‘Sometimes I watch the sunrise, I watch my life fall apart’
This has got to be one of the coolest band names ever, Seven Hours After Violet, I absolutely love it and it was purely for this reason that I tuned in. I was blissfully unaware of the legendary status of the individuals who put this together, we have Shavo Odadjian of SOAD and the mighty Morgoth, together they grab the metal scene by the scruff and flip it on its arse. Fortified by Taylor Barber – Left To Suffer, Josh Johnson – Winds Of Plague and Alejandro Aranda- runner up on American Idol, they complete a sturdy and steadfast incarnation of what we love about this scene.
The story starts in ‘Paradise’ and as you sing for your supper, the devil answers your call.
Second song in we have ‘Alive’ the throbbing guitars and drums, relentless like a jackhammer on concrete, sadly I am mere flesh and bone so the piercing, piquing and possessing are deadlier.
‘Go!’ gives us the healthy stadium vibes with the ‘woah-ohs’ so neat and clean and huggable. Set against the grit and dishevelled raw, uncut vocals, we are dragged through a variety of sounds, and we attest our own feelings in their wake.
‘There’s nothing for you here, could I make myself more clear?’
The violet hues in the videos for ‘Cry’, ‘Radiance’ and ‘Paradise’ enhance the structure, the meaning and representation behind the songs, there is a connection that we grasp, we honour the art of realisation and retention. The words sting like a scorpion; the telson primed to inflict and inject a perspective where we are heightened, where our projections are lucid.
‘Because the absence of your empathy is pounding in my head’ taken from ‘Radiance’ are words that are a like a dull ache, it’s always there, you understand it, you feel it but you can’t accept it. These emotions are typical of how as humans we go through life, we come across things we sometimes don’t get, we struggle and yet we learn, albeit the hard way.
The ending of ‘Feel’ actually sounds like a discharge of bullets; accept it as a cleansing, as a rite of passage, as a badge of honour, because when you are down for the count, seven seconds can seem like seven hours.
Azra Pathan
Seven Hours After Violet – debut album out now