Decadence And Disorder (The Voice Of Anorexia)

Waiting To Be Weightless

Decadence And Disorder (The Voice Of Anorexia) [2011 Version]

Sticks And Stones And Bones

This is a revamped version of Pull Me Under from my Dark Descent album for my Hollow EP.

I'd been considering redoing Pull Me Under for a while, with a deeper reference to binge eating as a part of bulimia. I also included an audio clip of a time when I was really struggling with my own bulimia and anorexia, which was incredibly difficult for me to do, but I felt it captured the raw and real emotion that went into the creation of this EP.

Hollow (Pull Me Under)

Feeding The Wolves

The Smile Underneath

The Dark Descent album version of Waiting To Be Weightless.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Waiting To Be Weightless (Dark Descent Version)

The first track on my 2018 album Dark Descent. It attempts to illustrate the beginning of the descent into anorexia - the elation, the high, and the initial seduction of the disease.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Dark Descent

This is the first song I've written about bulimia. This song presented quite a challenge for me - I hadn't thought about how it feels to be bulimic for a long time, so reliving the mentality was difficult. I also wanted to maintain the same sound and feel to the lyrics as my other songs.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Pull Me Under

Immune is a track from my 2018 album Dark Descent, about anorexia hospitalisation, and expresses how the sufferer is 'immune' to intervention due to the defensive strength of the anorexic voice.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Immune

Midnight Run is a track from my 2018 album Dark Descent. With Midnight Run, I wanted to create something that would reflect the emotional drive and willpower that comes along with compulsive over-exercising as an anorexic.
It's very different to any other song on the album - it's upbeat, energetic, and was designed with running and exercising in mind.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Midnight Run

Girl Within The Ghost is a track from my 2018 album Dark Descent. This song describes how anorexia can completely take over your own personality, to the point where that person appears to be a ghost of their former self; 'the lights are on, but nobody's home'.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Girl Within The Ghost

Dysmorphia is a track from my 2018 album Dark Descent. Through Dysmorphia, I've tried to reflect the psychological mind games involved with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) as an element of eating disorders.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Dysmorphia

On My Mind is the first song I've written solely about binge eating disorder.

The track features clips from a YouTube video by Keiko Cupcake, who describes what it's like to live with the disorder while in the midst of a binge eating episode. I thought the video was so powerful and raw, I really wanted to utilise it to add depth to the song.

Link to Keiko Cupcake's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dda6vN8IdA

On My Mind

The Animal Inside is a song about eating disorder recovery from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness. Through the lyrics, I aim to show how a sense of inner power and strength have been stifled by the illness, and learning how to rediscover and harness these can be the key to psychological recovery.

The Animal Inside

The Darkest Star is a track from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness.

I had quite a lot of requests to remake Decadence and Disorder for the album, so I decided to restructure the lyrics and give it a totally new sound. The title comes from my favourite lyric in D&D: 'you're the darkest star within the galaxy of life'.

The Darkest Star (The Voice Of Anorexia)

Shadow Dancer is a track from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness.

The inspiration behind this song came from the memory of dancing alone in my bedroom at night when I was suffering from anorexia as a teenager. I would wait until after midnight, put on my headphones, and dance until I believed I'd burned off enough calories - it was just me, my shadow, and the anorexic voice pushing me on. With this track, I hoped to capture the haunting feeling of isolation that comes with embracing the anorexic voice, and the strange sense of companionship that forms as a result.

Shadow Dancer

Loving Curse is a track from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness. I wanted to try and make something to bridge the gap between Dark Descent and BITD, going for something more atmospheric and menacing, portraying the anorexic voice in its rawest form.

Loving Curse

Dark Thoughts is my first song written solely about male anorexia, where I've tried to reflect the difficulties and judgement men with anorexia experience when reaching out for help.

Dark Thoughts

Cold is a track from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness, based on the cold reality of anorexia hospitalisation. Within the track, I've added voiceovers reflecting the mental battle between the sufferer and the anorexic voice. Cold can also be seen as a sister song to Immune.

Cold

So Low is the first song I've written about depression, with undercurrents of an eating disorder. With this track, I tried to capture how I've felt during low times, and the need to hide myself away from others and shut out the world.

So Low

Beauty In The Darkness is a song from my 2020 album under the same name. 

This track was inspired by a YouTube comment on one of my other songs, which made me realise that there are elements of beauty within the darkness of eating disorders - for example, the intense euphoria and feeling of achievement experienced through weight loss. The lyrics convey how the ED tries to seduce the sufferer by playing on insecurities and fears from childhood, or from peer pressure, and offers a misleading sense of comfort and security.

Beauty In The Darkness

Fading Light is the short intro to my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness. The track symbolises the descent into darkness in the story of the album, fading directly into Shadow Dancer.

Fading Light (Intro)

Rising Dawn is the final track from my 2020 album Beauty In The Darkness. It signifies the darkness giving way to light in the story of the album, portraying the rising hope of personal recovery, and encouraging the sufferer to find the strength within themselves to begin the recovery journey.

Also, I grew up in the 90s and I have a lot of nostalgia around cassette tapes, so I liked experimenting with this track and concluding the album, and over a year of hard work in creating it, with a final press of the stop button.

Rising Dawn (Outro)

Sugar & Ice is a song about anorexia nervosa, designed to portray the anorexic voice and its methods of manipulation; the voice will be sweet and kind if the sufferer obeys, but if not, it will be cruel and punishing.

Sugar & Ice

Warrior is the first track of my Hollow EP.

I had a lot of requests to make more music not based on eating disorders, so I tried to create something that reflected the sense of pain and loss I've experienced over the last year or so, but also the strength gained and lessons learned. 

I've given the song a sort of a haunted vibe as it progresses, to try to show the deep, lingering sense of nostalgia, or 'saudade', which has both a happy and sad meaning.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Warrior

Invisible Killer is a track from my Hollow EP about atypical anorexia - a type of anorexia that means the sufferer may be a normal weight, or not fit the general criteria of typical anorexia nervosa.

It's an incredibly suffocating mental illness, which I've experienced first hand. Others tend to refuse to believe you have anorexia or offer you any help, based solely on the fact that you're not underweight.

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Invisible Killer

This is a revamped version of Sugar & Ice for my Hollow EP.

When I was making Warrior, I loved experimenting with Japanese taiko drums and the powerful sound they produced, so I really wanted to utilise them for Sugar & Ice too. I also stripped the song of female gender references and added a male voiceover to the instrumental part, to try to bring more of a male voice to songs about anorexia.

Huge thanks to David for providing the spoken poetry for this song!

Album artwork: Katie Metcalfe Photography

Sugar & Ice (Hollow Version)

Deteriorate is a song from my Hollow EP about an eating disorder relapse. The idea for this song stems directly from a memory of a time when I experienced relapses of my eating disorder as a teenager.

A vivid image that hangs in my mind is of a crimson sky at dawn, when I would wake up early and run to burn off calories before the day had begun. There were some beautiful skies in the countryside, and for me, the red sky and cold morning rain always signalled the beginning of a relapse, and the fall back into the anorexic mindset.

Deteriorate

Play Pretend depicts the spiralling loss of control that comes with the development of certain mental illnesses, and the manifesting of deceptive behaviours birthed by inner demons and illusion. Within the lyrics, I touch upon hallucinations, anorexia, bipolar thought processes, psychosis, and a fragmented sense of reality.

Play Pretend

Recovered anorexic from UK 🇬🇧
Psychological music based on eating disorders & mental illness 🎶

ElysianSoul

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