Well I did it. 3 albums in nine weeks. This project is the most ambitious one to date. After finishing The Corrupted Thread in late June, I decided to double down on a spree of creative energy. In this post I will mostly talk about the story, but will occasionally ramble about the process and music work. Read on if you dare!

Challenges, Victories, and Inspiration

Turns out writing an album that takes place in, and often is about overcoming, an endless desert was sort of fitting in terms of burnout. 24 songs worth of lyrics, guitar riffs, composition, and fighting with AI tools to make drums sound just right, and vocals speak the way I wanted them to. I also experimented with adding some additional scene effects on a few songs.

Another challenge I faced was how to make an enjoyable song that tells a story that includes 5 different characters. Lyrics changed, sections were added and removed, and compromises were constant. Many of these songs may require context to enjoy, or not. Frankly, as I write this I am entirely too close to the work to be able to tell, and that’s how the creative process is sometimes, hahaha!

I really wanted to write a story about a mentor too young to be a good one, and an apprentice who looked up to her anyway. The flaws, emotions, and conflict that come from that dynamic were really interesting to me. In the sandy world without a name, with people forgotten by the sky, we have the perfect setting for these two.

And that brings me to…

Episode 1

1. The Sky Forgot Our Names

I wanted to set the scene with a people who had been forgotten, and felt forgotten. People born into survival mode. They knew the world hadn’t always been this hard, but so much history had been lost that there were no real answers left.

Libraries made of stars
Pages of light, inked in dust
Eternity cataloged
All except us.

All they had were fragments, old stories, and the sense that something had gone very wrong a long time ago. I introduce the royal family, monster hunting guilds, and at the very end, the Huntress, our hero.

For this song I wrote the most metalcore thing I could come up with. Since this is the opening to a 24-track story, I wanted the chorus and music to be welcoming to anyone who stumbles upon it. In later tracks there is plenty of experimentation. However, this one was meant to be a clean, easy listen.

2. She Who Hunts

Our hero needed an introduction. This song is the anthem to all bow-wielding badasses out there.

Draw, Pull, Aim, Release
Draw, Pull, Aim, Release
Vital Spots, Critical Hits

I expand the story here a bit. Monsters are a thing, and hunters are the solution to the problem. I also introduce the world’s mantra. “Every one slain buys us time”. The people living on this planet still have hope that one day, things will be different.

To embrace the sound of a bow string firing, I went a little crazy and added acoustic guitar, finger-picked, along with a mandolin plugin for my keyboard.

3. The Last of Their Water

The Apprentice enters the story in a somber doom metal piece. He’s introduced as a boy dealing with the harsh reality of this world.

A white lie
From dry lips
A deadly choice
Shared water
Shared water

The world is harsh, and he learns a harsh lesson. That is, until he is saved by our Hero, with a simple bottle of water.

(Lyra’s vocals sound so damn amazing when I do minimalistic tracks like this one.)

4. The Scarred Wall

The album’s POV stays with the Apprentice. He’s 16 years old, and in this society, he’s considered a man. He wants to grow up to be like his hero. He joins the guild to be a hunter and takes on the biggest thing he can, a massive monster known as the Scarred Wall.

A Jagged Valley
Carved Sand Stone
Ropes and Blades

A hunter as bait
Poisoned Bite
Shred the plates
Press the Scars

A scarred train barrels
Through fractured tunnel
A man stands tall
Ropes in hand

The walls shifts
Ocean sized maw

Swallow the world
Swallow them all

Ropes snap
Blades Fail
Eyes Widen
Scarred Walls Rise

Things don’t go well for him. The beast is way too strong, and his plan fails utterly. Luckily, he gets saved once again. The Huntress admires his guts and takes him on as her apprentice.

My favorite part about this song is the stop-and-go guitar riff. Simple, effective, with lots of palm mutes, like much of my rhythm work.

