For some reason, I wake up at 3:00 AM and even if I tried, I just can't go back to sleep or neither can I do activities that could wake people up so with nothing else to do, I decided to just finish my draft for my Splinterlands post which I will also published later today and while on it, might as well listen to some music to break this deafening silence. Of course, I'm wearing a wireless headset to contain the sound only to me but usually, I would connect it on a speaker and played it loud since the people in the house would be out on Sunday mornings.
As you know already, I'm a big fan or rock, metal, punk and any genres of music that was relative to them in particular, those that gets popular during the mid- late 2000's Myspace Scene and how they have a special place in my heart. Among those bands were a group with the name of Alesana whom I first heard when I was just 15 and fall to the emo/screamo/post-hardcore category but what separates them from their peers was that they do not just made songs that expresses extreme emotion, their music were also influenced by famous literary work such as Greek mythology and Brothers Grimm. And for what I'm gonna listen will be their 3 concept albums named "The Emptiness" inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee, "A Place Were Sun Is Silent" inspired by Dante Alighieri's Inferno and "Confessions" inspired by Madeleine L'Egle's Time Quintet which formed "The Annabel Trilogy", meaning that these three albums are in continuation with one another to tell a story and all in all they have a total of 40 songs.
Their first concept album, "The Emptiness" consist of 11 songs which tells a story of a sketch artist who was called as The Artist wakes up one day only to find his lover Annabel to be dead but without any recollection of the past events, he comes to the conclusion that it was him that kill Annabel and because of his fear to be caught, he buries her body and flee to the town where he find a tavern full of joy and laughter which seems to him as if celebrating his tragedy so he slaughtered them all. After some more time of wandering, The Artist meets a man who called himself as The Thespian and claimed to be that killed Annabel and they have a match to death where he was stabbed in his side. But soddenly, he was back on his home and it was Annabel who was the one holding the dagger. The point of view changes to Annabel and tells that The Artist was turning insane as he become more and more consumed with his sketches to the point she needs to take his life to defend herself.
Despite being their 2nd album, "A Place Where Sun Is Silent" was actually a prequel to ""The Emptiness and tells about the dream of The Artist before the day he killed Annabel or when he was killed by Annabel. He finds himself in the forest and his instinct says that he was chased by something so he run and run until he met a woman who was called The Temptress and for some reason, started chasing her. They reached a house where they meet The Fiend that started to chase them. At some point he realizes that he was in Hell and loses his consciousness into darkness and when he woke up, he was tied and in front of him were children that being led inside an incinerator. He also saw The Temptress begging for help as she was chased by The Fiend but this was nothing but a scheme to taunt him and chased him back out of rage to a golden city to watch it crumbles. Then the same repeats itself in a loop where he realizes that it was The Temptress that chases him so what he did this time was to kill her and when he did, he wakes up.
To conclude the story comes with the Confessions but was the hardest of the three to decipher as it includes concepts such as parallel world and time travel. Roderick and his wife Annabel lives in a dystopian future where there was no music nor art under the rule of the man known as Artist so Roderick created a device called The Acolyte to travel back in time and prevent this future from happening but as they were about to start their plan, Roderick was shot by the people of the Artist so it was only Annabel that was able to continue. Unbeknown to them, time travel has its consequences and created alternate worlds, creating 3 versions of her, one in a tesseract where she were subjected into different forms of torture, A place where she met The Goddess and told that she was Fatima the goddess of life which is the only one to save the world but not by killing the artist and the last where she met The Puppeteer and told that she was the demon of the night Rusalka and should be his queen then we switched back to the events that took place between A Place Where Sun is Silent and The Emptiness.
After this the 3 timelines has combined once again but the 3 personas remains to be 3 different individual with each different goals.
Rusalka made The Artist fell in love with her and wants to push him in the brink of madness by killing herself, believing that he will leave with her power as the demon of the night but realizes that she has no power as the blood on her stomach continues to flow.
Annabel was able to reached her destination and find The Artist who seems to know everything about her with the sketches lying around that got her more enrage so she stab The Artist only to know that it was Roderick that followed next to her but was slowly turning insane by being unable to find his love and when she goes to the bed, she saw the dead body of Rusalka.
Fatima who tries to make Roderick angry to him by showing in his dreams that Annabel was teasing him and do not really loved him to prevent him to fell into sanity but was overall failed when Rusalka shows in front of Roderick.
Conclusion
Each one were very entertaining but if you ask which one was my favorite, I would say that it would be The Emptiness because its storytelling was easier to follow. A Place Where Sun is Silent got some new things that they tried but the scream part has been reduced. Confessions got the same intensity present on The Emptiness but story telling was way complex.
These 3 albums has indeed made a different approach compared to most albums that not only makes it a music but also a puzzle to solve and the only reason that I could explain it this much was because they have written the story on the book which is the only book I bought in Kindle and is the only reason how I find that the last album was inspired on Time Quintet. But even after this, I still might have misinterpreted the events especially for the last album so I might revisit the book but this will be for another time. If the book also has made you curious, Here was the chapter 1 of the book in audio so you can listen to it.
I was able to finish my draft right before the 3rd started so after that I resumed it with my Battle Mage post and by the time, that I finish all the songs in the album, I became sleepy so I go back to bed and wakes up at 1 PM to be able to write this post.
