Now this one was a real challenge to record. Writing it and jamming it were always fun but when it came to getting the whole thing down the importance of tightness couldn't be more apparent to me in this super fast riff-heavy track. It was originally two separate songs but I decided to combine them both for that slower hard hitting outro!

Born Of Fire

Elysium

Now this is an interesting one, it was one of the songs that I've been saving up for a while since the Demo days in case I wanted to make an album that was focused on this kinda sound. Eventually that day finally came and it fit perfectly with the flow of the songs as well as riffing and soloing styles!

Absolute

This song was originally supposed to end at the fade out two thirds into the song before the thrashy bit, but I decided that it would be more fun to add a tempo change to it and a solo because that would fit better with the album than having a groovy and catchy song that's too simple.

Prescience

Yet another song with that 3/4 to 4/4 tempo change that I've grown to love writing with! Originally I wrote this song with an acoustic guitar but the more I added to it the more fitting it was to add clean tones and synthy ethereal tones to compliment the chords I was using.

Dirty Diamond

The main idea of this song started out from the intro which has been in the bank since early 2013. After sitting around for a while and playing around with pretty technical riffs in standard I eventually crafted out something that matched with the intro just enough to become a pretty interesting song and one of my favorites from this album!

Paper Crown

Now OG fans will recognize this from the demo but I reworked it since it was lacking that song structure style that I've come to use quite often in my songs admittedly enough, including a brand spanking new solo!

Save Yourself

Oh boy, now this song goes waaay back. As far back as when Vanity Alive originally started out with the name of Eternal Winter. In fact, this is technically one of the very first ideas for original songs and was supposed to be similar in vein to Ocean and Broken as sort of triplets in the key of D minor. Unfortunately it sat on the shelf for four years collecting dust until I had a recent breakthrough with how to bring it to life, how to give it that unique sound that everything has evolved since then, and its current relationship with the first track and middle interlude, and this was the final product. The epic closer to the album!

Revelations

The title came from a love/hate relationship I had with this song. I loved the idea of it but absolutely hated having to rework it over and over until I finally got one that I could love in its entirety. The ending part of the song alone may not be the most technical, but it is without a doubt my most favorite part in the entire album!

Love And War

That's right! Another reworked song! This one is certainly more altered compared to Save Yourself because of many things. I found the original demo version to be too long, repetitive, and just overall too simple (not that simple songs are bad mind you, just not one that catches your attention) so after a couple changes to the format and some new solos in the mix, it's pretty cool to see how far this song came in the past few years.

A New Eden

This song was originally posted with lyrics including my cringeworthy vocals months ago on our YouTube channel (which was then unlisted out of my sheer embarrassment) but since we are working to add vocals into our old songs in the meantime, we decided to leave this an instrumental for now and come back to it with full vocals when the time is right!

Would also like to mention that this is a reupload since the first time got corrupted halfway through the song.

Defy

The Official SoundCloud Account of rock/metal band Vanity Alive!
Project by Ericson Bernardo