New York death dealers Afterbirth have debuted a third song off their forthcoming record The Time Traveler’s Dilemma titled “Sifting Through The Sands Of The Unholy”. Guitarist Cody Drasser commented:
“Originally, this song was always intended to be an instrumental. Even when we had our original, pioneering death metal vocalist Matt Duncan in the band and I was preparing the song to show to the rest of the members, it always had a sense, to me at least, of being a long, epic, and atmospheric progressive death metal track that lent itself more to mental imagery and inner wanderings than needing any particular lyrical vision. Conceptually, I had always been reminded of the horrific ambience and terror of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Nameless City when I was piecing the song together. The song title itself arose from a late-night death metal talk with a friend of mine many years ago and it always stuck in my head as being particularly inventive and memorable. Musically, it springs from inspiration guided by my early love for thrash and heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, Kreator, Megadeth, Metallica, etc. as I wanted to capture and evoke the aura and spirit that those bands stirred up in my young psyche with their adventurous, legendary songwriting, especially when it came to some of their more extended, and epic song passages. For a long time it did exist as the instrumental version. After Matt’s departure from the band and new vocalist Will Smith coming on board, we all spoke about the idea of perhaps adding lyrics to the song; while I might have been slightly hesitant at first, Will presented ideas to the band that coincided with my own personal interpretations that were a perfect fit for the song and honestly too good to ignore just for the sake of keeping the track strictly instrumental.”
Smith adds:
“This song was originally written as an instrumental, but when I heard it I could imagine classic Afterbirth vocal patterns and easily convinced the guys to let me write and record the song’s vocal mix. I’m very proud that it ended up being used on the album. Like most of the album, the song title and concept were established before I joined and I just wrote the lyrics based on my bandmate’s ideas. Most of the visuals and narrative are based on the flashback scenes from The Exorcist II and Exorcist: The Beginning which explored that back story further.”
The Time Traveler’s Dilemma will be release through Unique Leader Records on July 28th. Secure your copy ahead of its release on IndieMerch or Bandcamp.
[via Decibel]