5. Reservoir Heir

This one starts out like a normal guild job. The Huntress and Apprentice take an escort mission to help the heir of a reservoir figure out why the water stopped flowing underground. The Huntress immediately hates the job because she hates escort missions. They descend for hours through old tunnels until everything changes.

Tunnel walls crumbled
A path revealed
Artificial Glow
Metal Revealed

Smooth walls reflected in wide eyes
Hollow floors hollow, dust breaks stride

A seamless door open wide
A room filled with glass

Creatures inside vats
A system alive

Suddenly there’s artificial light, metal walls, and technology none of them understand. Then they find the glass vats, and there are monsters growing inside them. That’s the first massive reveal of the story. These creatures aren’t just naturally appearing. Somebody is making them.

6. Shattered Reality

The Huntress has her entire worldview destroyed. She spent her life believing that every monster she killed bought people more time. Now she knows there were factories underground manufacturing them the whole time.

Picture of my world
Dropped upon the floor
Impact, ripple, fracture
Memories cut like shards

Every hunt, every person she couldn’t save, every scar, all of it suddenly feels different. She goes through a lot of anger here, including anger at herself, before deciding there’s only one thing she can do. Find whoever built the factories and tear the whole system apart.

7. The Young, Angry, and Damaged

I wanted this song to feel like the party-building section of an RPG. The Huntress realizes she can’t do this alone, so she starts recruiting.

Have You Heard?
Have You Heard?
The number 1 Hunter
Is recruiting

There’s the seven-foot Tank with the giant hammer, the Healer with a backpack full of medicine, an old Soldier looking for redemption, and the Chemist, who is basically a maniac wrapped in explosives. Add the Huntress and Apprentice and now we have six extremely questionable people preparing to attack an underground monster factory with medieval weapons and homemade bombs. What could possibly go wrong?

8. Into the Depths

(A very challenging song to write and compose. 6 characters take on an underground fortress.)

In our story, a lot goes wrong. The six of them go back underground and hit the factory head-on. They’re fighting robots, guns, lasers, and automated defenses using bows, swords, hammers, spears, medicine, and explosives. This is also where everyone really starts settling into their role in the group. Eventually they reach the control room and discover the person connected to the facility is the Prince. They can’t access the system, it triggers a self-destruct, and they barely escape before the entire place blows apart. The reservoir starts flowing again, but now they know the Prince is involved.

The water once again flowed
From the reservoir

As the prince met her eyes
From his tower

I wrote this song from a few points of view. We change from the “Men of Metal” back to our group. I also added some practical sound effects to help sell the story.

Episode 2

1. Lies Royals Tell

Episode 2 starts with the problem of knowing the truth and having no idea how to explain it to anyone. Six people just discovered underground factories, artificial monsters, and technology that most of the population wouldn’t even understand.

Explosive Echos
Cracks Spread
Burns on sunburn scars

Upon the towers
Lies Break
Across my awakened soul

The Huntress starts looking at the city and the royal family completely differently. The Huntress is pissed, really pissed, and is ready to stop hunting monsters and start hunting whoever she has to.

I’ll hold a lens
Just right
I’ll burn their lies away
We’ll burn their lies away

The Huntress’s change also affects the relationship between her and the Apprentice here. He used to worship her. Now he’s watching her more carefully and starting to question some of the things she’s doing.

2. The Rings of the Disalts

The Huntress starts digging into the people connected to the Prince, although her version of an investigation is more than a little aggressive. She’s following people through alleys, interrogating nobles, breaking into restricted areas, and tearing through old records looking for anything that connects back to the factories.

I’ll break their fortress
Their crowns, our crisis

Held high and righteous
Beasts that break our masses

Did you think
you could hide from me?

I. am. the. Huntress.

She keeps finding the same ring and learns they are tied to a cult called “The Disalts”. She also discovers that the conspiracy is much older than the Prince. Whatever has been happening to this world started long before the current royal family.

