GRACE DISGRACED from Russia play a brutal round of technical death metal. Front grunter Polina gives us her account of the songs from their latest album, The Primal Cause: Womanumental.
| #1. Venustus Caedes This is the first drawing of the woman’s image, which shall go through all the album, and here’s her first meeting with the death. Listener is like a witness of her suicide and the topic which is explored here is that a death means a lot for the living (not for the dead). The image of a woman jumped under the train is inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”. “Beautiful corpse” – that is how they call in literature some bad character who is killed but still stirs up sympathy from the readers. In our case the corpse is actually a beautiful woman, and what is more, the fatality scene in a public place always draw everyone’s attention and some people stay staring hypnotized and reflecting on what has just happened. As for our heroine – she has preferred death to humiliation and conscience torture. | ||
| #2. Secondary “Secondary” is the most vague composition on the album because it doesn’t have a particular plot, that’s a flow of thoughts of our main character. It tells us that stories repeat, that everyone wants to proclaim something new, but usually ends up in destructing the old and consuming what the others had done before. No way to escape from influences and we are scared to disappear completely after death, so our motive sometimes is to leave some traces, if not with creation, than with destruction. That’s an outcry out of time. | ||
| #3. Initial Getting closer to the core, “Initial” gives a more profound look at the motives which drive us. Instincts and sensations are the main drivers here, by contrast with thoughts in “Secondary”. I visualized some jungles, wild animals and ancient people when working on this composition. Here we could see the creating role of the woman – the procreation. She is the primal cause – the mother who brought you to this world and, seeking for reasons you take a look at her. | ||
| #4. She Smells Death The main topic here is the natural ageing of the woman. She is so afraid to lose her beauty on her way to natural death. The bitterness of realizing that the best years are already behind. It is interesting, that images which inspired me to write the lyrics were very far from the actual topic I raise here. It was an episode from “Abbe Mouret’s Transgression” by Émile Zola where a young girl committed her suicide by suffocating with a thick fragrance of a heap of flowers. | ||
| #5. Panacea In “Panacea” our heroine becomes a cruel ruler. The composition presents a row of allegories of modern societies by putting them in times of gladiators and slaves. Cruelty is the Panacea for the ruler – the guarantee of staying untouched. But at the same time she (the ruler) is ready give her Panacea for the people – the beliefs and the illusion of well-being. | ||
| #6. Dragons of Emptiness In “Dragons of Emptiness” we finally say good-bye to our rotten planet Earth and prepare for contacts with other creatures and even come to a disgusting fusion with an alien carnivore. Yes, it was influenced by “Aliens” films and by H. R. Giger’s artworks. Besides, I tried to bring in some hidden sense to this composition – some symbolic metaphor of pregnancy. | ||
| #7. Humiliated and Insulted The image for the final composition of the album is inspired by Sonya Marmeladova from “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, though the title is borrowed from his earlier novel. This time our main character is put in very bad conditions – poverty and humiliation. But she has someone to take care of, so this time she has preferred humiliation to death, and not the reverse as in “Venustus Caedes”. As you can see the whole concept is very life-asserting.) | ||
| Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?Cover artwork is something that helps the listener to dive into the conceptual atmosphere of the album. We pay special attention to it and try to make artwork the integral part of our releases. We chose Nick Keller from Australia as our artist for “The Primal Cause: Womanumental” and tried to depict our main character – the woman out of time. It was crucial to put our heroine in alternative realities and to underline the anachronism of the concept. That is why the cyborg elements are combined with ancient monument, pre-historic pterosaur and modern graffiti on the front cover of the album. It would be interesting to know, that the picture was executed as an oil painting, the original of that is still in Australia. The over 7 images – one for each track – are chalk drawings. The album’s symbol is Pterosaur fighting Centipede, where the centipede symbolizes pettiness and limitedness. And Pterosaur, on the contrary – greatness, beauty and aggression. These two elements are constantly fighting in a woman. Briefly, Grace Disgraced and Nick Keller tried our best for you could turn over the pages of the album booklet with incomparable pleasure! |
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