Track By Tracks: The Obsidian Resurrection - As Darkness Falls (2024)

1. Apocalyptic Prologue:

This opening instrumental is entirely written by Danny, our keyboardist and orchestrator. It applies the paint for an ominous setting on the canvas of our album's musical landscape. Back when we were a touring band, Danny was working on this at one point to be our opening set piece to set the stage for the audience at our live shows. Musically it feels both dark, and foreboding, but also empowering at the same time, leaving you with a feeling of anticipation of what is to come.

2. Prophecy's Will:

After the stage is set with Apocalyptic Prologue, the musical landscape thereof is thus destroyed with the burgeoning, heavy-hitting riffs of Prophecy's Will. This track is a musical love letter to old-school Thrash Metal and Death Metal. That old era when these two genres were both in their infancy, where Thrash Metal still had that balls-to-the-wall, punk rock attitude and even some sounded almost, quasi, "Death Metal" with the songwriting and even some of the vocal approach(think early Sepultura), and when Death Metal still retained its Thrash Metal roots, the likes of say, Possessed. Prophecy's Will seems to borrow from all of those things to become a mental Frankenstein's monster that is set and ready to wreak havoc upon anything in its way. Ultimately this song's lyrics are about what we call, The Beast Of Prophecy, a creature that lays dormant until awakened by the sins of mankind, then once awakened, destroys everything in its path, feeding on the souls of the wicked until it hunger and thirst is quenched.

3. As Darkness Falls:

Being the album's title track, we feel that this song encapsulates all major aspects of what this band represents musically. It has a bit of everything. From slick grooves to frantic riffing, all while keeping it tied together with gothic orchestration, As Darkness Falls is a perfect example of what this album stands for. This track at one point was titled, Written In Blood, but during the production of this album, and the writing of lyrics for it, it was ultimately changed to As Darkness Falls, which fits the overall feel of these compositions thematically. Since these songs are all from back in the day, around the time of our old demo, Enslaved By Nightmares, As Darkness Falls carries those themes over from the old demo to continue the audible nightmare that we started over two decades ago.

4. Forever's End:

Beginning with a beautiful piano piece, Forever's End is a relentless attack on your senses. It lures you into a place of musical transcendence with the gorgeous piano before smashing your false sense of serenity with a pummeling build-up to the main riff of the song. Harkening back to bands such as Slayer or Morbid Angel, Forever's End is a simple, yet effective banger of a track that was always a crowd-pleaser back in our live show days and always delivered our biggest mosh pits with the crowds. With such high energy from the music in this track, accompanied by vicious lyrics about how we are literally heralding our own demise and destruction, Forever's End is sure to break your neck with its sonic attack of old-school riffs.

5. Rise Of The Fallen:

Slowing things down a bit, up next on the album, we have, Rise Of The Fallen. This track is quite a musical ride, with vibes of a classical music piece in its melodic approach, it has plenty of ups and downs on its musical journey from start to finish. This song began way back with our original guitarist and bassist as they were in high school guitar class, where we were supposed to learn a Beatles medley, the only problem was, neither of us liked The Beatles, so without letting our teacher know, we began work on the early version of this song to play for a guitar class finals exam, our teacher was pissed, but we still received an "A" despite her frustration with us. Spanning thirteen minutes, Rise Of The Fallen is meant for the listener to just push play and enjoy the ride. Its musical dynamics allowed us to explore our music more creatively and approach this song in a way that feels quite unique to the rest of the album.

6. Edge Of Sanity:

The original "hit" of ours, the song that seemed to really start it all for us. Edge Of Sanity went through a couple changes before you heard the version on our old demo, at one point it was incredibly slow and boring, it just seemed to drone on and on with the same coupof le riffs, the original version was also written by our original guitarist. After some time, however, he left because as a band, the rest of us were moving towards a heavier style, more the likes of Symphonic Death Metal, while our original guitarist wanted to remain basic Metal, so we ultimately parted ways, but he left us with the songs he contributed to and wrote, which Edge Of Sanity was one of, and we completely changed this song to the more blistering shred-fest that you hear on our demo. The album version holds true to that demo version since if it isn't broken, don't fix it. The reimagining of this song from its original version to what you hear now was inspired by Deicide's, "The Truth Above", taking that song's styling and applying it to the riffs we already had for Edge Of Sanity, to us, just musically made sense to us and it worked out perfectly in the end.

7. Born From Tyranny:

Originally titled, This Day To Be My Last, Born From Tyranny is another song that is quite the musical journey from old school Death Metal jams that eventually blends and morphs its way to more thematic sections of tension building that escalates to a dynamic explosion of an ending. This song twists and turns through different feelings and emotions as it takes you through its aural terrain. Lyrically it is based on a book titled, The Crimson Legion, a Dungeons And Dragons campaign setting of a man who was quite literally, born into tyranny as a slave child who is forced into fighting in the gladiatorial arenas, but through his journey from arena to arena, city to city, he learns that he is more than who he thinks, he is actually royalty, the son of the king of the realm who had an affair with his mother, killed her and delivered the child into slavery in the hopes of burying his dark secret, until it comes back with a vengeance and takes back the throne and sets the salves free.

8. Unholy Retribution:

We come at last to the final song of this album, Unholy Retribution. This track is about the never-ending battle between Heaven and Hell, with mankind seemingly always caught in the middle. This piece is another song in the style of a classical music composition with a rising crescendo and build to a climax of fist-pumping proportions. Unholy Retribution is very orchestra-driven and gives a sense of being in a haunted cathedral while the guitars creep in intensity until a smashing end to the album is delivered. This song wraps things up for this album's tracklist as the final impression on the themes of this musical composition, a nightmarish look into the psyche of The Obsidian Resurrection.