Aitis Band – Screenplay
The ways in which you can find a painful death have dramatically decreased nowadays. That’s good news for people who have made up their minds about staying alive, but bad for everyone wanting to report on it and make a good buck from people buying the stories.
Why would so many people be interested in ghoulish tales of contemporaries of theirs meeting their end? Because that’s what happened to the majority of people since the beginning of time. A nice set of final words whispered on a comfortable bed is a luxury fate has afforded to very few.
People need the spooky thrills that horror movies or Aitis Band can provide. Maybe it’s because they know that they’re going to get scared out of their wits, yet still, most likely, be safe and alive by the time those are over.
And, indeed, Aitis Band with its half-whispered poetry and unorthodox use of instrumentation, create something resembling a murder ceremony. Close your eyes and pay attention long enough to “Screenplay” and you might just wake up screaming. Convince yourself that you’re in the room with the artists, and you might desperately want to find some way to escape. But you’re safe, if not exactly unharmed. Aitis Band makes music that makes you terrified of dying so that you can be happy about being alive.
Master Splinter – Unbound
In fairness, every single story has been told before any professional writer could hope to land an advance on their next novel from an interested publishing house. Truthfully, most of the greatest stories don’t have the names of authors on them, or the names that do exist were stuck onto the works hundreds of years after the ink finally dried.
But that’s, in fact, a wonderful thing. It should take the pressure off the shoulders of any modern artist. And, like Master Splinter, want to demonstrate that the whole shared mythology of mankind makes it unimportant where you actually reside. Gods rule from above until they’re stopped and replaced by other gods of their kind. Good and evil battle it out. You get to make choices between the two. That, in a nutshell, is a mythologised history of the universe.
“Unbound” by Master Splinter takes inspiration from a couple of places looked on by some as possessing divine qualities. The lyrics describe a conflict between the Greek Gods. Meanwhile, the music feels inspired by Seattle grunge bands, in particular, Alice in Chains’s brand of hazy, slithering vocal melodies and guitar riffs. It’s an old story told in a new way for the people who should hear it. And, yes, it’ll happen again and again. But as long as bands like Master Splinter do it honestly, and as long as people haven’t learned their lesson and need to hear it again, this is greatly welcomed.
