Liminal Rite

About

Liminal Rite via Metal Blade Records They say: It's strange to live in a time when information is immortal. While humans have been holding onto images since we could scrape the walls of caves and smear them with ochre, our ability to retain memories and ideas has become greatly sophisticated. I, as with many other, have found myself living in images and music from the past to ease the anxiety of facing the modern era. Moments of uncertainty can be assuaged by a familiar and predictable TV show. The fear of forgetting can be abated by snapping a photo and uploading it to social media. Even further, we can reflect and dwell on memories of past comfort. However, these reflections often turn into sour rumination. We find ourselves addicted to remembering. To hastily retreat into memory is to search for a community where no one live, and often those thoughts are interwoven with past mistakes and regret. Liminal Rite explores and amplifies my own tendency to depend on the past, and examines how nostalgia has become a means of self-medication that has only been magnified in recent year. These concepts are explored from the perspective of The Lost Man. He is an elderly individual who, having become lost in his current life, has made a pilgrimage to his childhood home. Though not explicitly stated through the lyric, he has begun noticing the first signs of dementia and in fear of losing the present, he has run to the past. Throughout the album he walks the property of his childhood home. He struggles to remember his family, the certainty of childhood, and the joy of familiarity. However, he is also flooded by deep regret for the accidental death of his brother. This event, only loosely alluded to by references to stones and broken gla, lead to his father disowning him and casting him out from his family. The album ends with the lost man becoming fully consumed by regret and despair. He realizes that his past does not belong to him, as he cannot separate the sorrow from the joy, and because his mind is slowly unraveling from memory lo. He sees that his current life, and as a result his future, is nothing but an existence of continued lo. He cannot have the childhood he remember, and the memory itself is unraveling day by day. He decides that if he cannot have his past or his future, he would rather die and take his history with him. He sets the house on fire and burns himself along with it, yielding himself to the cold and uncaring insects and animals that live in the surrounding wood. Liminal rite does not tell the story of suicide and despair as a means to be macabre for its own sake. Rather, it is a call to find a sense of self that utilizes the best parts of our past to move forward. It is a reminder that regret is only valuable if learned from and left behind. As was eloquently said by the late composer Gustav Mahler, “Tradition is not the worship of ash, but the preservation of fire”. released June 10, 2022 Album Recorded by Nico Mirolla, Sean Lang, Miah Lajeunesse and Christoph Clöser. Mixed by Miah Lajeunesse Mastered by Ryan Williams Track 3 and 10 - Feature pianist, fan, and friend of the band, Christopher Blaney's accompaniment Track 11 - "Beyond The Passage of Embers" Features saxophonist Christoph Clöser (Bohren, Der Club Of Gore) All Artwork was painted acrylic on canvas by Faith Veloro Layout and Designs by Raul Esquivel license .

via Last.fm

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