UNREQVITED has uncovered the second single ‘Funeral Pyre’ taken from their forthcoming album “Beautiful Ghosts”, which is scheduled for release on August 13, 2021.

As a whole, ‘Beautiful Ghosts’ contains mostly lighter, prettier sounding tracks, yet ‘Funeral Pyre’ has a somber twist to it that the other tracks don’t have. This song oscillates between juxtaposed depressive and uplifting passages. I took this dichotomic approach to the composition, to mimic the peaks and valleys of feeling love and attachment towards another human being.

鬼 (“Ghost”)

Pop music basically has one universal topic: love. Although the theme is presented in many variants about love being desired, lost love, the act of loving and so on, pop is generally all about love. This constitutes probably the main reason why metal bands generally shy away from that subject – as their musical genre defines itself partly as the very antithesis to all things pop. This rule of thumb applies the more, the darker a particular subgenre presents itself.

With his sixth UNREQVITED album, “Beautiful Ghosts” driving force and sole member 鬼 has set out to fearlessly explore this for metal-heads rather “scary” emotion. “Inspired by a muse, there are strong themes of love, passion, and devotion on this record”, explains the multi-instrumentalist. “My overall vision was to capture and document my experience with the unique feeling of infatuation and attachment.”

As a result of journeying into his mind and collecting a wide range of emotions, 鬼 has included many lighter and more uplifting passages than previously on “Beautiful Ghosts”. Yet the listener will also find the expected dark twists as the composer is balancing his score by occasionally pitting lonely cynicism against romantic naivety. New elements include significant use of clean vocals throughout the album and there are even playfully progressive rhythms as in the opening track ‘All Is Lost’. The core elements that have shaped UNREQVITED in the past remain active as well. Thus the massive anthemic refrains from “Mosaic I: L’amour Et L’ardeur” (2018) are equally present as the simple melancholic melodies from the 2016 debut album “Disquiet” and the orchestral grandeur of “Empathica” (2020). 

Ever since 鬼 conceived UNREQVITED as a special musical vehicle for his multi-faceted creative output and brought it to light in 2016, his project has been a constantly shape-shifting and stylistically wide-roaming creature. With “Beautiful Ghosts”, the Canadian is at the same time gathering the strands of his previous works and taking an innovative step forward that makes it even harder to pin just one label onto his sound. “Beautiful Ghosts” applies a rich palette of musical colors, hues, and shades that are passionately blended together by the theme of “love”.

Engineered & mixed by 鬼
Mastered by Nekkomix 

Artwork by Delta Options
Layout by Łukasz Jaszak

Photos: (c) Robin Parsons

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