Crimson Sun
It's been a month already since the release of our first single of the coming second album. It feels like an eternity, just because of the sheer amount of work and things that have been happening, and because social media has the tendency of warping your sense of time. If you don't post for a few days the thing you did post just gets sucked into the void and it's just like it never existed. Unless the thing goes viral or something, which I think hasn't really happened for us yet.
Still, the single has been well received and there has been some plays on net radios and interest from magazines. In fact, I just finished answering questions to an interview. One of the things that came up, is the subject of Crimson Sun, and the symbolism in it. I realize I didn't really open it up in the media release, let alone here, because I still wanted to keep a thin veil of mystery to it. But, I figured now would be as good a time as any. It's also perhaps time to start opening up about the general themes and the background of the second album. It's going to be a full series, many posts, so I hope you'll enjoy the ride. I think I will.
One of the reasons we decided to go with Crimson Sun and release it first was because it's themes fell quite neatly as a continuance of the last songs on our first album, thematically, but perhaps musically as well. The theme in Good People was the hypocrisy of human kind, the self-anointing of all of us who think we're good people.
In Siouxsie on the Beach the theme was the end of the world as we know it, like it had already happened, and how we did nothing about it. To be perfectly clear, it's about climate change and destruction of nature, in which we, the good people, contribute to the most and are not doing enough about. In this I am pretty judgmental, and fully aware of that, but I do count myself into the lot, being a first world inhabitant myself. However, the point of view in both of these songs is lamentation, not that much pointing of fingers, and maybe a somewhat cynical approach. The same approach is present in Crimson Sun.
In the verses are presented all hopes that we have for the future, all wars being ended, all pain and suffering ending, all that. It's also something many religions and cults promise will happen in the next world, or after death. Towards the end of the verse the question is raised: Why is it not so? Or the attempt to convince oneself: It must be so. And in the chorus the idea of Good People is again present in different words: We hope for a bright future, but keep blaming others for our mistakes, we bathe in the blood of scape goats, but the sun is setting already. Then of course the question comes to mind, who is this "We" the song is describing? Because surely not all people think this way?
The lyrics of Crimson Sun originate in a lengthy exchange I had with my aquaintance, a Jehovah's Wittness. This was a few years ago, before Hateful Chains was formed, at a time when I was in the process of growing out of my Christian faith and organised religion altogether. I lived alone in a new apartment as I was recently divorced, and the doorbell rang. It was them, Jehovah's wittnesses, whom I had always turned away with some excuse, or just taken their leaflets and wished them a happy day, the leaflet ending up in the bin. But now I had nothing to do and felt like I could take the challenge of debating a person from a different sect of faith than me, and enjoy the exchange.
It turned out to be not very enjoyable, because the Jehovah's Wittnesses have a strict program for their interaction with the people they're trying to recruit and turn into followers. The person who contacted me at first never came alone, she always had another woman with her, and they basically wanted to go through a "program" of explaining their beliefs and persuading me to join. I was looking for a reason to end these programmed "bible studies" and finally it came in the form of a belief I just couldn't accept.
Among the many wacky and distorted (at that point, in my view, distorted, because I could not yet see the oddities of my christian faith) beliefs, one was just too unjust for my taste: That communion, was not for everybody in the congregation, but only for a select group that counted themselves as one of the chosen. It was something that was against everything I had been taught about the core beliefs of Christianity and made me very angry. So, I stopped the meetings and stopped communication with these people altogether.
After this episode I had the need to find out, what kind of belief system it actually was, that made people hold on to such strange views and go to such lengths as even refusing blood transfusions and shunning their family members. What better source of that information than the people that used to believe, but have walked away? And to say that Youtube and all of internet was full of them would be an understatement. It seems I hit a time when loads of people had decided to share the story of their "awakening" on the web at the same time. It was a gold mine, not only of information, but also inspiration.
At this time, many lyrics of the forth coming second album came into existence. Some were born out of the process of my own journey, some from the frustration and outright fury, when I found out about the serious injustices and beliefs and systems that hurt people, present in the cults I was looking into. Most of these are about the Jehovah's Wittnesses. Sometimes a song is an end product of a lengthy thought process, and seems to just pop out of nowhere, but when looking back, you understand it was there all along, brewing inside your head. And Crimson Sun is a song like that.
I cooked it up when playing just something on a piano and waiting for my vocal student to come to class. Chorus came first, just had to write it down. And then I made a verse. Chords and melodies at the same time, all just happening so smoothly. The best part, (in my opinion) in which I put my thoughts on the Witnesses in, was the middle eight, where I describe them as carrion birds, picking the bones of the dead. Who else believes that after Armageddon, they will be the ones that survive and will build a new world, be the kings of the corpse mountains? Quite literally, really. But, of course we all wish that things were better, and that the world would some day be a blessing to all of us, not just a select few. So, the last verse is just that, a tiny hope, not much more, that it would be possible. Most of the time it's just too hard to really believe in it.
So, this was the first writing, disclosing the stories and background behind the songs we are currently recording. I'll be writing much more on the subject and the matters of faith from the perspective of one who has walked away, as it has really been a source of inspiration on songwriting and a force of change in my life.
Love, Flora