The song itself is dark, mean, industrial horror metal. I weaved spoken word throughout the song to push the story forward and show just how willing the Huntress is to follow through with her vow. She’s been hunting monsters for years. Hunting people is easy in comparison.

3. Cultists and Cadmium

This song is a straight-up riff machine. I went with big barre chords and slides. Probably the most fun-to-play chorus on the album.

In the story, the Huntress is making killing the Disalts a full-time job. She spends nights taking their rings, extracting names, and killing the people she believes are responsible. In her mind, it isn’t murder. It’s pulling cancer out by the roots.

Cultists and Cadmium
Hunt them, scatter them

Drag them from the shadows
Yellow teeth betray them

Cut the rings from fingers
Leave no place to hide

Suffer no Disalts
Suffer no Disalts

The lyrics highlight what the rest of her team is doing, helping with weapons, traps, safe houses, and escape routes, but the Apprentice is clearly becoming uncomfortable with how far she’s willing to go. The Huntress’s main motivation to stay mentally “iron” is all the things the cult has been doing. Monsters, earthquakes, poisoned systems, and two thousand years of suffering. By the end of the song, my lyrics paint a picture in the mind of the listener.

In a small shack
A tired huntress rests

Next to a pile of blood soaked rings

Startled, she looks to the door.

“They found me.”

This sets us up for the next song.

4. Hundreds Closing In

The Disalts send hundreds of people after one Huntress, which she handles about as calmly as you would expect. She already knows the city, the rooftops, the alleys, and the routes they’ll use to chase her, so she turns the whole thing into a giant trap.

Hundreds outside
Breathing at my door

They came for blood
They came for war

Wood breaks inward
Glass breaks out

Dogs in the alleys
Men screaming loud

I know every rooftop
Every turn, every light

I built this road for running
The Disalts bleed tonight

She leads them through fire, wire, explosions, and whatever else she can use until they finally corner her at a cliff. They think they won. She steps backward, triggers the explosives, and drops the mountain on them. The problem is that the mountain doesn’t care who was wearing a ring. Innocent people were buried too, and I wanted to make sure this song was callous to that fact.

My only regret
When they take my life

I won’t have time
To cut off their rings

You have power
I have speed

You bring numbers
I make them bleed

You spread the gas
I strike the match

Come and find me
Come and catch

Come at me!
Come at me!

I love writing swagger lyrics like this. The first half of this album has been about the Huntress in her prime. This is her at the peak. My original draft of this song had a few lines that I had to pull out, which included the name “McCallister”. I decided references outside of the story would just hurt it, but if you know, you know.

5. Oxidized Conviction

The element that represents the Huntress is Iron. As I write my lyrics for her, this is a common theme that I come back to. I do that for my characters: create a list of phrases, attributes, or relate them to an object. In this case, it’s a sharp iron arrowhead. Strong enough to punch through anything in this world, with enough force, that is. With that being said, I used the word “Oxidized” here on purpose.

Nylon guitar, cello, heavy minimal guitar, and vocal-forward, this song is about accountability, even when you believe what you’ve done was right.

Roots torn out, soil ruptured
This garden is a battlefield

Dirt and blood stain both my hands
I kneel inside what I have done

The landslide she caused killed many and hurt many more. She helps find survivors as she’s recognized as the hero from her reputation. This serves as a knife twist.

His arms close around me
Tears against my neck

He tells me, “Breathe”
He tells me, “I’m here”

Another crack in my resolve
Not from grief this time

I’m not ready
I must be Iron

To do what must be done.

 

A nod to the Apprentice, and what he’s going through while following her. Among the strangers, only he truly sees what she is going through. He doesn’t tell her “it’s okay” or offer any words of comfort, just “I’m here.”

A shout cuts through the silence
Steel shines beneath the earth

A buried metal tunnel
Torn open by the mountain

No longer hidden
Seen by every eye

This serves as a transition in the story. What they couldn’t really tell people in track 1 is now apparent to the entire city. There’s something horrifying underground…

6. Adrenal Response

In this song, I wanted to lift our characters out of the darkness. The city is with them now, a joint purpose.

