Rampant Welsh riff merchants Root Zero (who we have performance at Bloodstock ’24) will release their stunning debut album, Dark Rainbow, on Friday 16th May. The rising progressive metallers have just dropped their brand new single and video, “Ignis Fatuus“. We caught up with the band and exclusively asked them for a track by track breakdown of the new album.
The Good Things Never Last
This is an intro track for the album, I wanted to try and set the tone with plenty of swelling synths and keys, and it leads nicely into “Inner Turmoil”, the first proper track. Albums should be listened to as entire pieces of work, and my hope is that this intro grabs your attention enough to want to listen to the whole record.
Inner Turmoil
“Inner Turmoil” tries to embody those moments of pointless rumination where the mind digs up all of your worst moments, regrets, misunderstandings, things you wish you had done differently, unresolved or poorly handled conflicts and situations that you still can’t make sense of. You wish it wouldn’t and it feels pretty counterproductive but it’s like a habit of picking at old wounds, with all the painful feelings that accompany.
I Drowned In The Desert
“I Drowned” is one of my personal favourite songs although we’ve never played it live as we currently don’t have the capacity to run the backing tracks! It meanders between ethereal electronic ages and progressive metal. The title is taken from the lyrics of a band called Silent Planet, but it was also inspired by the fact that more people actually drown in deserts than die of dehydration. Lyrically it is mostly about the paradoxical nature of anxiety disorders, and how even though human beings are social creatures, anxiety can actually lead to you wanting to withdraw and isolate, but normally to your detriment, and starving yourself of social interactions will inevitably lead to you fading away and being forgotten about, almost as if you’re drowning in an empty desert with nobody around to help or even know if you were gone.
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Notti D’Inverno
We released “Notti” as a standalone single with an animated music video last spring and it largely covers seasonal depression. Winter can have a stark beauty to it and is usually a time that people associate with Christmas and snow, but for a lot of people the shorter days and the grey skies can be pretty tough to get through, so that’s what this song is about. The wistful feeling of knowing the days are getting shorter, anticipating the low energy and moods this can bring, and trying to stay afloat as nature sheds and decays around you. The animated music video accompanying this song is pretty intense, showing that seasonal depression as a physical manifestation, in this case a giant eldritch horror you may get on a PS1 horror game!
Ignis Fatuus
“Ignis” is one of the heaviest tracks on the albums, and lyrically it mainly focuses on aspects of Christianity that I’ve really come to despise, namely the fundamentalist factions that paint God as an overbearing tyrant as well as the more wishy-washy elements that pacify people into not doing anything to make the world a better place. The classic example of that for me is people in America saying “thoughts and prayers” every time a mass shooting takes place but then they don’t do a damn thing to change their gun laws. I didn’t want to make this song a strictly pro or anti-religious song as that polarity is already very well ed for, but it is very much a commentary on how I think religion has a lot of work to do if it wants to become the force for good that it claims to be.
Tumbleweed
“Tumbleweed” largely focuses on friends that drift apart over the years, and it also takes some inspiration from the hedgehog’s dilemma, exploring the dichotomy between humans desiring connection but at the same time being afraid of things like abandonment and hurting close friends. There’s a Neon Genesis Evangelion episode that basically covers this same topic, although it wasn’t a direct inspiration.
Dry
“Dry” is a song about writer’s block. I knew I wanted to write a song about it during a particularly bad bout of it but obviously getting it finished was a real pain… It’s a real throwback to old-school Anathema, and lyrically I took most of my inspiration from Nine Inch Nails’ song “Every Day is Exactly The Same”.
Depression
This song’s title is fairly self-explanatory. This song is an instrumental and musically is pretty unique for us, as it’s completely electronic. I was listening to a lot of Aphex Twin and wanted to capture the same sort of gloomy vibe as songs like “Rhubarb”. Depression is by no means a new topic discussed in music but I wanted this song to capture the complete bleakness that comes with the disorder, hence why there aren’t any lyrics. The instrumentation is supposed to feel like those dreams where you can hardly move and shouts turn to whispers, which is what the worst depressive episodes are for me; a grey haze with no joy that you can’t escape from physically or mentally, and where no words can accurately describe the experience.
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Dark Rainbow
This album’s title track is about the dream of money-chasing and wealth that capitalism paints as the number one thing you should aspire to do. In reality chasing this dream will more than likely lead to a pretty empty and meaningless existence. I’m obviously not a psychologist but I do believe that this dissatisfaction with the emptiness that wealth brings people is one of the main reasons why you see these multi-billionaires at the very top constantly wanting more and more wealth.
Litha
“Litha” was inspired by the film Midsommar – specifically the idea of escaping to a remote and idyllic community with a catch – dark secrets and brutal sacrifices it relies on to continue, and how desperate people can find themselves lured into and stuck in cults. It describes the initial enchantment of being welcomed in and celebrated, and the sense of belonging this can bring, only to realise that there is a much darker side. It’s written from the protagonist Dani’s perspective after the events of the film have taken place, just as the drugs and intoxicating ardour are starting to wear off. Doubts begin to creep in as she realises and reflects on the horrors of what she’s become a part of, and she switches between giving in and trying to fight against it.
The Infection
This song takes a lot of inspiration from the story of a game called Hollow Knight, where a once thriving society becomes infected by a being called The Radiance. This infection largely happens through dreams and manifests itself as an internal struggle between the physical conscience and the subconscious in dreams. The song largely talks about how people can use that sort of dream state to escape the ittedly grim reality of the world we live in, but in my opinion that can be even more dangerous. I realised whilst writing the lyrics for this song that it inadvertently touches on very similar topics that the album Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle does, so there is a bit of an anti-drug element to it as well. Obviously a lot of people will take drugs to escape reality but as anyone who has dealt with any form of addiction will tell you it’s not really a solution to the problems of reality, it’s just a crutch.”
Header image by Stu Rowles Photography
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