How easy is it for a person to get used to a life that’s no longer their own? That’s the question Watch Me Die Inside are asking in ‘Elevate’ (the opening Fragment of the upcoming EP The Luminous Abyss). It’s a track about the slow erosion of self through habit and the acceptance of the status quo. It’s a journey about self awareness, resistance and the repercussions of simply looking past the obvious. The central theme is that we can very easily become so used to a life that we just go along with it rather than actually make the choice to live it.
The imagery of corridors, cages, dust and blindfolds gives the subject of the song a very physical dimension indeed and makes mental imprisonment something that can quietly and steadily work its way into the fabric of everyday life. Against that imagery the repeated injunction to ‘lift the mind’ is very potent. It’s not a suggestion that you just go and do it, it’s a command to actively break from the state of intellectual passivity. There’s a definite determination in that call, even if the prospect of awakening is by no means presented as a facile route out of the problems that inevitably follow greater awareness.
Within the wider context of The Luminous Abyss “Elevate” is the first step in an ascent which is going to be much more than just a rejection of the mundane. The EP as a whole is a mixture of modern metal, electronic architecture, piano driven melancholy and cinematic darkness and that’s the broader creative direction that the Fragments are exploring. “Elevate” is the first chapter in that book and it’s the first step in the process of making the decision to look around you and to question the structures that you’re operating within. Its importance becomes much more apparent when you consider the exposure and the awakening that you’re going to get in the subsequent chapters.
Perhaps the most powerful thing about “Elevate” is that it doesn’t at all confuse awareness with freedom. If you’re going to break out of your established patterns you’re going to be in a state of uncertainty rather than a state of certainty. Staying in the unquestioning state offers you nothing at all. It takes that very tension and turns it into a call for resistance. That’s the basis of The Luminous Abyss. It’s an invitation to resist the boundaries of habitual thought and to consider what’s on the other side of that.
