Story behind the record "Black n' Red"

As you already know, we produced our second record called “Black n’ Red” in 2012. This September the record will be released online. For this occasion we want to take you on the journey behind the scenes. This post starts the journey by explaining what the story behind “Black n’ Red” is. Besides this post, we’ll release a making of video of the song “Heroin” and do more stuff. 

Unlike the first record, which was basically a compilation of our best songs at the time, the album “Black n’ Red” has a certain complexity in it. This complexity is the frame of the painting and represents simply contradistinction or if you will contrasts.

As you could imagine the color black itself stands for dark, unpleasant, scary, or shocky scenes where the color red stands for warm, carrying, committing, or lightened scenes. The contrast line starts with the titel itself. The contrast of black and red comes from the ancient Greece with their mythology where they considered black and red as contradistinction. They thought that red (Eros) stood for love and life, and black (Tanatos) for death. These two symbols are placed in the whole record and appear in different forms. As already mentioned, the first form is the titel of the record itself.

The second appearance makes the track list. This list begins with dark songs and ends up with light and warmer songs. Though the album is in our opinion a classic heavy metal album, the contrast is marked by the melodies and arrangements of the songs. For instance, some songs content both symbols in the lyrics like the song Heroin, Goodbye or 666. Other songs only symbolize black (Tanatos) like Forsaken, the rest only symbolizes red (Eros), like “The Crying Train” or “What it’s worth for”. Also the dark songs are played in minor, where the love songs are played in major. There you have the second contrast.

The third appearance of the contrast makes the lyrics of each song. “Heroin” for example paints a scene where people get bound to drugs. The craving for it or the love they get of the sugar stands for the red.The sad end by the last shot stands of course for black. The contrast lives in this bizzar coexistance. Another contrast appears in the song “Goodbye". Though the song itself is played in D major the story is about a man who loses the fight against cancer. One contrast there. The second in this song is this. The man does not regret what happens in his life and thanks to his wife. This is red. After he died (black), he waits at the gates for her which is red again, though he stands on the dark side. Considering the ancient Greece again, this is about the river "stycs" where the dead stand on one side and the living on the other side. But it is possible to wait at the border for the living and watch them.

You see that this record is all about these two symbols, black and red. But why?

The point is that death is for certain and bad things can happen anytime. And still, if I didn't fear these things to happen I would be ready to receive the good and positive things like love. Death means here more than just the end of a humanbeing. It also means in a metaphoric way a loss of something. To me, love and death are the two dominant but subconscious motivators in human lifes. Most of us search for the one love. Having found it, the next station for both would be death. Maybe they stay together until the end of their lifes or maybe their love falls appart (metaphorical death) and the new search for someone or something to love starts all over again. We can not escape nor controll both things. They just happen because we are humanbeings. Though this view seems to be fatalistic, it also means you should not be afraid of dying because it happens normally in a natural way. However, what I want to say is that: What ever happens in life, it is heavier to keep on carying for something you love than throwing it away or letting it dying.

In sum, the record makes you think about the mentioned issue and takes you on an emotional ride with ups and downs. Don't miss it out!

Stay tuned for more information.

Enjoy Seasplash!