BACKGROUND

Scream Again is the third collaboration between Embers and synthwave artist HeartBeatHero (a.k.a. Daniel Barton). The song blends HeartBeatHero’s arp-driven cybersynth groove and soundscape with my drum programming, heavy "cybermetal" rhythm guitars and vocals.  The song started out as an instrumental, but as I added a vocal melody to it, it became a commentary about what I see as the darker side of organized religion in our human history.  

LYRICS:

They try to comprehend this nothingness
They fill the void with fables of before
They look for truths that are celestial
Please tell them that there's something more

Deceiving believers
Dividing us they give us holy wars

Hooked masses breathing in the opiate
Somnambulists they are

We scream again
Can anyone hear us?
We scream again
Is anyone listening?

They try to reconcile oblivion
They obfuscate with shackles made of fear
Distorting truths that are celestial
It goes on and on...on and on and on

Deceiving believers
Dividing us they give us holy wars

Hooked masses breathing in the opiate
Somnambulists they are

We scream again
Can anyone hear us?
We scream again
Is anyone listening

THE MUSIC

As mentioned above, the seed for this song was an arp-based synth instrumental excerpt that Daniel sent me, with a cryptic "this made me think of you" message!    When I asked him what he had in mind, he mentioned a cybermetal vibe, but gave me free rein from there.  A few days later, I had added a moving bass line and chord changes over the initial synths, and came up with a full vocal melody and lyrics for verses, pre-choruses and choruses.  Daniel and I worked together to blend some of his drum and bass sounds with mine to get the big, thumping texture we were aiming for.  I focused a lot on adding cinematic style toms and heaviness courtesy of the incredible Heavyocity Damage 2 percussion suite, and blending Submission Audio's Eurobass II with Daniel's Dune 3 bass sound.  This song also marked my first full release using Cubase Pro 11.  I've recently added Cubase as another DAW alongside ProTools; both have their strong suits, but Cubase absolutely wins when it comes to advanced MIDI editing and certain other features.  I also had a lot of fun using Cubase's built-in sampler track functionality to easily sample and edit my own vocals, allowing me to program pitched melody lines and stutters.  Add to all of this some very chunky guitars, courtesy of my trusty custom OD Venus and Steinberg Prog 7 strings through Neural DSP Gojira and Omega plugins and we wound up with this bit of grandiosity.  Hope you enjoy!