WHISPERS INTHE SHADOW stumbled across that word and thought: ‘This is it!’ It describes the sound of the music perfectly. I was also intrigued by the fact that it can be interpreted in many different ways. There is not just one meaning. Whispers In The Shadow has released a new studio album, their twelfth. It’s a musically diverse album with several overarching themes. We know the group and frontman Ashley Dayour always have a compelling story to tell, so we asked Dayour a few questions, to which we promptly received answers. Dear Ashley, congratulations on your new record: ‘Rapture’. We love the album. As you have written, it is not a concept album, though it has overarching themes: religion, love, death, and spirituality. Perhaps our readers would like to know how you inserted these themes throughout the record. Thank you! I’m glad you like it. It’s not strictly a concept album, in that it doesn’t have a story arc or ongoing narrative,but there are recurring themes.This time, I just sat down and wrote whatever came into mymind.There was no plan. Like the music, the process was very fluid and natural. And in the end it all made sense as a whole.The longer I do this, the more difficult it becomes to write lyrics. Simply because so much has already been said. But it was easier this time. I also allowed myself to explore some more personal themes. I let down the curtain a bit, so to speak. The title is verywell chosen. I looked up the meaning of ‘Rapture’, and I got three different meanings: extreme pleasure or excitement, a mystical experience, and a specifically Christian interpretation: the transporting of believers to heaven at the second coming of Christ. Tell us more about how you chose this title and what you wanted to convey with it. As has happened many times before, I came up with the actual title of the album very early on. I don’t know why. I www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 14 - You have evolved in the lyrics you write, or at least in the way you want the listeners to understand your lyrics. During the alchemic quadrilogy – the four albums you releases between 2008 and 2014 – you admitted that most of your listeners would not understand your lyrics. However, from ‘The Urgency Of Now’ onwards, it seems you attach more importance to being well understood. Is this a right way to describe your evolution? That’s right.The big one was ‘The Urgency Of Now’,which was full of social commentary. I wrote it in 2017, after Trump got into power. The whole Brexit thing also just happened, and it looked like the rise of the right wing was a done deal. I thought I’d better say something. I need to get all that down on paper. So, for the first time, it was actually important to me that people would understand the meaning of it. On ‘Rapture’, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Some of these songs are meant to be interpreted exactly as I intend, while others are more open to interpretation. I put way more time and effort into writing lyrics from ‘The Urgency Of Now’ onward. From then on, the lyrics were clearer than before. Before, I sometimes even just painted pictures with words, at least in some cases.That’s all right. But I wanted to have a bit more gravitas than that. I knew I could get better at it. I’ll be honest with you, some of the older lyrics, especially from the very early days, are pretty cringe. Let’s look closer to a number of songs on the album. You open with ‘Resume The Pose’, which you described as dealing with ‘the madness of being in a rock band’. Images of ‘Spinal Tab’ came to my mind when I read that, and of course we would all like to know more about the madness you’ve encountered as a rock musician.What drove you to write that song? Spinal Tap: the goth edition. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’ve written a few songs about the band in the past. ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’ from the album ‘The Eternal Arcane’ is one of them. Or ‘Here I Go Again’ on ‘Taste Of Decay’ was another. I thought, well, it’s been a while since I did that. Let’s see how I’d go about it now. It’s pretty tongue-in-cheek. I used some things that happened during all those years on the road, but turned them into metaphors and decoded them. It might be hard for anyone to really get it. I’m not even sure if I do. There you go, that’s the madness!
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