Marcia: What up! The South American tour is over, and we've headed back to Germany for the last leg before we get back in the studio. Stuttgart is looking damn fine this evening, and Berlin is as good a place as any to finish the Innocence Lost tour with some flair. We've already got some new material knocking around, most of which is due for release in a few week's time. But, to keep you entertained, we've decided to release a single before the album comes to light. Called 'The Empty World', it's the first insight into our concept: a distorted system of dreamers and degenerates where only the corrupt and seditious survive. In other words, it's about Earth. Enjoy!
THE EMPTY WORLD
TRACKLIST
In The Chains of the Dreamer (5:34, Delaque/Flint)
Studying human misanthropy and self-absorption, as well as the concepts of the duality of the soul and of the body, Marcia discovered unsettling ideologies of delusion and egomania in her pursuit of subject matter for what was intended to be a commentary on the flexibility of trust in modern society. Reflecting on those that suffer as a result of the entrenchment of the system, In The Chains of the Dreamer forms a parable of a man so lost in his corroded existence that a fabrication of his own mentality, a self-deception that he enjoys affluence and the pangs of love, proves preferable to his current life. Exploring drug abuse and escapism alongside the deeper detailing of the extents to which man is driven by sorrow, the song is amongst the most complex and philosophical the band has released, and yet retains a scathing, acerbic bitterness. Fast-paced and enlivened by a variable polyrhythmic time signature, In The Chains of the Dreamer is brutal enough to appease long-term fans and also presents a new sense of direction and creative nous.
In the falsity of conformity I reside,
Belittled world, mine hands shall thee sculpt,
My mind the hammer, perception anvil, tool and forge,
So shall I blind the pacifistic doubt.
Rebound in pursuit of deceptions of thy God,
As I create from the ash of this bitter past,
Forms fall before thee, hands know their touch,
Fragility is my mistress, body wrought of glass.
I am a being of my own creation,
Beyond God and man dost I now revoke my image,
Only alone, am I most alive.
In the chains of the dreamer,
Mind clouded with fog,
In the chains of the dreamer,
I need no poison Gods.
Shaping a future of needles and intravenous dust,
The product of systems arbitrary, stare back,
Envisage a place in the soul, an induction's cage,
Born of beneath and raised into this cold black.
I am a being of my own creation,
Beyond God and man dost I now revoke my image,
Only alone, am I most alive.
In the chains of the dreamer,
Mind clouded with fog,
In the chains of the dreamer,
I need no poison Gods.
The Empty World (3:56, Delaque)
A blunt and critical social commentary, The Empty World focuses on the redundancy of compassion and affection within a bureaucracy created by humanity's own ignorance. More scathing and less convoluted than its predecessor, the song is structured around a slow, grinding doom riff that broadens into moments of frenetic energy, resembling the peaks and troughs of emotion reflected in the lyrics. Antipathetic to normality in the choral refrain, the idea for The Empty World sprang from the South American leg of the Innocence Lost World Tour. Seeing poverty, suffering and disease juxtaposed with affluence and wealth, Marcia was disgusted at the self-serving nature of the rich and their obsession with continuing the income gap between themselves and the poor. It was this lack of compassion that prompted the single pre-release to be titled as such, for it was clear that human nature was not of mutual affection but more inclined to further personal gain.
You spit on the graves of the dead,
Unknown they shall walk below,
Necropolis of schismatic man,
Unfeeling their horrors grow.
The disgrace is ours to bear,
You live at the stay of our hand,
Now we shall end this
Once and for all!
This world is empty, bleeding,
We are the cleansing flames!
This world is empty, dying,
Legion shall be our names!
Rise!
Beneath the gaze of the imperators,
Lies the sub-classes, the lost,
They are the race of humanity's death,
Belied hope in your sordid cost.
The disgrace is ours to bear,
You live at the stay of our hand,
Now we shall end this
Once and for all!
This world is empty, bleeding,
We are the cleansing flames!
This world is empty, dying,
Legion shall be our names!
Rise!
Rise!
Rise!
Peer to the Insane (6:12, Flint)
Peer to the Insane is a self-reflective, warped lament sourced from Flint's own experience of psychosis upon his father's development of schizophrenia. Told from the perspective of a child looking into the eyes of a madman, it explores just how impossible it proves to be to understand a mind deranged. Presenting such a concept as alien, unnatural and disturbing, the slow-burning, spiraling riffs and employment of visceral screaming as a choral accompaniment to the lyrics gives the song a sense of the madness it attempts to comment upon, becoming both highly sinister and morbid over its six-minute run-time. One of the first songs the band has written without Marcia's influence, it marks an alternate direction into slower, less death metal influenced territory more in the vein of classic doom bands such as Cathedral coupled with the insanity of modern groups such as Slipknot in its use of synths and samples. There remain a number of hints towards the band's older musical style, however, as the song possesses an astringent and fast-paced central riff from which the suffocating sonic weight of the track hangs.
The eyes are vacant, as I stare into their abyss,
The iris white, the cornea's blight
Alive with corrosion's sordid kiss.
There is a spark in the depths, as I watch the dreamer stir,
The brow belied, the lips did try
To awake the forgotten emptied words.
A conflict within, clouds lined on face so bleak,
Hands tighten, knuckles harsh afore the eyes so weak,
I the watcher, peer to the insane.
He knows not that here I stand,
In self-perpetuating hell,
The fire burns and has consumed the self.
The mind breaks.
The bones are stark, as I watch the flesh fade to grey,
The skull unearthed, the sanity's dearth
Releases inhibition's chains away.
The tears are cold, as I brush the drops so clear,
Eyes then shake, the hate awakes,
And compassion's touch is fear.
A conflict within, clouds lined on face so bleak,
Hands tighten, knuckles harsh afore the eyes so weak,
I the watcher, peer to the insane.
He knows not that here I stand,
In self-perpetuating hell,
The fire burns and has consumed the self.
The mind breaks.
The mind breaks.
And I break within it.
