Track By Tracks: Ephialtes - Melas Oneiros (2024)

While Quazarre (composer, guitarist, and vocalist of the band) gives you an insight into the lyrics, Avernatvs (drummer) leads you through each track’s musical side from the drummer’s perspective.

Quazarre: The song ‘TO THE VICTIMS OF SIRENS’ draws upon a story from Homer's ‘Odyssey’ - our titular protagonist, Odysseus, trying to reach home after the Trojan War and lands upon the island of Sirens. Their beautiful, mesmerizing voices lead sailors to their doom, causing them to crash their ships and drown in the process. While Odysseus commanded his crew to stuff their ears with wax as protection and ordered them to tie him to the mast of the ship, in the song our character falls victim to the Sirens’ deceiving singing and ultimately shares the abysmal fate of men that came there before him.

Avernatvs: When I first heard this track, I immediately felt we had our lead single. It has all the ingredients of the “hit” metal song – fast pace, catchy melodies, memorable passages of clean guitars and vocals, almost like an arena black metal song. I wanted to up it with drum work, using every trick in the book – from fast double bass, blast beats, and groovy rhythms, topped with some intricate fills. Chorus specifically was inspired by modern melodic death metal, mostly bands from the US, as I felt it would fit the feel we were going for in this song.

Q: The lyrics of ‘IN HER EMBRACE AGAIN’ song directly refer to what a ‘mare’ is, a figure present in beliefs and religious denominations around the world. It describes recurring images of a nightmare sitting on the chest of a sleeping person and the feelings accompanying it. The feeling of helplessness, the paralyzing fear of a figure lurking in the dark, and the inability to scream. I suspect that there is no person in the world who would not experience something similar at least once in their life.

A: This one has plenty of twists and turns. The main riff has this very rhythm-based, modern feel to it that I wanted to match with bass drum work. It has some of the fastest parts on the whole album and some of the patterns I am most proud of – particularly parts played during riffs with clean vocals. Originally, the blast beat came later in the song for the second time but it was ultimately scrapped. There was also one drum part that came out by accident during the demoing process, guess which one!

Q: ‘THE VOID’ tells a story about a human who struggles with loneliness and searches for answers to an array of existential dilemmas, often seeking help from the supernatural. Regardless of under what name humanity refers to God in different places and cultures, the mechanism of merging the physical and spiritual world with each other is always exactly the same. The true question is if prayers sent out to forces above or below in actuality help one persevere through struggle and hard times, or if in any case, they fall upon deaf ears, into the void...

A: One of my favorite songs on the whole album. The chorus has a lot of emotion and I wanted to channel it during the recording process. The middle of the song has unusual time signatures going on, which adds a bit its sort of uneasy nature. It has probably some of the most memorable musical ideas on the entire record.

Q: ‘CHILDREN OF ARACHNE’ – Arachne was a great weaver yet her boasts about her own abilities angered the goddess Athena, who challenged her to a weaving duel. Athena embroidered images of the Olympian gods, illustrating their power. In the corners of the fabric, she placed examples of punishments that people receive for their pride. This didactic message did not stop Arachne, who on her loom conjured gods in loving relationships with mortal girls. Her fabric was at least as beautiful as Athena's embroidery. The angry goddess tore Arachne's work and began to beat her with a weaver's canoe. The girl hanged herself out of despair. Athena felt sad about the situation, so she decided to bring the suicide back to life. However, no longer in the form of a human, but a spider that would always weave intricate threads. In our view, the Children of Arachne personify all those who today decide to take revenge for what the old gods did to their mother. The Children of Arachne are the people of today, proudly defying the will of the gods and the pressures of society.

A: First song we recorded (drum-wise) and I think the first that Quazarre wrote for this album. This one feels a bit more conventional and melodic and it’s fun to play – more straightforward and upbeat, in a way. Still, it has some double-ride work pepper all over the place and some busy fills.

Q: ‘HOMO DEUS’ indirectly references a story akin to the one we saw in Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein’ - a creature created from body parts coming from numerous corpses, sewn back together and artificially brought to life. Frankenstein's Monster was a powerful being and while being physically repulsive, he possessed remarkable sensibility, intelligence, and depth. He wanted to be loved and live with humans in peace but he was cast out as a freak, an outsider. Here we have a story not only about well know human desire to be as powerful as God himself and create anything in his image but also - or first and foremost - a warning tale about lack of acceptance for otherness, about reasons that drive societies all over the world to reject anything "different" and ostracize such units. No wonder that in the end, the creature unleashes his vengeful rampage on mankind. After all, isn't it what we deserve?

A: The heaviest and most evil-sounding on the album, hands down. It’s a barrage of that sledgehammer, Morbid Angel-type riffs I knew I had to match with avalanche bass drum work. Definitely a more rhythm-based song in the drum department, it has crazy triplet fills all over the song (a lot of songs are done in this feel – I refer to the albums as “triplet record”). In the middle there is also this brutal blast beat – for sure, the fastest part of this album.

Q: ‘THE BLOOD OF THE GODS’ song talks about how, in today's rush for material goods, we forget about the need to work on the development of our spiritual side. About the fact that as thinking beings, we should live not only for temporal good but also by desiring something more, to live life to the fullest, accept its challenges and one day face death with pride.

A: A fairly progressive song, it has a lot going on. Time signatures change left and right, the same as the drum patterns I use throughout the whole thing. I remember having to dig into it to come up with drums that would compliment the song, rather than sink it. I like the outro – it’s melodic in the finest possible way and it has some cymbal work that is a bit outside of the box.

Q: 'Pulvis Et Umbra Sumus' is quite a pessimistic, yet true reflection on what or who we are, and how in fact this small fragment of time in eternity means little for the fate of the world and humanity. At the same time, we have a very high opinion of ourselves, although it is unjustified in the context of our importance for the course of events. Because, no matter what we tend to think of ourselves, the truth is that at the end of the day, we are nothing but dust and shadow.

A: Another one of my favorites. It completely abandonsthe  verse-chorus formula for a more free-flowing, progressive approach. At the same time, it carries itself with those gorgeous melodies and a mix of triumphant and sorrowful edge. What listener can get right away is how groovy it is – I tried to come up with drums that would let feel the mood of the song and bang your head, at the same time. It has plenty of double bass, also in the climax of the song, which I think is a great conclusion for a closing track like this. This one was finished shortly before we got into the studio and some of the drums I initially came up with weren’t working, so we had to spent some time on tweaking it in the studio. Nevertheless, we got it down and came at the other end with a truly reflective and memorable musical suite.