Adam Michael Kozak, aka Burial Grid, makes music that goes head first into loss and grief. Electronic music that veers to the melancholy lean of Giallo and into industrial-tinged metal reminiscent of the Melvins, NIN, and St. Vitus. Kozak is honest in his work, dealing in the realities of our existence in our mortal coil. – Complex Distractions
The final track written for the album, so naturally it had to come first. It just came to me as I was sleeping, woke up, sat down behind a Kurzweil K2000, Waldorf Blofeld, Arturia Microfreak, and Korg Wavestation, and banged out the entire thing within 2 hours.
The angriest song on the album. 2020 was full of the arrogance of presumed invincibility. It was on full display with our elected officials. It could be seen across the country in the behavior of folks throwing caution to the wind during a deadly pandemic. On a microcosmic level, my own father showed it in his unwillingness to change his lifestyle as his health began declining, and put his full trust in the pills and harsh treatments that his doctors profited from. That’s a white hot frustration that I’ll never shake. I think I also set this album up for streaming suicide by putting the slowest burning, second-longest running track at the very beginning. SKIP! Whoops.
This is my favorite song on the album. I want to push it onto everyone in sight even though I imagine the personal sentiment to it is what resonates with me so strongly. I listened to it walking my dog one day and started crying in the park and then felt like an arrogant ass for being driven to tears by my own music.
Sunset Over An Ocean Of Marrow
This song deals with some pretty personal stuff that I probably shouldn’t get into publicly, but also references the Capuchin Crypt in Italy. I wanted the deep, sludgy passages to have an open, but claustrophobic feel and used Grinderman’s “When My Baby Comes” as a jump-off point. I struggled with this song more than any others on the album. There’s actually an entirely different version in 9/8 with hugely different instrumentation that I might release as a bancamp-exclusive at some point.
Named after a spirit of the Indian subcontinent that is restless due to not finishing its worldly business or being blighted by guilt and shame. This song largely deals with shameful memories that haunt us, preventing us from being able to comfortably die (or live). The vocals were vocoded using, as the modulator, samples of screams from the degloving scene in Gerald’s Game and the electric-shock torture scene in Lethal Weapon.
The only track not written specifically for this album, hence why there’s some guitar fluttering around in there. I felt that the tracklist needed a bit of a palette-cleanser that still kept the tone moving forward. The name is inspired by the Bolivian festival, Día de las Ñatitas, where relative’s skulls are decorated and put on display.
From His Face Sprouted The Beak
One day I was confiding in a friend about the oncoming wave that was my father dying. He sort of shushed me, told me that I’d get a sign that – while he may be dying – he’ll be okay, whatever that meant. The moment that he said this, my favorite type of bird, the normally incredibly shy rose-breasted grosbeak, landed on a stone wall 5 feet from me and lingered for several minutes, watching us, before taking flight. While I’m a staunch theological noncognitivist, it both rattled and soothed me in the same instant.
A pishacha is a Hindu demon, thought to be derived from the spirit of a deceased rapist, among other unsavory and vile acts. They haunt crematoriums and cremation grounds. There are references to my dead uncle, who was a bit of a creep in life, visiting my ailing ol’ dad, eating burgers with him and trading hallucinatory gossip.
Voluntary Ending Of Eating And Drinking
I’ve known quite a few people who were chronically ill whom, upon grieving the inevitable end of their ride on this plane, find acceptance and commit a type of passive suicide, deciding to end their dialysis, chemotherapy… whatever. This song juxtaposes the anger and despair felt by the bereaved with the lightness and resolution experienced by the dying. So a bit on the nose with this one.
Most albums that I’ve made on my own represent some sort of great purging regarding a specific topic or set of emotions. It’s oftentimes a bit of a dissonant caterwhaul, so I like to end things on a note that transcends all of the noise and brings things down to a neutral and meditative place. This is inspired by the gorgeous and bittersweet Twilight Zone episode of the same name. Go track it down. I cry every time I watch it. I reckoned it’d be a fitting and cathartic end to an album dealing with the fear of death.
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