by Fervency
The Nine Unknown Men is the new album by Danish dark-wave romantics, Fervency. A concept album, each song is one of nine sacred books, protected by one of the nine guardians entrusted with the ancient knowledge, wisdom, and technology deemed too dangerous for mankind to possess.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
Formed by Ashoka the Great, after his final, bloody victory (260 bc) the Emperor realized knowledge had to be safeguarded – the true responsibility of rule being that of peace and harmony and the seeds for the first secret organization were sown. Their mandate to operate in secret and intercept, preserve and protect ancient, contemporary and future technologies…
Research and Artistic Liberty
Research for this album was a lot of fun, and I started with the work of Talbot Mundy who was a science fiction writer in the 1920’s onward and the emperor Ashoka himself, a truly great man that knew the horror of war, the taste of absolute victory and in an epiphany of wisdom, chose a path of peace and enlightenment for himself and all mankind.
I took some artistic liberty with the book titles of Talbot Mundy’s work due to the sometimes darker nature of the content and tried to derive more fundamental/universal understandings (especially book 1) and then researched cutting-edge scientific explorations to see if I could make something work in a convincing fashion.
Gravity
An example would be the song Gravity- where I delved into the Thunderbolt project and the Electric Universe, as well as the book ‘Future Science’ by Maurice Cotterell, asking a very simple question – What is gravity? I found ancient texts/ myths/stories pertaining to singing stones into shape via vibrational interaction, as well as a fascinating modern mystery in Coral castle, in America. I ended up enjoying the idea of an electro/magnetic universe with the effect we know as gravity being a bi-product of helical polarization in atomic bonds…
So, lets recap: We have the idea of a sacred book that needs to be teeming with ancient and cutting-edge, even future, science and then we need to try and imagine what the content must be within the confines of the song structure composed by Thomas Blaesbjerg, who has composed the meat of the song for me to sing on.
The song ‘Gravity’ is a nice example of the kind of adventures one comes across as a lyricist. When you even ask the most basic of questions “What is gravity?”, you will find that as a species we are still in a very rudimentary stage in the discussion with scientific models working in certain confines and thus valuable but without any true consensus, or understanding, of what gravity actually is!
Answers, not Questions
I found ancient texts pertaining to ‘moving’ stones into shape and/or place via vibrational interaction (sound and resonance), as well as a fascinating modern mystery in Coral castle (E. Leedskalnin in Florida) I ended up enjoying the idea of an electro/magnetic universe with the effect we know as gravity being a natural additive aspect of helical polarization in atomic bonds. This worked so much better than ‘I have no idea’, as the books have to contain the answers not the questions and I felt it worked nicely.
There are nine books to write for and each had its own fascinating twists and turns. I am very grateful for the story (fictional) of the Nine Unknown Men, the pre-existing structures and the wealth of detail to work from. It made my job a lot easier.
Deep, Esoteric and Rewarding
To do the lyrics justice, my job is to disseminate as best I can and write, based on the amazing compositions Thomas Blaesbjerg has arranged. After that point, I record guitars and then Thomas is very likely to add more instruments and work further (sometimes re-arrange) and produce the music into the deep, dark and hypnotically beautiful sound we get at the end.
I hope this gives you a little insight into our lyric process and the approach we use and we hope you love our fourth album, Fervency – The Nine Unknown Men, as much as we do. It is deep, esoteric and rewarding, each listen revealing more and more in the sound picture, something I need as a music fan and adore about the bands I listen to – check us out at fervency.bandcamp.com – enjoy our back catalogue and, as always, stay fervent!
Links to the sources of lyric research:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_Mundy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Unknown
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity (and all the places it will lead, from Newton onwards)
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/about/
https://www.mauricecotterell.com/
https://coralcastle.com/
I also watched a bunch of documentaries and enjoyed lectures from ‘Physics for future presidents’ to Leonard Susskind etc.
Fervency
Fervency, Category: Artist, Albums: The Nine Unknown Men, Lowering Entropy, In a Grain of Sand, Equilibrium, Top Tracks: Book 1 – Mind, Book 2 – Physiology, Book 3 – Biotech, Book 5 – Communication, Book 4 – Alchemy, Monthly Listeners: 50, Where People Listen: Copenhagen, Soborg, Frederiksberg, Haugesund, Cologne
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