#Were you encumbered by the weight of your bloodied hands? or was it the fear that the heaviness would bury another had it landed on them

[bloodiedstar]

[A home you thought you couldn't return to]

[ominoose]

DBD Killers React To Cake Offering

Characters: The Plague, Ghostface, The Cannibal Plot: Killer's react to being given a Ghostly Gateau cake offering. TW's: None. The Plague's is mostly inspired from her youth in the lore in case it wasn't too obvious.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞 - 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬

The Plague was found in the middle of the temple after two gens had popped, sat cross-legged over the central grating, gold highlighting her face from the archway above. Her back was to you as you and your fellow survivors crouched towards her as silently as possible, craning to see what had disturbed the bloody, monotonous routine of the realm.

The metal Profane Censer that had been swung brutally at your head too many times to count now lay discarded to her side, still close, its floral fumes encompassing the whole temple, cascading up to the sky in ropes. She had been here for a while.

You went around the stairs on the surrounding platforms, creeping to hide behind a stone as you stared down at the priestess. She was sat rigid in front of the gateau. Confusion raked over you at what was supposed to be a simple offering, yet the killer was entirely entranced by it.

The Plague was still as she looked the cake over, her fingers dancing over it lightly, tilting her head an inch. As keenly as she was staring at it, her eyes almost looked to be seeing something else, another place, another time. There was a softness to her expression, a completely foreign look on eyes so often narrowed for the hunt.

Out of curiosity you stood up from your spot and carefully walked down the steps, edging cautiously in front of the killer, not daring to risk a surprise.

As you stopped before the woman, her eyes snapped up towards you, the deathly look coming back immediately. If it hadn’t been for the sharp clinking of the censer chain, you’d have thought she was frozen, like you. Now that you were this close, fear held you in place.

Your teammates must have scattered without you noticing as another gen popped in the distance. The Plague still hadn’t moved.

As slowly as you could, terrified of spooking her out of whatever calm she had found, you sat down across from her. The cake was nearly toppling over from the weight of the icing it was encumbered with and was the thing to finally draw her attention. She regarded the dessert closely, and finally reached her finger out to scrape off the smallest bit of icing. An expression of shock spread on her face as she brought the finger to her mouth, and the far-off look settled on her eyes once more.

You both remained that way until the exit gates were opened. The silence became comfortable as The Plague remained, looking dreamily at the cake even after you silently slipped away. It was the calmest trial you’ve ever had.

𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 - 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

The sight of the cake was a complete jolt to the system as you leapt through the windowsill of one of the many white picket fenced houses of Haddonfield. Enough of a fright to stop you dead in your tracks mid-chase with Ghostface as you stood staring at the table in shock.

Ghostface hadn’t been far behind you, and nearly tripped over you as he ran into the room, just as confused at a survivor stopping mid-chase, and just as shocked to see a gore covered gateau.

Both of you were stood there, your body still facing the door you had been about to run out of and hand on the gash on your side, and Ghostface with his knife half-raised in the air, facing the dessert with furrowed brows.

Slowly, you both turned to stare at each other, double-taking on the cake at the same time before the situation had settled upon you. Unfortunately, Ghostface was faster to react, and a knife went clean through your shoulder with enough force to make an audible thunk noise before you had the chance to run.

You went limp on the ground, only capable of groaning while your hands feebly clawed you forward at a snail's pace.

Ghostface checked the cake out once more, pulling his camera out cautiously and snapping a slow picture of it. Satisfied with his new and rare shot, you were hauled over a stiff shoulder, the breath knocking out of your lungs. Before you could even suck all the air back in a hook was piercing through you while a scream tore itself from deep within your lungs.

When the blackspots finally cleared from your eyes and the shock wore off, you realised you were hanging in front of the house.

Drawers were slamming inside, and the faint clanging of metal echoed down the empty street. You weren’t left wondering over the noise for long as the hooded killer came out of the house, a dining chair dragging behind him with one hand and a slice of cake held in his other.

He pulled the chair out in front of you and dropped into it with an audible sigh, pulling his mask up ever so slightly and popping a piece of cake into his mouth.

Your teammates were too scared to get you at that point, so on the hook you stayed, watching the man slowly savour the sweet treat. Under the streetlights you could almost see a faint, satisfied smirk. It was the most humiliating trial you’d ever been in.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐛𝐚𝐥 - 𝐁𝐮𝐛𝐛𝐚 𝐒𝐚𝐰𝐲𝐞𝐫

You had foolishly felt safe crouching behind a door of the farmhouse when you heard the pounding heartbeat just before he hooked another survivor. A chainsaw splintering through the door you had been leaning against was the last thing you expected, nearly slicing down through you as you picked yourself up and ran further into the house.

