If truth is so important—so hallowed that we hold it as perhaps our most sacred tenet—then why do we go to such great lengths to deny it the moment it makes us uncomfortable or goes against our narrative?
In 2015 four young and irresponsibly ambitious musicians released their heartfelt understanding of truth in A Dream In Static—a rare and uncompromising debut of emotional gravitas, unconstrained creativity, and song craft well beyond the artists’ individual ages.
Earthside are Jamie van Dyck [Guitars, backing vocals, programming, keyboards], Ben Shanbrom [drums, backing vocals], Frank Sacramone [Keyboards, synthesizers, programming, percussion, guitar] and Ryan Griffin [Bass, backing vocals].
8 long years removed from their critically show-stopping entrance - A Dream in Static [2015] - the idealistic thinkers and feelers in Earthside found themselves in a different world entirely … or, perhaps, a world more honest and unhinged than they and many others had bargained for.
“It isn’t that things are really different now.” drummer Ben Shanbrom says. “It’s that the veil has been pulled back and we’re able to see that the narratives we’ve grown up with are riddled with holes. The people we’ve celebrated have glaring flaws and the binary sides we’ve identified with since grade school—when push came to shove—didn’t stand for what they spoke of. It’s unnerving to suddenly have the feeling that nothing was quite what you understood it to be, and that there’s little you can do as an individual to make things better."
Artists strive to never lose touch with their inner child—that wide-eyed amazement that comes from experiencing a goosebump-inducing chord progression, and that persistent urge to ask “why?” when the answer offered isn’t sufficient. Following the ADIS album cycle, the members of Earthside began writing their next record immersed in this fiery inspiration … in a way that was both unfamiliar and detrimental to their day-to-day lives.
"This album almost destroyed our lives and friendships,” keyboardist and co-orchestrator Frank Sacramone confides. "It's insanity, but it is beautiful.”
Years of recording and scrutinizing, a pandemic, and nearly 80 minutes of music later, the group’s idealistic ambition and absurd commitment to quality had all but broken them. But good can come from the abrasiveness of confronting the truth and humbling oneself before what we do not fully know and have only assumed.
“The title Let The Truth Speak came from Frank,” Shanbrom says. “After we finished a set on the ADIS North American tour Frank dropped that phrase in conversation in a way that had nothing to do with anything profound going on in the world, but it stopped me in my tracks and I had to write it down. Without meaning to, he’d put into words what the great problem of our day is—that truth is well within our reach, but we don’t want it—our egos and our identities are too threatened; we’d rather go down with the ship we’ve built than ever question its integrity."
The members of Earthside gradually began to see the change that this type of critical thinking instilled. “At first, it’s unnerving,” Sacramone chimes in. “But when you're able to confront the shortcomings of your tribe and your beliefs, the other side begins to look a lot more human and the problems you face begin to look like a small part of a much bigger whole that’s affecting people in every city and every country.”
“A Dream In Static was more of an *I* album,” reflects guitarist and orchestrator Jamie van Dyck. “Each of us in our own way was engaging topics of self-actualization and the fear of never quite becoming. Let The Truth Speak, however, turns its focus to the *We*. Within months of releasing ADIS, the global landscape had changed to where issues of far more consequence than our own individual dreams coming true were tugging at us. We became far more consumed with the trajectory of humanity as a whole than our own legacies therein.”
This is where the worldly scope of the collective’s long-awaited second LP comes into focus. "Part of "Letting The Truth Speak," means not speaking on behalf of everyone else,” Shanbrom says. "While we composed the music and built certain sections with our features in mind, our guests had a much more collaborative role on this album, at times contributing their own lyrics, melodies, and perspectives to the whole.”
Indeed, Let The Truth Speak is truly an international affair, featuring vocalists and storytellers from all walks of life and corners of the globe. "On A Dream In Static we were a brand new band so working with our heroes was both a bucket list item and served to distinguish ourselves among the many up-and-coming bands at that time,” van Dyck says. “On the new record it felt far more meaningful to use our platform as a way to showcase voices and musicians that needed to be heard. It also allowed us to take greater creative risks.”
