Track By Track: Endless Dark’s ‘Hereafter Ltd.’

Endless Dark are the post-hardcore stars of the Reykjavík scene. If you’re into poppy choruses mixed with heavy breakdowns, they might just be your thing. Here they talk us through their new concept album, ‘Hereafter Ltd.’

Warriors
Stacked with 80s synths and machine-like riffs, this prologue has a sci-fi-war feel to it. It’s about spirits from another dimension starting a war against mankind.

Guardian
Here we meet the hero of ‘Hereafter’, a father of a dying son who faces the moral question of pulling the plug. This song almost didn’t make it on the album, as it was only a rough demo until we were recording. But after adding group vocals and an outstanding solo guitar track, we all started loving it, mostly for how different it is.

Steel & Arrowwood
This song is about a child being reborn as a machine. Writing this song was strangely easy and it’s one of those rare occasions where the demo is almost identical to the finished version.

Terra Incognita
After writing six or seven songs we thought we needed a heavy, steady song on the album, so we wrote this one. Here, the story takes a horrific turn: an evil spirit has emerged from another dimension and corrupted all soul-driven machines, along with our hero’s son.

Amélie
“Amélie” is about regret and forgiveness, focusing on the hero’s long-lost friend Amélie.

Blue-Sky Heroes
When the hero of our story needs people to listen, he finds himself speaking to deaf ears, so this song is about rising up against the current, refusing to be taken to slaughter. There’s a lot going on: 80s synths infused with metal-core riffs, a heavy minute-long breakdown, steady bass-driven parts and fast transitions of clean vocals to heavy screams.

Dr. Delirium
This upbeat song goes back and forth like a mad scientist from heavy metal to electronic dance music, leaving you wanting more (hopefully). The lyrics are about a delusional man who sees the emerging evil spirit as the Messiah and decides to help him corrupt all living things.

Through Desperation
This is the oldest song on the album. It has a sentimental value to us because we’ve played it so many times through the years. It’s heavy, catchy and never stops to relax. In this part of the story, the hero, with a small group of rebels, decides to take on the machines.

Man & Machine
The song is about the ascension of the machines after a failed attempt by mankind to stop them. It’s full of different time-signatures, unorthodox drum fills and dreamy lead guitar.

Hereafter
This song was originally two different songs but when we were writing the first half, we had difficulty finishing it, so we decided to take an older dramatic interlude and stick in there. The song starts with the mad machines ascending in power over mankind. The second half is our hero saying his goodbyes before he enters the portal to the “other side” to stop the machines. Rúnar Geirmundsson goes all out with more straightforward, out-of-breath dramatic screaming.

Wanderer
Our hero is falling through time and space after entering the portal and the song gives you a taste of that atmosphere. Will he prevail?

Read more Track By Tracks here.