Black merchants approach
Offering forbidden Weapons

Widows come forward
Offering inherited Armor

We are with you
We are with you

The energy in this song is upbeat, fast, and transitions away from the somber tone of the previous track. Plenty of ripping guitars, and the AI drums went a little nuts, but I was here for it.

Not much story-wise happens in this song aside from our characters getting resupplied. It’s a fun listen that gets to be a song without a complicated narration of events, like in the next two tracks.

7. Cut Through Them

Our party blows open the tunnel and heads down below. The mandolin plugin is back, representing the Huntress leading her party into a dungeon. Unlike the last time they went in, the party has better gear and knows what they will face. In my verses, I wrote out what each character is up to.

Draw, Pull, Aim, Release
Vital Spots, Critical Hits

The Chemist grins
And lights the fuse

The Tank goes first
And breaks them through

The Huntress draws
And picks her mark

Her Apprentice follows
One step behind

The Healer runs
Her bottles clink

The Soldier turns
And guards the flank

The party runs through the dungeon, overcoming the Men of Metal and the monsters, and reaches the control room. They spent all their supplies to get to this point. I wrap the song with the start of the Prince confrontation.

Musically, the song is a spectacle. A linear story push with a simple chorus and long verses. The instruments are here mainly to create atmosphere and push the story forward, with sequences to represent action. My goal is to give room for the listener’s imagination to visualize what is going on.

8. Wild Laughter

Oh boy, here we go. The Kefka confrontation that I’ve been building up to this entire time happens here. If you are reading this and you haven’t listened to the music yet, I’d suggest you stop reading and go experience the story, because a big spoiler is coming.

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Alright, if you’re still reading this, I’m going to assume you’re good to move forward. The entire song is not really a song, and more an “Act”. Same as before, the music is here to push the story along.

The party, exhausted and running low on HP, supplies, etc., now has to face the final boss of the album, the Prince. And to make things worse, the Prince is cheating. He has god mode turned on, represented by purple flames. The party tries to hit him with everything they have, all to do no damage. The Huntress pulls her trump card. The one that worked against “The Scarred Wall”: hundreds of small explosives that she keeps in her coat. She dumps them across the floor, and in this tight space, she doesn’t expect to live through the experience.

Boom.

The smoke clears, and the Prince is untouched, and yet, the Huntress is there with her health blinking in the red. The Prince then makes his first attack, a single swing, killing our Hero.

The Huntress lies among the ruins
A wicked grin still on her face

The boy who followed in her footprints
Will never follow them again

A warrior stands among the wreckage

She knew

They would not stop

They would not stop

Until they killed him

Episode 2 ends with the Apprentice being handed the responsibility of finishing her mission.

“And Scene”.

Episode 3

With the death of the Huntress, I changed the composition to be led by male vocals. This is to represent the Apprentice, as this has now become his story. Lyra becomes Riot’s backup vocalist. This allowed me to sing most of the album myself, using Riot as an autotune. Also, in this episode, I broke away from the nylon guitar and gave the Apprentice something unique to him: Genesis-era chiptune support, and it worked well.

1. Funeral of Rust

This song is our funeral for the Huntress. A doom metal-style opening to address the trauma of how the last episode ended, while introducing our male vocals to the listener.

Hidden Oxidation
Weakened Bonds
Rust forms
From the inside out

No one saw
How deep it spread

Strong for so long
She died for us

The Huntress hyper-focused on her mission, staying Iron until the end. Oxidation was a big part of her arc, hence we are here at her Funeral of Rust.

Saved twice before I served her
Saved twice before I knew

I knew her anger
I knew her silence

My Hero, My Huntress
My Mentor

I’ll still fight for her!

