Break the Altar ©

The story — in my words

I wrote this during a winter in the rust belt when the air felt like it was made of lead and every old building seemed to be holding its breath. I was thinking about the way we worship our own traumas—how we build these internal altars to the things that hurt us—and I wanted to write something that felt like physically tearing those structures down. We recorded the percussion by literally striking heavy metal sheets in the studio to get that jarring, bone-shaking resonance. It’s meant to be a visceral experience, a reminder that we aren't just the ghosts of our past; we are muscle, breath, and the sheer will to keep running until the light breaks through the cold.