it, but we’ve played it live a handful of times and it’s always been well-received, so
hopefully the same can be said of the album version.
9. Thy Frozen Throne:
This song is essentially our take on the Sonata Arctica “tragic love story” formula – both
musically and lyrically. Musically this is probably the most straightforward Euro-power metal
song we’ve ever written, and lyrically, sometimes you make enormous sacrifices for love and
get only “desolation and pain” in return.
Whether or not the lyrics are autobiographical in natural, I’ll leave it up to the listener to
determine.
No hay comentarios