EPK – Grimmreaper – The Tragedy of Being (2021)
Publicist – Jon Asher – asher[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
For fans of Trivium, In Flames, Meshuggah, Dragonforce, Devin Townsend
Facebook.com/GrimmreaperOfficial | Instagram.com/grimmreaperusa
Album Title: The Tragedy of Being
Release Date: March 30, 2021
Label: Logan Grimm Records
Distribution: Distrokid
“It’s been a long process to get this solo record ready, but I couldn’t be more excited to finally put it out there. This is Grimmreaper’s debut album, The Tragedy of Being. So far, Grimmreaper has been described as mixing technical styles like those of Dragonforce and Meshuggah with mainstream styles like Bullet For My Valentine and Five Finger Death Punch.
I’m trying to give fans an experience that goes to different places in metal, from fast and hard, to slow and groovy, and even a Babymetal cover song. It’s a dark record with many twists and turns, but never boring. The lyrics come from ideas of old stories and archetypes, but the music isn’t as abstract. Some songs are commercial sounding in their structure, but some are longer with abrupt changes and weird patterns. The album is a journey through different tastes of metal, and while it’s meant to be enjoyed from start to finish, each song stands strong on its own.” – Grimmreaper – Logan Grimm
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“Talk about ambition. Grimmreaper, the brainchild of Logan Grimm, is a modern metal project where Logan plays all the instruments. Merging modern metal influences like Bullet For My Valentine with more technical ones like Meshuggah, the project is as much a multimedia one as it is a musical one.” – New Fury Media
“If you like pounding rhythms and impressive lead playing this power metal track (North Star) is just for you. With emotive vocals and rampaging rhythms, this is a classic headbanger from the very first double bass drum kick. The vocals soar and take flight mirroring the lyrical content. Throw in an epic thrash metal solo and we have one of the year’s best metal tracks- and it’s only the first week of January.” – BackSeatMafia
“Grimmreaper is inspired by many different sub-genres of metal, but it is without doubt that power metal is the strongest flavour in this particular track (North Star). There’s plenty of variation of riffs involved, ranging from meaty chugs to epic melodies that soar out of the atmosphere. In fact, the riff that starts at 0:33 sounds very similar to Those Who Fight Further from the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack, at least to start off with, And that happens to be one of my most favourite pieces of music ever, so I was smiling giddily when I heard that part.” – Abrasive Noise
BAND STORY ANGLES / FUN FACTS
1. This album was recorded worldwide over 2.5 years. Two countries, several apartments, an RV, and house, but never an actual recording studio.
2. The album and single art are planetary and abstract, representing the chaotic nature of the psyche, unknowable. The album art looks like a black hole, but was originally inspired from the sky of the Soul Cairn in the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Road of Resistance’s cover art came from the idea of a blood-red sun. In Skyrim’s Dawnguard DLC, you can shoot the sun with vampiric blood-tainted arrows to make it turn blood red. That was the founding idea for that art.
3. Grimmreaper is a constant pull between Logan and me, the two personalities that rule the band and its decisions. Logan is the manager, I’m the artist. – Grimm.
Is it pretentious to think of yourself as so deep that you need to show fans two personalities because you can’t be held to one? Yes. Also, Grimm is a blowhard. – Logan
4. All of what you hear on Grimmreaper’s debut album was recorded on one guitar, one bass, a very slow computer, and a cheap recording equipment bundle from the internet.
Super Ultra Exclusive Grimmreaper Recording Equipment Package™
Guitar: $200 Jackson JS22-7 Dinky
Bass: $300 Aria IGB-STD/5
Computer: Toshiba Satellite (not meant to record music, many technical difficulties encountered along the way)
Microphone: $300 MXL recording gear bundle from Amazon
Drums: Easy Drummer 2
Guitar Effects: Bias FX plugin
5. Grimmreaper and its debut album, The Tragedy of Being, resulted from personal events in 2017. Ultimately, however, I credit this project to Jordan Peterson and his lecture series, The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories, a series that was released on Youtube in 2017. Peterson is a clinical psychologist who, in the series, details the stories of the Old Testament, relating them to modern psychology, evolution, mythology, and human history. It was very painful and transformative for me to watch him talk on and on for hours, tearing down my paradigms about everything I thought I knew. I guess it hurts me so much that I had to find an outlet for the disorientation I experienced. There was no other option. My mind had been blown to the cosmos, and I was drifting. In that drifting, The Tragedy of Being was created.
Logan Grimm is an ambitious young artist seeking to take on the world, and the creator of Grimmreaper. He has developed an intense backstory for a multimedia project that explores the very human realities of tragedy and suffering, and the choices they present, from nihilism and resentment to transcendence and courage. In the process of this, he has crafted music that fuses the influences of highly technical bands like Dragonforce and Meshuggah with the work of more mainstream names such as Five Finger Death Punch and Bullet For My Valentine.
The project, which will start to see release in the early half of 2021, will center around an album entitled The Tragedy Of Being. The record explores noble and contemptible ways to respond to the conditions inherent to human consciousness. Since it is wholly a solo project, Grimm will perform on the record as each ‘band member.’ He will also represent each member in the videos released for the project, each hidden behind a black hood with a different appearance. The Tragedy Of Being will be accompanied by a documentary of the creation process featuring the twin personalities of the business-minded Logan and the poetic artist, Grimm. It will embody his sense of humor, split personas, and inspirations.
