This is how I work, how I live, how I make anything.

I don’t skim. I go under. I stay.

It’s not obsession. It’s rhythm.

I submerge so I don’t disappear.

Submerge

I walked into a café and ordered a long black. Triple shot.

And the barista asked if I wanted milk.

That moment stuck with me, how something so clear gets misread. Wasn't just once.

This isn’t a joke song. It’s frustration. So I put it into a track.

Long black. That’s the order. That’s the whole point.

Long Black

This one’s about someone being kept on hold. And someone else seeing it.

It’s not about telling them what to do. It’s just letting them know. You know.

Halfway Hold

This one’s built from a dream.
The kind where you don’t know where you’re going but you know you have to get there.

It’s not a story. It’s a journey. Fragments, symbols, things that don’t make sense until later.

Numaé is the place. Or the pull. Whatever it is, it keeps showing up.

Numaé

This one’s dry but serious.

It’s about doing things without waiting to feel ready.

You’re tired? Do it tired.

Once you're dead, you've lived your dreams. Make them count.

Do It Tired

This one's about not letting people push you around. If you fall, it’s because you let go, not because someone else had power over you. It will be up to me when I fall. 

I Only Fall If I Let Go

It’s about someone who keeps everything unclear.

She didn’t say yes or no. Didn’t stay, didn’t leave.

Nothing gets finished. Nothing gets decided.

And in the end, someone is still holding her silence.

Didn't Say When

Not Memory is about the quiet violence of photographs and how they disguise themselves as memory but bring back more pain than clarity. This isn’t a nostalgic track. It’s about trying to let go, but being pulled back by images you never asked to see again.

The voice is soft, but the message is sharp: we didn’t choose to remember this. We tried to move on. We even left the photos untouched. But they still win.

Even the good ones burn.

Not Memory

This is a tribute song for my brother.

There’s not much I can really say,

except I just wish he came to me.

I wish he had told me that he was done.

Brother

After years as a visual artist, I found myself starting Athen Tobias. I had spent that time painting bold abstractions, but grief shifted my path. In the quiet that followed, music became the only vessel that could carry what painting no longer could.

My first album, Aftermath, was born in that space. It is both elegy and rebirth, made from poetry I have written over many years. Some came from childhood, some from more recent memory. Some sat in old notebooks. Some were written fresh in a moment of catharsis. For the first time, I gave these words sound, with the help of AI as a technical assistant.

I named the project in honour of my late pet Athen, whose presence still anchors everything I make. Like my paintings, these songs are for people who take time to look closer. Listeners who are willing to sit with something and find meaning in the layers.

With my second album, Submerge, I step forward. If Aftermath was the album I needed to make, Submerge is the album I wanted to make. The sound moves between textured ballads, songs driven by guitar and rhythm, electronic chanting, and moments that rise with choral energy. It still holds that emotional weight, but it is braver and broader than before.

Together, these albums tell the story of what it means to begin again. From survival to immersion. From silence to sound. From aftermath to submersion.

Submerge

Athen Tobias

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