Secondary Drowning

As a whole, the album is an attempt to relate to the emotional burden inflicted on an individual by the age-old experience of forced migration. In the storyline, the character is forced to leave home, escapes over the seas and finally reaches an apparently safe place. With time, the experiences made on the trip, the burdens from the past, and the realization that the new environment is none the better gain an enormous impact on the person. This album is about drowning, not physically, but socially, as a result of alienation after struggling for a way out and seeing one’s hopes fade away.

In emergency medicine, secondary drowning is a state in which a person drowns internally some time after a near-drowning event, rather than as an immediate result of ingesting water or another liquid. The name of the album is therefore a metaphor for the above mentioned social drowning.

The main character of the story is one, many, and none at all. Fictitious and metaphorical. The inspirations taken to shape the character are completely independent from each other. Thematically, locally, temporally, from Latin America to the Middle East, World War II, today, 50 years ago, male, female, old or young.

Even though we would like to leave room for interpretation of the songs to the listeners, we still would like to deliver insight into the conceptualisation or ideas behind the songs.

AChE

An ambiguous song title. On the one hand, one can read the word as a synonym for pain, whereas on the other hand it is an abbreviation for an enzyme in the human body named Acetylcholinesterase. AChE fulfills crucial tasks in the nervous system. When blocked, for example when the body is exposed to gases like Sarin in chemical warfare, patients have only a little chance of surviving. Within the topic of migration, we hereby portrayed one of numerous reasons for forced migration; a war. Unfortunately, the topic of chemical warfare is still very current, with reported casualties from Sarin in one of the most brutal and complex conflicts: the Syrian war.

Coriolis

The Coriolis force is caused by the Earth’s rotation and leads to air and marine currents moving from the Equator towards the poles. This movement is a basic part of the viability of our planet for it balances pressure and temperature differences.

Currently, still many people try to escape across the Mediterranean Sea. Under this aspect, the title implies a certain danger of those movements.

Submerge

Very much like AChE, this song has a very real background. During times of the dictatorship under Pinochet in Chile, a great number of political opponents disappeared. A few decades later, it was discovered that those so called desaparecidos were tortured, killed and drowned in the ocean with weights on their bodies. Yet another reason to escape from home is portrayed in this song: political prosecution. Chile is only one of many examples of many forms of prosecution.

The End

You chose the deepest road

anxious again

In this vessel you float

Are hoping this darkness

will clear away

You stare into the dark

With empty eyes

All light is eaten it seems

swallowed down

into deepest grounds

Despair and relief

Just whistling noise

Eventually, you start to see

The end moves upfront

Yeah the end lies ahead

And yet the end moves along

The end moves along

Strife/Relief

After reaching new shores and with a seemingly bright future ahead, the album’s character is full of hope but on the other hand very certain that tough times will lie ahead. A song about the duality of feelings.

Zodiac

Drained of all your strength

You lie with curtains drawn

Dashed hopes lie behind

The vortex still ahead

Your fate engulfs us all

Rituals of old

Your life you left behind

So that we may breathe

This air

This freedom

This future

For what it’s worth

This air

This freedom

This future

Our everything

The Fall

Everything referring to home has been cut by the escape of the person. Loved ones have been lost or left behind, the uncertainty of the future is enormous and there is this slow realization that even in this shining new destination, nothing resembles a safe haven. The only thing one can do now, is desperately trying to keep the head up high and not being overwhelmed by the depression.