The explosive title track of the album carries a feeling of culmination—the fully unexpected but fittingly show-stopping point of arrival in the album’s tumultuous pursuit of truth. A full string section—an overarching element of the record’s sound—jostles with violent rhythms, eldritch scales, and the unprecedented pairing of Earthside alum and Tesseract frontman Daniel Tompkins' indomitable vocal dexterity and world-music ace Gennady Tkachenko Papizh’s jaw-dropping vocalizations and cinematic wails. These elements all crescendo to an ending climax that is a unanimous favorite moment of the album for the band.
They have previously revealed songs from the album including “All We Ever Knew And Ever Loved” featuring Baard Kolstad [Leprous]. The video won the award for Best Music Video at the United Artist International Film Festival and was selected to be screened at a number of film festivals – Horrorcon UK, UAIFF, Dam Short Film Festival, Animiest, Rhode Island International film festival and more . The song is quite unlike anything currently in the rock music landscape. Coming across more like the chilling final movement of a score to an end-times thriller than anything one might loosely associate with the work of a “band,” the 9-minute voyage invokes one of the largest pipe organs in the world, a full orchestral brass section, thunderous pit percussion, and two duelling drummers to supernatural effect.
“Pattern of Rebirth” features Fire From The God’s poignant frontman AJ Channer, who composed lyrics and melodies to the song, which resulted was a cathartic and unexpected take, with AJ processing the grief of losing his dad and even singing from the vantage of his late father. Jamie van Dyck says, “he’s a socially conscious soul who passionately takes a stand without taking a side. He’s a unifier, and he will call out BS or injustice no matter who’s in the wrong or who’s being wronged. And in addition to us loving the warmth and character of his voice in his work with Fire From The Gods, we felt conviction in inviting his message into our music and the greater message of this album.”
“Tyranny” bursts out of the gate with a confrontational crash of orchestral brass and percussion alongside a wild galloping groove and frenetic riff. Are we genuine in our quest to be forces of good, or merely stroking our egos, jockeying for moral high ground? It features another unique voice Earthside handpicked to feature—Pritam Adhikary of the Indian Metal band Aarlon. It all culminates in a massive ending section driven by heart-searing vocals and lyrics composed exclusively by Pritam and sung in his native Bengal.
“We Who Lament” was released late 2022 and features Keturah on vocals. The song is a a fitting bridge from the past to the future—Earthside’s rhythmically vibrant and melodically and texturally intense sound with an absolute dynamo of a vocalist on top—filtered through a darker, wearied perspective. It’s undoubtedly one of the most infectious and immediate songs on the album, but, even as such, it still offers the engrossing sound worlds, textures, and architectural approach to eventful songwriting expected of the ever-ambitious act.
For a band that has only released one album and a handful of new singles over the better part of a decade, the Earthside name has garnered a near cult-like association with quality and ambition—it’s a reputation the members themselves are keenly aware of.
“We’re really proud of what we achieved with A Dream In Static,” van Dyck says. “But a valid critique of it is that the songs each fit into one of two buckets—either these heavy post-rock instrumentals or more cinematic orchestral pieces—but these elements were generally kept distinct from each other, rarely heard at the same time or even on the same song. We wanted Let The Truth Speak to be the union of our influences as opposed to just the intersection—we wanted the world music, film score, and non-traditional rock and metal elements to come to the fore—to create something new, something unexplored.”
Let The Truth Speak will be released on 17th November via Music Theories Recordings/Mascot Label Group. The album features collaborations with Daniel Tompkins [Tesseract], AJ Channer [Fire From The Gods], Keturah, Pritam Adhikary [Aarlon] and more. Earthside finished 2022 with a sold-out US tour with VOLA and they will be heading to Europe to play Euroblast festival in Germany in September and Progpower festival in the Netherlands in October.