The Apprentice says out loud what he’s feeling, unlike his mentor. Whereas her strength came from iron, his comes from water. Emotion.

Musically, I stay minimalistic. Simple riffs, cello support, and loud, slow drums.

2. Legend of Sepitath

I open with chiptune, setting the stage for the rest of the album. Its cheerful sound is such a contrast to the dramatic subject that I can’t help but enjoy how it worked.

Our Apprentice and party are completely lost as to what to do. The Prince can’t be touched, they lost their leader, and they fled with their tails between their legs. (Off camera.) If you are an A86 fan, you might know who comes to their aid. A dry, sandy planet suddenly experiences mist, and in it…

Mist crawls across the sand
Shapes move inside

My hand closes on the hilt
Figures through the haze

A woman
A child

A woman with her own agenda, who knows of their situation, coming out of nowhere to help them. Almost too good to be true. Almost as if she has her own story that might be told later.

She knows too much
She knows our dead
She speaks of violet fire
Of rings upon their hands

She knows too much
To find me here by chance

Why does she know
The Legend of Sepitath?

Our MC takes the hand of the child and is shown the Prince, his shadow, and far beyond the desert sands, a tower with a staff. A weapon against the flame.

I return
My body numb

The woman gone
The child gone

Nothing but sand
And somewhere beyond it…

Sepitath.

So many different games that I’ve played went into the inspiration here. It was really a fun one to produce.

3. The Endless Sands

Mites in an hourglass
Brutal hours pass
Step by sinking step

Though we are together
In this trial we’re alone
In the Endless Sands

The environment is once again the villain. It’s hard not to address the fact that this planet is such a bitch to live on. The concept of being alone in a trial, even with others, is one that I really wanted to establish.

The Apprentice had to cross the desert once before, as a young boy, and as it’s now his story, putting him back out there walking in the sinking sand as a man seemed appropriate. Facing his emotional demons head-on.

Sweet Irony

Our healer was the first to break
She says, “go on”
While we carry her

Our man in iron
Kneels in defeat
He says, “Go on”
While we drag him

I will not leave another
Behind!

Our MC pushes on, refusing to leave others behind after what happened in his own childhood.

On the horizon
Past the false ocean

A Tower breaks the sky.

I end the song with our party finding the tower.

4. Tower of Sepitath

The chiptune is back, and so are some heavy and hard riffs.

Tower of Sepitath
Shell of a dead god

Floor by floor
We climb through horror

Tower of Sepitath
No turning back

Our characters can’t go back. They push up through the floors, each one containing a test, as they run through supplies.

We reached the summit
My team drops to their knees

A massive imp blocks the path
The staff waits behind it

Purple flames burn in its eyes

I stop dead

My hands start shaking
My jaw locks shut

Then something breaks

I rip my blade free
And sprint straight at it

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

The story’s first F-bomb. I intentionally wrote clean songs for our story to this point. However, the Apprentice has just gone through too much. The purple flames were just too much for him.

I walked between the
halves of a dying demon
Twitching on the floor

The staff was plain
A violet jewel
Set into its crown

And after all the walking and fighting, the staff is a plain, ordinary-looking object.

5. Below the Tower, to the Stars

A fun and strange song. One of my favorite strange songs, Grief Bears the Smithy, was created from a poem I wrote. No chorus, verses, or traditional song structure. This one works the same way. The party has what they came for, but they are spent and without supplies. How the hell are they going to make it back to the city now?

Turns out they don’t have to. They walk down the stairs to discover a new door opened at the bottom. With staff in hand, they walk into yet another factory. This time the Men of Metal are kneeling, recognizing the party as a royal member. The Chemist still holds bombs, skeptical, until they find big-ass spaceships. Chiptune comes in clutch here as I transition the story to a high-tech facility.

“Welcome royal, to the facility”
“How can we be of service?”

My eyes narrow, the medic at my side.

