This song is about promises that don’t hold, the kind that look solid one day and disappear the next. Dates circled then erased, endings that never feel finished.


Still Deciding

Late is about timing that never lands the way you want it to. Waiting, showing up, and finding out too late it doesn’t matter. It’s the sound of missed time and opportunity and the weight that comes with it.

Late

Meant To Gather is about the kind of gatherings that never should have happened. Moments that looked like joy if you squinted, but underneath were scattered, awkward, and wrong. The song moves on bongo rhythm and chant, carrying the unease of people together but never really together.

Meant to Gather

Bitter Moon is about being away and coming home. It’s about distance, the quiet spaces in between, and leaving the door unlatched as a way of saying I’ll be back soon.

Bitter Moon

Whitehaven is about escapism to the beach, and the solitude I found there. It comes from Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsunday Islands, a place that took my breath away, but it’s also about every beach that gave me space to get away from people. This song carries that feeling of freedom, campfire warmth, and the hush that only comes when nothing is following you.

Whitehaven

This song is about my own refusal to stay in one place for too long. Even when I settle, there’s always a part of me waiting to leave. The stay of refusal feels like it tangles in my hair, a reminder that I can’t sit still forever. It’s restless, high-energy, and carries the push to keep moving forward.


Refusal to Stay

This song is about people who come and go from your life. Some leave gently, some vanish without warning, and a few stay. That’s enough. It’s the opening track because it sets that truth right at the start.

Some Still Answer

This song is the tribute to Athen, my cat who was by my side for 17 years. It isn’t about putting everything into words, but about the presence he carried, quiet, steady, never asking for anything. I loved being alone, but I wasn’t lonely until he was gone. This track holds the small moments of memory, the routines, and the weight of absence that made alone feel different.


Not Asking

This one is about not listening to people who try to hold you back. It’s about moving forward without a plan, no directions, no signs, just keeping on with your own path.

Bare Handed, No Map

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

Athen Tobias is my music project. I started it after spending years working as a visual artist, mostly painting bold abstractions. But grief changed my direction. In the quiet that followed, music became the only way to 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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