Damn Your Eyes Here are releasing their debut album "Kill The Outside" this week and to celebrate we asked Artie Alexander to tell us about the song "Ascension". is the story:
The song Ascension was what I would call revival song. I had stopped playing music around 2003 and started a family. By the time I got the itch again it was 2015. I found myself remembering a ton of riffs I had written back in the early 2000's.
One of those riffs that I had written with Oddie McLaughlin was the backbone of Ascension. With a local drummer I started to rewrite some of those main parts and piece together a song with aggressive, big guitars with a breakdown that we could build back up into a strong powerful finish. After all the parts were finally put together I recorded the song in my home studio. As with ANY song, I write the riffs first and I build the melodies, cadence and lyrics off of the riffs. I never write lyrics and try and write to them.
It was about 2016 when I began to write the lyrics for Ascension and the political climate in America was to say the least, very divided. EVERYONE had a strong opinion on the elections and I found myself thinking how there wasn't a single candidate who was for the people. Matter of fact everyone in office or running for one was out for themselves. On top of that, we are getting ripped off from every angle from our government. Tax dollars being spent on airplanes that go from the assembly line straight to the junk yard and that is just one example.
The first line of Ascension kicked it all off. "Get up off your knees," set the tone for the whole song. How can we campaign, support and fight with our loved ones over people who could care less about anyone but themselves. So it became a call to revolution, twisting old sayings and using lines from the "Star Spangled Banner" to jump off of and make points. To be very clear, it's a song idea, it's not my overall ideology.
I recorded the song with me doing all the vocal parts just to see how it worked out. After our singer Kenny Vincent Jr. joined he was singing all the parts but he expressed how he wanted me to do some of the parts like I had recorded them on my demos. That's when we began to share vocal duties and define our sound.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself right here!
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