Representing himself as the embodiment of his lyrical themes, Logan Grimm has built a strong visual presence for the project. Instantly recognizable and endlessly ambitious, there are a lot of interesting twists and turns presented in the work of Grimmreaper. With a bright future painted before him featuring everything from forming a DIY label to endless touring, Logan Grimm has the ambition and the vision to match. Poised to be the next great force in metal, Grimmreaper look boldly into the future.
Discography:
2021 – The Tragedy of Being
[Download Album Cover | Download Album Lyrics]
Album Title: The Tragedy of Being
Release Date: March 30, 2021
Label: Logan Grimm Records
Distribution: Distrokid
Track Listing:
1. Mind’s Mirrors Meshing Together (6:34)
2. North Star (6:31)
3. Prison (8:09)
4. Resent (5:40)
5. The Land I Will Show You (8:37)
6. Catastrophe of the Tragic Melancholies (4:52)
7. Road of Resistance (5:12) (Babymetal Cover)
8. Happy Times (4:48)
9. The Tragedy of Being (9:56)
Album Length: 1:00:23
Album Credits:
• All songs performed by: Logan Grimm
• All songs written by: Logan Grimm
• Produced by: Fredrik Erlingsson – Audiosphere Recordings
• Mixed by: Fredrik Erlingsson – Audiosphere Recordings
• Mastered by: Fredrik Erlingsson – Audiosphere Recordings
• Album Artwork by: Ardasen – Fiverr, single artworks by
Album Band Line Up:
Logan Grimm – Lead Vocals
Logan Grimm – Lead Guitar
Logan Grimm – Drums
Logan Grimm – Bass
Lyrical Themes by Song:
1. Mind’s Mirrors Meshing Together: The album starts with a catastrophic anomaly to the psyche. The frame of reference through which you interpret the world is shattered. The thin ice of order you stand on crashes through and you move to the underworld of chaos where nothing is certain.
2. North Star: You need to rekindle yourself to move forward in life. Aim toward the highest thing you can conceptualize. You will not get it right the first time, but you must have an aim. You may think of aiming yourself towards a guide in the sky, the north star. But you’re not smart enough to know where the north star is, so you’ll aim for the south because of your ignorance. This is still a good path moving forward because you have decided to move. Your aim will come more into focus as you move.
3. Prison: To rekindle yourself and move forward is quite hard to do, and everything can feel like a prison when your psyche is shattered from the aforementioned anomaly. To me, it feels like moving through molasses or being locked in a room unable to move. This can be oddly comforting, however, because it might feel like home to you.
4. Resent (Single 1): I believe that at some point in deciding to continue living, resentment for existence arises in you. A struggle for reason emerges, and nihilism can take over. This song is a terrible reach into how you can think when nothing matters when the world is in gray when the suffering of existence outweighs any justification or joy. It is hell.
5. The Land I Will Show You: This is an immediate counter-argument to the nihilism presented in Resent. Walk forward in a covenant with God (so to speak) and act truthfully as if Being is good. This is taken from the stories of Abraham, where Old Testament God tells Abraham to leave his land and venture to the promised land, “the land I will show you”.
6. Catastrophe of the Tragic Melancholies (Single 2): To move to the promised land is no easy task. You can’t be naive. There will be obstacles in your way and people trying to take you out at every turn. To operate within the covenantal relationship with God, you must incorporate the evil of your soul into your being. This is the terrible realization of all you could be capable of. A descent into the underworld to confront your own self. This is a naked look into the worst parts of my soul, my shadow, the parts of my soul and fantasies that I want to pretend don’t exist. This is an attempt to make contact with my shadow, from a Jungian perspective.
7. Road of Resistance (cover song): After the trauma of contacting your shadow, you still take trembling steps forward. This is a noble and honorable action, because contact with the shadow can often make people freeze. This song sticks with the meaning of the literal translation from Japanese, the original language of the song. But, I took the opportunity to rewrite the lyrics in my own words. It was originally written by Dragonforce, and they often write about the hero’s journey, mountains, dragons, and archetypes. I paid homage to their writing style by making the song about the nobility of moving forward in life up the mountain. It also fits into the theme of the album quite nicely.
8. Happy Times: To continue moving forward, you need more defenses against nihilism and hatred of existence. You always need more. You’re never fully equipped to stand against the suffering of life.
Journey back to your childhood and regain the wonder that has since been lost. This is not naive, because having made an attempt to incorporate your shadow, you know the world isn’t like it was as a child. You know it can be terrible, and so can you. Regain the sense of grandeur, potential, and joy you had as a child to bolster yourself against the tragic conditions of life.
9. The Tragedy of Being: Finally, no matter how far you’ve come, no matter how integrated you are as a person, the tragedy of existence is still there. However transformed you are, this still weighs heavily on your soul, as it’s the only thing that’s true about life… This song is a melancholic wrap. It is an instrumental, 10 minutes close to The Tragedy of Being to symbolize that the tragic conditions of human existence never seem to end.
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