OCTAVIA SPERATI "Grace Submerged" Song-By-Song Special
Ein Artikel von Krümel vom 22.06.2007 (16795 mal gelesen)
‘Guilty Am I’
Silje: “This is taken from our first EP. There’s a difficult story behind that. We all got to know each other through the death of a good friend of ours. Trine, Gyri, Bodil and me got together and we turned out to be really good friends. I had a really hard time after our friend died, and the lyrics are based around my feelings about it all. I was stuck with a feeling of guilt. I decided not to talk about it, until now basically. We just didn’t want to use it as a press thing, and also out of respect for the guy’s family. It’s a very personal song, but that is the true story behind it. Of course I think about it still, but it’s a song now and that helps me to deal with it.”
Gyri: “'Guilty....' is one of the first songs I ever wrote, and it might sound strange but this is a song that I'm still very happy with. It's just very straightforward and heavy. The simple and pounding riffs work good with Silje's vocals, which is really powerful - I rembember the first time I heard her sing the lyrics I was in awe! The synth intro still gives me goose bumps, and the song has a really heavy feel to it which always gets the audience going when we play it live.”
‘Moonlit’
Silje: “Some of the songs are very obtuse. I don’t want them to be about anything specific. I want them to be open to interpretation, but this is probably the most political song on the album. We are not a political band, but I find it very hard to not be influenced by everything you read or see on the news. Mainly all the religious fights from poor countries, both economically and culturally, towards our world are themes that makes me want to speak out. But at the same time the right of speech is threatened. It all comes down to those people being poor and unhappy and often lack knowledge of what they actually are fighting against. This song is reflected on the cover as well. As you can see on the front there is the planet about to be “going under”. One of the things we mean by that is to mirror how we as human beings are capable of destroying the beauty surrounding us, both physically and psychologically. It might sound like a cliché, but it is still very real to me
Gyri: “When I started writing this song the idea was that it should bevery slow and doomy, very Type O-like. So I started with the intro riff, which originally were much more low-tempo than it turned out in the end. I couldn't find the proper riff to get the song going, I tried different things that didn't work and finally I put it aside for a while. Then one morning I woke up with the chorus riff on my mind (which is the reason why the working title was 'D-song' - short for Dream-song'). Since the chorus had the potential of being very massive, I wanted to keep the verse down, and decided to make it bass-driven. Together with the faster part in the middle I think Moonlit ended up miles from where it started, but it resulted in a song with lots of dynamics and punch!”
‘Going North’
Silje: “There’s a lot of people who want to go north to the richer countries, because they’re having a miserable time in their own ones. At the same time, I’m moving around the world quite a lot myself, so the song is about the feeling people have when they’re constantly searching for somewhere better. Everyone has things they want to get away from, but we’re constantly thrown back and we can’t escape.”
Trine:”When a track finally is recorded and all is set and done, it is the first time to really decide whether the track turned out the way I had figured. And when it comes to Going North I am very satisfied with what I hear! In particularly as this song has been through quite a lot, as it was one of the “creativity tasks” for the auditioning drummers after Kikken left the band; I have to admit I am very happy it turned out to be Ivar`s drum style on this track! Perhaps it’s because we have evolved similarities in musical preferences after playing together in another band for some time, but I find him perfect for it! And with vocals and everything set, I really enjoy listening to this track “
‘Don’t Believe A Word’
Silje: “We wanted a song that was a little quieter for the album, to add some contrast. We got the idea of doing this Thin Lizzy song and were wondering if it we could do a quiet version of it. In the end, we thought it was a good idea, so we went for it. The lyrics aren’t the nicest lyrics in the world, and at the same time, it’s a really sad song. Even on the original version, which is very upbeat and catchy, it’s still a sad song. Somehow we made it even sadder. We knew that if we messed around with it and spoiled it then people would hate us, so it was a scary thing to do. But I think we did a good job.”
