Track By Tracks: Xavernah - Absence (2025)

1. Absence (A Prelude):

'Absence (A Prelude)' sets the stage for the entire record, introducing sonic textures and musical motifs that are sprinkled throughout the rest of the album. Within the concept of the album, it also functions as a fitting yet eerie and ominous beginning, painting a picture of abyssal depths and endless oceans.

2. Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons:

The catalyst of the album/project, 'Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons' was initially written to be a Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos-worship song, but not seeing the originality or longevity of becoming another Lovecraft-band it changed and led to the song and album concept to become the way it is now.

Where 'Absence (A Prelude)' functions to set the scene, 'Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons' expands upon it, introducing the character and the story starts to unfold. Awakening in an ocean tomb, the character is unaware of its surroundings, time and its past. Whilst human(oid), the character also seems to be cursed with immortality, rendering the character able to survive underwater. An endless stretch of ocean and loss of memory has transported this unseemly character into a desolate and dark ocean world. Hopeless, the character forces itself back into slumber, like the one it had awoken from. Slipping back into a comatose state, its final thoughts wishing to never wake up again.

3. Thalassic Dream:

‘Thalassic Dream’ is one of the many songs on the record that is an earlier concept that just fits the puzzle piece that came about after writing and working out the concept of 'Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons’. A non-metal experiment, taking influence from the soundtrack of the BBC mini-series Sea Monsters, I always envisioned this song to be “ocean”-related. So when the concept came together, this song seemed perfect to add to the tracklist.

This is the musical accompaniment for the character’s slumber, adrift in oceanic waters, unknowingly riding waves and currents. Further embellishing the haunting dread of the unnerving deep ocean.

4. Desolate Sands:

‘Desolate Sands’ was the final piece in the puzzle, completing the concept. An epic odyssey across a coarse sand ocean (deserts merely being the other side of the same coin as oceans) gives the character more incentive to search for hope and purpose, but being plagued during this journey by his own mind.

The song starts off ashore, where the character awakens once more not knowing how much time has passed since. This time greeted in similar fashion by a different sight: a desert, an endless wasteland. Traversing this barren landmass in search of another being like him, or life in general, he grows aware of his surroundings. The sky is completely open to see the cosmos, and the atmosphere has been stripped away from this world. Stars seemed to be at war with each other and the fiercest warrior of all, the sun of this planet. At the end of its life cycle, it is soon to devour all in one final desperate attempt for survival before fading away too.

Filled with all-consuming dread, the character wanders aimlessly and hopelessly into the desert. The final blow to the character’s morale is when it, during its wander, finds a withered effigy, nearly indistinguishable from any other rock within the desert. Confirming that all is lost and that the character is truly alone on this doomed planet.

5. Ozymandias:

‘Ozymandias’ is the oldest song written on this album. Written in early 2020 (before the “thing” happening) this was a song I wanted to write for a long time. Inspired by the poem of the same name, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, this was at first envisioned as the quintessential counterpart to 'Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons’. However, whilst I still felt this was a strong song, it would not be as fitting as a counterpart, both musically and story-wise, to 'Perpetual Gloom Across The Basaltic Horizons’ like ‘Desolate Sands’ ended up being.

This song can be seen as an “extended scene” from the epic climax in ‘Desolate Sands', but a more "gray-scaled", dramatic version. Tying in the imagery and message from Percy Bysshe Shelley into my story of ‘Desolate Sands’ and the rest of the record, creating this sense of loss, nihilism, dread, hubris and the inevitable downfall of man.

6. Celestial Ruin:

‘Celestial Ruin’ is a rework of an old project of mine, with the working title ‘Annihilation’. Originally a fusion between electronic and orchestral elements, trying to create a dread-inducing soundtrack, the musical themes you hear were inspired and written in the week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the tension and fear it let loose upon the rest of the world. Due to the weight of its origin alone, it seemed only fitting to end the record with a song like this. The lyrics were written the night I visited the detention camp Sachsenhausen. Inspired by the place and its surroundings, it was the perfect reference to write about something bleak, grey, and dreadful, yet oddly and unsettlingly serene.

This song is more of an outside perspective of the planet, and the stage, instead of continuing to directly follow the character. This is the final curtain for the planet. The oceans dry out, the landmass gets even harsher, the character becomes one with the soil and the star devours the planet in a fiery feast, macabre. Now the star will eventually die too, and nothing but void remains, but mere absence remains.