You could hear The Cannibals thudding boots behind you as he followed suit, revving his chainsaw in anticipation. Your next mistake was turning round to make sure said chainsaw wasn’t too close, not seeing the dining area until you fell over one of the kitchen chairs.

The sound of the chainsaw pierced your ears while you huddled into yourself on the ground, the ringing in your eyes lasting forever, but the pain of a nearly amputated limb never came.

Slowly, you unfurled yourself and came face to face with black, bloodied boots. You looked up slowly past the yellow apron and found the large man wasn’t even staring at you. His head was tilted curiously at the table you were half under, humming curiously to himself.

The curious look fell upon you, still laid out on the wooden floor. His humming became harsh huffs of air as he looked around, shifting on his feet like he wasn’t sure of himself. You almost thought you could slip away until strong hands hauled you up by your armpits and dumped you onto a chair.

He seemed even more unsure now, hands clenching and unclenching around his chainsaw, whines escaping from his mask. After a few tense moments of staring at each other, he seemed to lose some tension and settle. Slowly, he put his chainsaw down on the table next to you and took a slow step back, dark eyes studying your reaction. You remained still, completely too terrified and uncomfortable in the new situation to do anything but wait in tense anticipation of whatever unfolded next.

A quick nod and high pitched chirp came from The Cannibal before he started puttering around the kitchen, opening cabinets and babbling to himself. As you followed his movements around the room, the cake caught your eye, nearly causing you to jump out of the seat. The entrails were still oozing blood over the icing, intestines partially sliding down the side.

You did jump when a plate and its accompanying cutlery were placed neatly in front of you, reflecting the similar set that was already placed across the table from you. The Cannibal pulled out a knife and made an effort of carefully cutting a slice of cake that he just as carefully deposited in front of you, and another on the second plate.

Realisation set in as he pulled himself into the chair across from you, tapping his cutlery on the table as he nodded approvingly at you, a genuine smile shining from under the face-mask.

Out of mostly fear-induced obligation, you shakily picked up a fork and brought a piece of the cake to your mouth. It tasted as though it would’ve been the best cake you’ve ever eaten, had it not been for the taste of copper and flesh. After seeing you take your first bite, The Cannibal chirped gleefully and started shovelling the cake into his face.

You both remained at the rickety wooden dining table, The Cannibal giving you another heaping serving of gory gateau and holding a one-way conversation with babbles, until the familiar bong of the exit gate opening rushed through the map. The large man noticeably deflated when he heard it, sighing and hanging his head in sadness. Part of you wanted to reach out and pat his shoulder in sympathy until he rushed round the table and yanked you back over his shoulder.

Against the cage of his huge arm, you struggled fruitlessly until you saw a hook pass you by. “Uh-ah, Uh-ah!” The Cannibal croaked, shaking his head violently, and you went limp, once again waiting tensely for what came next.

You were placed on the stone floor of the exit gate with a surprising amount of care, only catching the man waddle backwards from you back into the cornfield. He was still slouched in dismay, and when you finally looked straight up at him, a thick handed waved shyly at you. It was the grossest, but most comforting trial you’ve ever been in.

[js116]

Silent Planet’s Everything Was Sound

22 May 2021

A wee bit of background before we get to the main event:

Silent Planet is an American post-rock metalcore band from California headed by retired psychologist/therapist Garrett Russell, and Everything Was Sound is their second studio album. Released in 2016, this concept album did nothing short of blow my mind; the total runtime is 41 minutes, but it took me a couple hours to write out everything I picked up from each song. 

Everything Was Sound has thirteen tracks, standard, so that is the album I listened to for this review! For the purpose of sticking with the album���s story concept, I’ll be adding my standout lyric quotes with the description of the song, rather than sticking them at the end. 

- I want to post a warning before I get into this album: this one covers topics some may view as disturbing. There are mentions of death, suicide, war, several mental disorders including depression and eating disorders), politics, and generally dark themes. This is where you should stop reading if any of these will bother you. -

The concept for this album revolves around the idea of the “panopticon,” which describes a circular prison surrounding a central guard tower. There are bright lights shining down from the tower so that the prisoners cannot see into the tower, where they are told there are guards watching them constantly. The prisoners are isolated from the guards and each other, being unable to see into the tower or other cells due to the walls and the lights. This setup removes the autonomy of the prisoners, and the paranoia that the guards are constantly watching (whether there are truly guards in the tower or not) removes the will to try to escape or act out. 

