Art should reflect the artist’s vision for the world. The world this piece intends to create is shrouded in spectral lights and abysmal darkness, it is a world caught between bestial cruelty and yearning sentimentality. Darkness and Light exist on the same continuum, and art should be willing to reflect the spectrum, between sheer horror and radiant beauty. This album should be seen as an effort to that end.

This album is essentially a collection of semi-spontaneous improvisations made over the month of August originally recorded to tape. The only track which isn’t improvised is tracks 3, “Something” which is a Coil cover. Because of this, this album should be seen as a collection of glimpses at different states of mind and loose ends, rather than a cohesive piece. Musically, these pieces were conjured to have adriving, and monolithic feeling, opposed to a more chaotic feeling exhibited by noise musicians. Because this music was recorded in one take it will have an incidental, unpolished sound, much like other free-form music, but within a more meditative context.

Death Masks is the musical moniker of artist Andrew Maxson. Death Masks draws from an array of sonic traditions including drone, pop, avant-garde, industrial, minimalism, and heavy metal in an attempt to create a sonic narrative. The music strives to evoke a driving, contemplative, monolithic feeling.

Death Masks seeks to make music that both reflects a new mythology but still acknowledges its continuity with other narratives. Death Masks seeks to affirm the reciprocal nature of bestial cruelty and maudlin sentimentality, that sheer horror provides an excellent standard to judge all other experiences off of.

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