Albion-Tharotia - Run

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DavidXNewton

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Published on September 21, 2016 1:18:41 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-HUw-_NaJE

Duration: 4:50

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Listen/download the Poison Skies: http://albion.bandcamp.com
The Afflicted: http://bit.ly/theafflicted

David says...
At the very beginning when I was putting a vague plan together for the songs on the album, the note I had under this song title was “Try to write Deadlands by Gamma Ray”. It’s almost eerily appropriate to the story, describing someone evading snipers in a city, and you’ll be able to hear obvious influences from it. And the image of Marcus’s run in the novel was definitely the point where I realized I had to do something musically with this story.

Every song seems to be a first for something on this album, and this was the first one that I finished both the music and lyrics for, all the way back when I thought this was going to be a Modplug project. It was also the first that I used to experiment with moving into a full DAW with Impact Soundworks’ Shreddage plugin. I loved the results even after the first pass and just kept learning as I went!

This is a much more straightforward song than either of the others before it, with a simple ABABCB formula, but there are a couple of unusual touches in it I like, such as the stumbling part after the first chorus that doesn’t keep constant time. And at the end, the harpsichord plays the riff from Iron Maiden’s “Hallowed Be Thy Name” in the background, another song about a character close to death.

Kjorteo says...
The inspiration for The Afflicted originally came from a dream I had. There was plenty of revising and editing and fleshing out ideas to turn half-baked illogical dream scenes into a complete and cohesive story, but one of the very few images to survive completely unchanged was that of Marcus' final run through the abandoned city. Even the vision of Keeper Edward afterward used to be handled differently, but the run itself was always as it is here. It was something I saw in the dream and that resonated deeply with me, something that I really wanted to do something with when I woke up. David cites that scene as something powerful enough to grab him and let him know he had to do something with this, to which I can only say... me, too!

This is one of the first songs David made for the album, and its original rendition predated his new approach of using Reaper and Shreddage and his own real-life vocals. If you've heard any of Albion's earlier albums, they used to be pure Modplug files with a flute instrument serving as the "vocals." Said flute instrument is alarmingly high, leading me to believe David imagined Michael Kiske or Ben Sotto in his band when he was putting those tracks together. The Poison Skies started as a Modplug album, too, which led me to wonder how he was going to turn those impossibly high flute notes into real vocals when that change was made. His voice couldn't actually do that, could it?

Indeed, there were some elements that had to be adjusted or rewritten accordingly. The chorus to Out in the Wilds, for example--I still really like how the melody sounded in the original, but it just was not physically possible in real life. The prechorus in this song was another part I wondered about, but for this one, it turned out that David's solution to the high notes was to defy my expectations and sing them. His voice quite literally rose to the challenge, and so this one floored me the first time I heard it.