This concept is introduced in the first track of the album, Inherit the Earth. This first song begins by referencing the events of the previous album’s last track (Depths II from album The Night God Slept, in which the viewer has a vivid vision in the forest before falling asleep) as having happened only a few hours before, and now the viewer is waking up in the woods to find it is starting to rain. The viewer (us) stumbles through the rain and the forest under they find a structure: the panopticon. They enter the prison to escape the weather, and so we are pulled into the story of the album -- a metaphor for the human condition. 

“We inherit the earth, we inherit the war / I inhabit the wound, I dwell in the harm / Oh how far we fall: We’re casualties of time / Oh how far we fall: Forgive existence.”

The second track, Psychescape, (and each subsequent song, except the last one) introduces us to the contents of one of the cells: Schizophrenia. The theme of this song is paranoia and delusion, and the tower’s lights and watching guards are revealed to us; there are two distinct, conflicting voices. 

“I waited on the tracks of reason / But my train of thought never came / It never came.”

“Scrawled across the walls the suffering saint cries out: / ‘Is it madness to retreat from the myopic gaze that holds us captive?’”

Dying In Circles, the third track and second cell, holds the prisoner Organized Religion. Heavily rooted in Biblical principles, I was surprised to find this track used those principles to highlight and call out the hypocrisy of the modern church; the gatekeeping, neglect of those in need, the isolation of outsiders. Silent Planet calls on systematic religion (particularly modern Christianity) to return to its original purpose: to care for others, rather than turn them away or determine their worth as an organization. They are charged with trading their religious superiority for the awe and compassion for humanity they once had; to return to being a religion about the life of God, rather than being solely about his death. I really do love the idea of the “Image of God” being represented by a homeless person sleeping on church steps. 

“Beside the shadow of a frozen chapel / Under the marriage of cross and crown / Outside the privilege of the ‘chosen ones’ / The Image of God is sleeping on the ground.”

“We are the eulogy at the funeral of God.”

“Trade your certainty for awe.”

The fourth track took me for a spin, personally, as I’ve encountered the prisoner described here myself. Understanding Love as Loss opens with a few brief lyrics outlining the suicides of writers Sylvia Plath (“Searching for solace in a toxic temple--” death by toxic inhalation), Earnest Hemingway (“Fragments of lead climbing through your head--” death by shotgun to the skull), Virginia Woolf (“Stones load your coat as you wade through the winter current / Dancing with the dead on the riverbed--” death by drowning), and David Foster Wallace (“Wanton hanging of the wise pale king.” death by hanging). 

The line immediately following the deaths of these writers stuck out to me, as a fellow writer who has struggled with depression: “And I see myself.”

The title of the song explains that love is sacrifice; you lose a piece of yourself when you love someone else. Lose that piece, Silent Planet urges in this song; lose that piece to another person instead of losing yourself to your suffering. 

Lead vocalist Garrett Russell: “[Sometimes with depression,] the world feels like there’s no color. Even if you can’t see the color, be bold enough to ask someone to describe the colors of the world to you.”

This song was my favorite this far into the album, for its bare, unflinching honesty on the subject. The footnotes for this song in the album booklet include the number for the National Suicide Hotline. I respect that. 

The fifth track, Tout Comprendre, draws its title from the first half of a French quote, and translates loosely to “To Understand All.” This song is an interlude, meaning it does not contain any lyrics, and it is the first of two interludes on the set. 

Immediately following Tout Comprendre comes Panic Room, a track that tells the story of a veteran who has come home, but is mentally haunted by the war. The lyrics take us to bloody battlefields in desert sands, and lay out the plague of terror-memories. Panic Room’s prisoner is PTSD, and it delves into the American treatment of returned veterans and their struggles with armed-conflict trauma. 

“Praise me for my valor, lay me in a crimson tower / Justify my endless terror as my ‘finest hour’ / Treat me as a token to deceive the child / Whom we fatten for this scapegoat slaughter / I learned to fight, I learned to kill, I learned to steal / I learned that none of this is real, none of this is real / None of this is real, NONE OF THIS IS REAL”

Just after this verse, there is a brief, almost total silence, before the song resumes. There are several breaks like this in the music; periods of calm between the intense music. 

We move on to the fifth cell and seventh track, REDIVIDER. This song threw me off at first; I thought the words were being reused and rearranged before I realized the song is a palindrome. About halfway through, the lyrics flip to mirror the first half of the song. 