She says “Take us to the prince”
They answer “Right this way”

To the Stars you’ll go
Come now

To the Stars You’ll go
Sit down

Hold on tight
Soon now
Hold on tight

The sands look so small from up here.

And just like that, our party, with their sandy armor and weapons, is in space.

6. Our Masters Abandon

Our last “Act”-style song. The party shows up at a space station, a city above the sky, and it’s time to fuck things up.

At this point, the party are experts at killing these mobs. They are leveled up, pissed, and ready to finish this.

Our Masters Abandon
When servants fall

Power borrowed
Was never yours at all

Pray louder
Beg harder

When the final curtain calls

Our Masters Abandon
Our Masters Abandon

While they tear through the satellite, they recognize the same architecture and systems from the factories below and finally understand that this ancient infrastructure above the planet has been tied to what’s been happening for two thousand years.

Control room opens
Black armor waits

A vicious grin
An old mistake

Purple fire
Fills the room

The Soldier raises
Sepitath’s staff

Violet jewel
Drinks the flame

For the first time
The Prince looks afraid

There’s nothing quite like someone getting what’s coming to them. There’s a satisfaction, and under it, spiritually, we know we should not enjoy it, but the animal in us still does.

The party beats the living fuck out of the Prince. There really wasn’t much of a fight. With god mode turned off, they wreck him. All the while, the Prince begs for his master’s power to come back.

Once defeated, our heroes watch as a shadow leaves the Prince’s body and flees to a nearby asteroid.

7. After the Huntress Fell

This song was the single that I released back in May. This entire story was in my head back then, and I tried to capture a part of it with this song. For our album, it serves as a recap song. The team is ready to take on the big bad evil thing that has kept their civilization in ruins for over 2,000 years.

8. How to Kill a Demon

This is it, the final song of the album. The final confrontation. A shit-talking demon.

I brought the mandolin plugin back one more time. The Huntress is here in spirit behind her team.

The music is full of swagger and arrogance. Bouncy riffs to represent the demon.

Inside the stone
Beyond the stars

Five shadows enter
One waits in the dark

Blackened flesh
White teeth

“Finally.”

“I whispered to kings
Before your names”

“I gave them power
They gave me pain”

Close the reservoirs
Build the machines
Keep them afraid
Keep feeding me

Two thousand years
Your world has died

“And every death
Kept me alive.”

The monologues give the demon some depth while going over his motives.

Hammer breaks
The Soldier bleeds

Bombs ignite
It barely sees

Our Healer screams
I charge alone

My blade goes through
It isn’t enough

“You crossed the stars
For this?”

“You buried your Huntress
For this?”

“I tasted her suffering too.”

The party gives it everything they have, but, in the words of Jason Lee, “I’m a freakin demon.” And it takes all the damage and just keeps talking shit.

That is, until…

A hand
On my shoulder

No weight
But I know it

A whisper

“Drink.”

I smile.

“Of course.”

The Apprentice decides to follow in his mentor’s footprints in the sand, but this time, with a much bigger bomb. Black merchants and forbidden weapons.

I take the bag
From my Chemist

She understands
Before I do

One last look
At my family

Now I understand
Her final smile

I climb its back
Drive steel through bone

Lock myself in
It cannot run

The fuse burns

“GET OFF ME!”

I remember her
The demon understands

Pull

Click

“No!”

Cinematic, tragic, and yet, this is how the story formed in my mind.

Two stones
Upon the hill

The Huntress
Her Apprentice

Clouds gather
Above the sand

One drop
Then another

For the first time
In two thousand years

The sands

Drink.

With the death of the demon, the satellites, the Prince, and the Disalts, the planet was finally able to do what it was stopped from doing. Rain, such a simple thing, and yet, it’s the key to everything.

Final Thoughts

This story means a lot to me. A childhood memory stands as my biggest inspiration. I hope that you enjoyed the ride, and will come visit the sands every once in a while, to listen to the story of a mentor who was too young to be a good one, and an apprentice who followed her anyway.