many worlds, free gods, and silence broken
where physics meets philosophy lives an idea: everything that can happen, actually does. every decision leads to the creation of alternate or parallel universes. it’s called the many worlds theory or hypothesis; an interesting, if disturbing, thought. getting older, it’s probably common to question what might be, or could have been, had you made a different decision and a different world unfolded around you. in many ways that’s what the new single is about; creating an alternate sonic universe within infinite singularity.
before infinite singularity, there were several bands in my teens. none of them ever went anywhere (I was in a band in my twenties that did, but that’s another story). i remember the last of those bands and the exact moment when it fell apart. there were six of us—two guitarists including me, a singer, a keyboardist, a bassist, and a drummer. we were working on this one transition from a fairly technical slayer-esque guitar passage to a spooky three-chord groove and couldn’t get it to mesh. i insisted we keep trying until everyone was tired and bored and pissed off at me. i received a phone call a few days later letting me know that I was no longer in the band. that spooky three-chord riff, written back in 2000, is the basis for the new song, “silence, broken.”
a version of that three-chord spooky riff also ended up on the second infinite singularity album silence (try saying that five times fast)—the first song, called “free gods.” as an album, silence is the most technical and ambitious infinite singularity effort to date. it took over a year and a half to record; the original goal was to release it on halloween 2003 but i missed that by almost three months, and it was released early january the next year. the song “free gods” was an extended philosophical critique of religion. i was a resentful lapsed catholic in my late teens when i penned those lyrics. “free gods” has over a dozen separate keyboard tracks, including a synthesized harpsichord, and a six-string bass guitar, both of which got “leads” in that seven-and-a-half-minute bit of organized chaos. i tried to fuse so many different musical styles I ended up making spooky prog rock. which isn’t a bad thing.
releasing the new single, “silence, broken,” is a tribute to that second album and the two decades since it happened. the new single draws on that same main riff, the one that got me kicked out of that band all those years ago. i know i just released ruins revisited: 20 years later, last year, so this probably seems like another attempt to recycle past (distinctly limited) glory. ruins revisited is not a remix; it’s the same album, recorded with better gear and higher production value, 20 years later, as infinite singularity began anew. I don’t like remixes.
but i am also a hypocrite. i feel differently about “revisiting” silence. i don’t want to replicate the songs from the original silence. unlike ruins, which is mostly nature poetry and dark mysticism, the songs on silence are about a descent into madness and self-destruction; they deal with some things that i’ve grown out of and others that i don’t want to revisit. with the creation of that album, there were decisions made early on that gave rise to an alternate universe. I’d like to re-imagine that universe from a different perspective—to go back in time, “break” it, and create a parallel universe. infinite singularity is, after all, an astrophysics pun. the singularity was the point from which the potentially infinite universe began. some have theorized that black holes contain singularities, and could themselves be the formation of possible other universes.
growing up in arlington, texas, many of my friends were metal heads, and many of them listened religiously to bands like pantera. hell, their guitarist lived a few miles from the house where i grew up. that ill-fated high school band told me they wanted to make “southern metal” and i didn’t fit with that. i was also an overbearing pain to work with. when i was 18, i started going to this club in dallas called the church to dance the night away to bands like the cure and joy division. dressed in black, slowly flailing hands around. it was so cathartic. i met the woman i would later marry there. i once attended a fetish ball dressed in black silk boxer briefs, knee-high platform boots, and a miniskirt made of saran wrap. it was a joke to my metalhead friends. it was an alternate universe to me. i leaned into the “metal thing” more so than the “goth thing” and those decisions reflected in my musical taste as well as the resulting first two albums.
i liked make-up and nail polish and barrettes in my hair (when i wasn’t stopped by concerned but well-intentioned parents on the way out the door, of course). i loved writing eerie keyboard suites and played piano before guitar (another point of ridicule in blue-collar texas). and there were many times when i’d pick up a guitar and experiment with minimalism—simple, evocative, repeating passages rather than riffs and leads. i played with drum samples and loops at a time when they were still rare, especially in rock and metal. and when it came time to sing, i looked more to peter steele or peter murphy than tom araya or phil anselmo for inspiration. “silence, broken” is a reimagining of “free gods” through the lens of someone who chose a different (and perhaps more personally authentic) path, artistically and perhaps in life, all those years ago.
many of the lyrics are the same. but there is a different emphasis. i’ve noticed a trend in metal toward hostility to religion; there are definitely goth artists like christian death and marilyn manson that live in this realm, as well, but i think back to the feel of being on that dance floor and how different it was from being in a slayer pit. both are cathartic, but anger in goth music is deferred, biting, sarcastic, like the often-misunderstood lyrics of type o negative or the self-owning sampled loops of religious and political leaders used by ministry. behind it there is deep emotion and quest for self-expression. “free gods” was a diatribe against religion, if a rather philosophical one. “silence, broken” is about a search for meaning, something we all engage in to varying degrees—and with varying degrees of success.
“silence, broken” is minimalistic. it uses a drum machine, simple, repetitive bass groove, and mostly clean guitar with a trent reznor-inspired “wall of noise” electric guitar climax. more dance floor and less mosh pit. i’ve recorded an ep worth of songs like this, mostly re-imagining songs/themes from the second album, silence. i’ll probably release these songs, and others if i feel so inspired, as singles over the next couple of years. one advantage of this alternate universe is the ability to perform live as a solo artist; i don’t want to perform spooky prog rock solo, by recording a bunch of backing tracks—it feels too milli vanilli. but this more stripped-down, minimalistic sound feels right when i plug in the drum machine, sample the bass, and use vocals, guitar, and a keyboard loop. i’m releasing the full version of the first rehearsal this friday on instagram. it’s a learning curve. beyond that, not sure what happens next.
so, through the looking glass, to a different world, an alternate musical reality that arose some two decades ago, beginning with silence, broken.
silence, broken: available on all streaming platforms october 27, 2023.
photo by author, lake bemidji, autumn 2022.