“Death ran away then life flooded in world / This I am: Imbalance, beautifully so / Hands connected, perhaps… / Then dead reflections saw you / I did, didn’t I? / I didn’t, did I? / You saw reflections dead then / Perhaps, connected hands… / So beautifully imbalance: Am I this world? / In flooded life then away ran Death.” 

The fifth prisoner is Bipolar Disorder. 

Nervosa is the name of the eighth track; this one disturbed me the most out of all of them. My first impression of this song was, if you’ll excuse my Irish here, “Holy sh*t.” None of the imagery prior to this song was nearly as vivid and disturbing as it was here. The clean vocals (singing instead of metal-screaming) are very well done, capturing the desperation of the situation in a very raw way, which is fitting for the theme of the song -- this cell’s prisoner is the deadliest of psychiatric disorders, bulimia nervosa. The entirety of the lyrics are well-written (although, again, vividly disturbing), so I chose the most poignant of them.

“I am not my own reflection / I am not myself, I am not myself / I am haunted by a non-existent lover / The spectre, the ghost, the self-starving host / I am haunted by a non-existent lover / I was gifted with the vision but cursed to be the witness.”

This song, too, contains links to help services for eating disorders in the footnotes of the album booklet. 

We come now to the second interlude, C’est Tout Pardonner, titled after the second half of the French quote, the entirety of which translates to “To understand all is to forgive all.” The prisoner held in the two of these is ignorance. 

Just as C’est is the second, contrasting half of Tout, which was followed by war-themed Panic Room, so Orphan, the second, contrasting half of Panic Room, follows C’est. 

Orphan relays the perspective of orphans of war, the prisoners of this track. Particularly focusing on crimes against peaceful civilians (especially in the Middle East), Orphan also describes the reunion of two brothers on opposite sides of war. 

“I’m finding the violence -- it looks like me.”

“Terrified little son, encumbered by your sword / You can hide your fear, but won’t shed the weight of your humanity -- Humanity / You can face me toward the mountains / Where I meet our mother’s gaze / Too blinded by this hatred / To recognize your brother’s face.”

The eleventh track, No Place to Breathe, was both ahead of its time and should not have had to be written in the first place. The prisoner in this eighth cell is fascism, specifically within enforcers of the law. It dives into how easy it is to turn a blind eye to issues like systematic racism, police brutality, and inherent injustice, if these things do not affect us personally. There are three murder victims, (Eric Garner [2014], Hernan Jaramillo [2013], and Kelly Thomas [2011]) all killed by police, whose last recorded words are attributed in the song: “I can’t breathe.” 

Does that sound familiar from more recent news? This album was released in 2016, to give some perspective on how things have changed. 

“We shout at fascists, hands fixed on asphyxiating those in need / Place your hands to the pulse of this city / Keep your ear to the ground / Hear him gasp, / ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’”

The ninth and final cell is explored in the twelfth track, First Father (which is the partner of a song called First Mother from their previous album). The final prisoner is the grief over losing a loved one. Switching between a rushing, loud tempo and a low-toned quiet of guitars and vocals, the song captures the process of moving forward through personal loss. 

“‘You pulled me through time,’ through the edgeless night / I’ll learn to love as you learned to die / I’ll begin to feel again and finish the chapter you couldn’t write / Candles in the dark, defiant to the night / Defiant to the shadow / You pull me through time, through the edgeless night / I learned to love as you learned to die.”

With the thirteenth and final song, we’ve literally come full circle and are finally at the prison’s central tower, where we discover we are the guard watching the prisoners. Titled after a line from the first track’s lyrics (”We inherit the earth[...] We inhabit the wound”), Inhabit the Wound tears down the guard tower, freeing the prisoners from the confines of their situation or disorder. Each of the nine prisoners reaches into themselves and retrieves a seed, which is planted in the place of the tower. The album closes with this image:

“The earth, with a final gasp, shook free from our inventions. Grace and nature reconciled as I heard ‘it is finished.’ The final seal was broken, the concussion blew me back -- I teetered on the edge of re-creation and the wrath. The nine lovers stumbled out of their shells of brokenness, they reached inside their wounds to find the seeds borne from their suffering. Coalesce upon me to plant the tree of life inside the heart of the machine. Reach inside -- heal the wound -- make us whole.”

I found this album to be an absolute masterpiece, and metal isn’t usually a preferred genre of mine. I’ve got to give this one five out of five symbolic and vivid frogs. Well done, Silent Planet, both in composition and in raising awareness about different types of struggle.

Next week I’ll be reviewing an album that was recommended to me, and that was released today: Twenty One Pilots’ Scaled and Icy.

Thanks for listening with me!