Release
Previous titles: Lycantrophy, Carpathian Breed, Atum Nocturnem
Dialogue from:
Taste the Blood of Dracula 1970
I have always been a big fan of classic horror movies, especially the ones from the Hammer Studios. Since I was studying Audio Visual Arts I had my own video editing setup at home. I liked to capture bits of audio from movies and use that in songs. Since we never really thought about lyrics with these songs one night I wanted to experiment with some dialogue from “Taste the Blood of Dracula”, my favourite of the Hammer Dracula movies. The edit I made back then hasn’t changed much, a bit of timing here and there and because this worked so well I decided to do the same with the other songs 20 years later.
I always liked this song because of it’s variation and it hasn’t changed much from the original Mod. Basically I just added some guitar on top of the rhythm section and that’s about it. I always envisioned there was this battle between good and evil in the mid section and that’s how I came upon the idea of making it about an actual victim of Dracula. After Van Helsing tells the father to go away I also tried to add in a bit of dialogue from earlier in the movie where the woman who was bitten begs Dracula for his attention. Her pleading towards Dracula sounded in that context as pleading to Van Helsing not to kill her. But I liked the sudden sound of the stake better and she was beyond redemption so it didn’t make sense to hear her beg.
The iterations of the title always had to do with some sort of shapeshifting or metamorphosis and in this case a human turning into a vampire. “Atum Nocurnem” even translates as “impregnation by a lord of the underworld” but in the end “Release” worked better since it’s more about releasing the victim of her curse rather than letting her turn into a vampire.