Tone: When Silje called me with the suggestion of doing a cover of this song, I immediately thought it was a good idea, being an old Thin Lizzy fan. We both agreed we wanted it slow and sad, and first step for me in the rearrangement of the music was listening to the original version over and over again, trying to hear it in a different way. I sat down with the piano and worked for some time, and then I played it over the phone for
Silje (not the first time we have presented ideas to each others that way…hehe). Since it was only going to be me and Silje on this song, we decided to do the recordings at my place, in MOF studio. Silje came over to Sandefjord for a few days, so we could work on the song together, before we went into studio with Morfeus for the recording. I am quite happy with the result, we wanted it to be very different from the original, and I think is. Luckily the rest of the band was pleased with the result as well, and agreed to put it on the album
‘…And Then The World Froze’
Silje: “This is another personal song. It’s about someone I met who wanted to talk to me but never did. He looked at me like I was someone he couldn’t reach. It’s a very strange, personal song. Sometimes I really regret writing lyrics like this because I have to stand up and explain them afterwards! (laughs).”
Bodil: “The ide for this song started with the intro/verse riff and then the rest of the riffs just came in naturally. I wanted a very straight forward song that would be great to play live. Usually it takes me a lot of time deciding how many times each verse and chorus should be repeated but with this song it was very easy.”
‘The Final Rest’
Silje: “This was inspired by when I was watching a reality TV programme about some drug addicts. It was really, really sad how they were trying to escape from their own lives. I know some people being trapped in their own desperation for drugs, and they try for years and years to get away from it. In essence, this song is about this.”
Bodil: “The chorus riffs in this song was made many years ago, and finally I came up with a verse riff to complete it. The mood in the intro is inspired by Twin Peaks which I always have been a huge fan of. In the end this song came out sounding totally different from what I initially thought it would. “
‘Deprivation’
Silje: “This is also from the first EP. It’s about a time when I was unable to sleep, so it’s about sleep deprivation. I was having lots of nightmares and thought I was losing my mind a little bit! It’s the perfect subject for another happy song, isn’t it?”
Trine: “The difference between this track and the one included on the EP is basically two new riffs and a re-issue of the refrain. As it has always felt like the song never was really finished, it now finally is, and with a gloomier touch; I am very happy with the way it turned out holding the right amount of drive and doom! I love this track!”
‘Provenance Of Hate’
Silje: “This was written just after a break up, so I had to get out a lot of anger very quickly. You know how when you have a break up, there are a lot of feelings, a lot of anger and sadness. I guess this song is about one of the angry moments.”
Gyri: “This is also one of our older tunes - and as one of the heavyest songs we thought it deserved a spot on the record. This is a song which normally also works really well live - it has massive drums, intense guitar parts and some cool twists.”
‘Dead End Poem’
Silje: ”These lyrics were written by Ivar from Enslaved. In fact, he is the reason why I started to sing. He’s the first person who made me sing. He wrote a song (not for Enslaved) and asked me to make vocals on it. I really liked it, but his computer blew up so the music disappeared. Anyway, I made a brand new piano version of the song and decided I wanted to use both the lyrics and the vocal melodies for our new album, so I asked Ivar if that was okay and he was happy about it. We made a completely new version of it. Enslaved used the lyrics on their ‘Below The Lights’ album, and it was called ‘As Fire Swept Clean The Earth’. We changed the title for our album.”
’Submerged’
Tone: “This song was originally written as a stageintro some time ago. I had some ideas for the song, which I wanted atmospheric, but it was not yet finished when I went into studio. Morfeus was doing the recording, and he had some good inputs, and started playing around with some sounds. In the end the song became a result of us working together, me doing the piano and strings, and him doing the samples and soundeffects. When we were recording ‘Grace Submerged’ it was Trines idea that we should put the stageintro on the record, as an outro. Morfeus did a remix of the intro, making it a bit shorter than the original version, and it was given the name ‘Submerged’. We still use it as a stageintro, but now we are using this version from the record.”
