Deathconsciousness: A stare into human abyss

                            Deathconsciousness 

                                                    A stare into human abyss

Prologue of The Tragedy

In 1793, Jacquis-louis David painted his masterpiece named "Death of MARAT".  With this,

David symbolized the French revolution and his friend's final moment. The protagonist in this painting, Jean Paul Marat

was  considered  a saint during the French revolution.  Created During the reign of terror, the painting

depicts the moment immediately after Marat was killed by Charlotte Corday. The national deputy was

in bathtub while treating a skin disease  when the counter revolutionized Girondized women was 

admitted to his presence on the pretense that she had information to give. She later then stabbed Marat 

right there and killed one of the notable French figure back then. This painting is used as the album cover.

The album is made by the duo Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga. It took them about Six years 

to produce a dark grim masterpiece. The album separates itself from other not just by beinga dark musical experience with a dual disc but also by being bundled with a 70 page booklet.

The album cover is a grisly and grim crop portion of Jacques-Louis Davids' painting. The 

painting is titled as "Death of Marat" .   The musician duo, uses a cropped version of this picture, 

a far more grim and gruesome version of this painting to set the lights for a dark depressive 86 

minute of music. The album is a concept album, criticizing the wests view of death and humanity .Macugas' quote on this topic is, " Believe in hope for a hereafter, whether for reincarnation or 

paradise is quite old. Human has a lot of anxiety of the prospect of ceasing to be." The booklet is

half the experience itself written by a professor religious history at MIT. The booklet tells a story of 

Antiochus, a prophet of thirteen century. According to the text, he is the founder of a very obscure 

branch of Christianity. The book touches on Antiochus' legacy resulting after life and death of Antiochus.

Even after being a very well written book, the reader would quickly realize and come to the fact it is

simply either hopelessly obscure or entirely fictional. These could give a view of Dan and Tims view of 

life and death and an idea of what the album is about

The Tragedy itself 

The album is unlike any other, a mere once in a life time sound with replications  of it seems very far till

this day. Musically it touches on many genres. Major influence could be traced back to Post rock ,Ambient and drone music. The duo had their focus on dark sounding keys and vocals being more or less ambient. This demonstrates perfectly in their first song, the album opener, " a quick one before the eternal worm devours Connecticut" This song is 7 min of same guitar phase with warm dark synth keys. . Within the same song, lullaby of ambient music could be found . Tim and Dan, none of them are drummer, so they used electronic drum with simple rhythm. To counter the slow and ambient music, they quite often use the electric drum to speed up the song. they make it doesn't always gets a monotonous vibe by adding some coarse guitar licks, some of them being very old school. Their ambient music with abrasive tone often brings the songs a shoegaze tone quite exemplified in the last phase of the song "HUNTER". The song has some of the pop oriented catchy  phrases in their song "Holy Fucking Shit: 40000". The song "There is no food" displays duos impeccable understanding of what to do when. The song starts with a very simple electronic loop, comes with a single rock lick then extends it with synths. later part of the song has a use of  distorted guitar with noisy unclear vocal on the background. Almost gives a feeling of unconsciousness. Vocals on this album is quite opposite of what an average listener would expect from a musical duo. The vocals are completed with reverbs, delays and distortion almost numbering the use of raw vocal to 0. This album is made through the blessing of technology and understanding of music. Albums like this dont come often, and yet till now looks far off to produce another one. 

But what does it mean?

Apart from the musical brilliance it brings, what does it mean? how does it make sense to us? To the listeners and creators? what does it transcends? questions have been asked. The night in the life of a human  being is often scary yet brilliant. It's  not just a struggle to get out of it alive, its also is a source of securing tomorrow brilliance to survive. The album comes in two disks, two sides, named "The plow that broke the plains" and "The Future". 

THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS

"The plow that broke the plains" is the first part that starts from the opener and ends on "There is no food" These 7 tracks has a common base and that is the existence of GOD and his DEATH.  A quick one, the album opener gives you a feeling of drowning in hopelessness, as if your world is falling and burning yet you stand still and stare into the abyss with a glass in your hand. The song BLOODHAIL comes with the  beginning of  murder of GOD. Bloodhail sees the preparation for the murder of GOD, the HUNTER being the murderer of it. The middle track "THE BIG GLOOM" is about how helpless God feels, a plea of saving, an earthly plea. It takes us on a tour of how this album is, about suicide. A mere identical expression of suicide. Its such an on point song, to such extend it ends on silence. Last phase of this song is just pure silence, the death. The entire track is our narrator, the god debating in an ice bath on how his death affects the people around him. This could be found in the title, the plow that broke the plain, the hunter or humanity metaphorical being the plow broke the plain , the GOD. These first songs touches a common factor beyond religion, DEATH. The lines are written as, "PLEASE PLEASE RELEASE ME" a plea to stay alive. But the hunter goes on and kills everyone in his path, even the GOD and GOD dies giving his last wounds and flesh to the survivors. It also shows us GOD being generous in his death, which hunter never does. In TELEPHONY we are again taken to a personal account of someone in grief pain. He our narrator wants to build a telephone that can talk through time, giving a chance to talk to their deceased loved one, but at what cost? who would talk to "Who leaves their son in the sun?". This part of the album almost feels like the homecoming of Christ . Gods deceases flesh for humanity. Hunters influence has changed the people as Christ says in the song," THERE ARENT MANY ARCHANNGLES IN THE SKY TO COME DOWN AND MAKE US FEEL RIGHT" There is also a hint of  selfishness and contradiction. The lyrics goes "Everyone spends some time on the cross, I just want to make sure it's not a total loss, so maybe I'll get tanned, and lose some weight while I wait". Asking the question, isn't selfishness a sin? Jesus was put for our sin, not his and whole of humanity saw it. The end track is THERE IS NO FOOD, it could be shown as a symbol of mental distress of humanity. There's only pain and distress, the suffering the loneliness. 

THE FUTURE

This part of the album includes the previous characters a  bit less. Hunter could be seen as a metaphor for humanity. The first track is "WAITING FOR BLACK METAL RECORDS TO COME IN THE MAIL" this song carries a theme of genocide and absurdity and shows humanity have been tolerating everything wrong around them and waiting for a revelation out of nowhere.  This song shows how humanity has no sense of right or wrong, only sense of selfishness. The last lines points to humankinds greed for more. The lines go as, "Its never going to be good enough/ there's no air anywhere/Its all money now/wouldn't you do the same again?" The next song is about humanities respond to massacre also a reference to Americas suicide number per year, 40000. we feel, we know that but do we do anything? it also compares human to animals, acting and going as if nothing happened The next song relates to humanities loneliness. Humans have made a mess of love, and gone back to the roots of evolution. They use love only to produce, this doesn't remove their distress, loving anyone doesn't mean anything. This song shows humanity has gone back to being baseless animals living in the cave, replacing one good for another. Narrator here cries out of loneliness . as the author speaks 

"Jesus Christ why is love so lonely? "The next two songs are humanities confession, I Don't love and earthmover. I don't love is humanity crying to their lord. They realize their sins and they don't want to continue like this, they want this to end, they don't love each other, nor they love someone. The entire record dies on earthmover depicting a picture of earths last days. It is a song about golems as humans taking over earth destroying everything in sight. As time passes they grow restless, tired without hope aspiration or without life. They become immortal machines who can only destroy, cannot create or cannot be destroyed. Their last wish will be death in their meaningless life.  The last lines are:-

                                    "And when their earthen mouths will open up

                                            Just what words should come out? But
                                                        "We wish we were dead"

 

Existence is tiring, being a machine of destruction without the beauty of creation is ultimate demise of mankind. Once everything is destroyed, nothing left to live for where do humanity or the golems go? They wish to die but they cannot. Only thing they can say is "We wish to die".  They repent and repeat in their worthless life.

notes:- if you like this review please check them out and also try DAN BARETT's other project GILES COREY.

written by 

Tanjeem Ashhab Arnob 

ID:- 22299515