Pronunciation Guide
Music release
All over the internet, at least three people have wondered, "how do you pronounce Entropyrian?" Despite giving it their best shot at the time, this information eluded them. So I made this track, helpfully called Pronunciation Guide, to answer this question that has, for however brief a time, plagued at least three people.
It's my first new release in years, and represents the first of a new series of songs that clarify and define Entropyrian as a musical project. Entropyrian centers around industrial metal that follows the theme in the name. But what is the theme of the name? Now that we know how to say it, what is an Entropyrian anyway?
Entropy is the slow and fast slide toward chaos. The leaking of life force. It's what will snuff out every civilization, extinguish every star. It's the final boss of the universe. One day, long after "day" has ceased to have any meaning, the last light will go out and the last heat will dissipate. The last of order dissolves and final, cold, blank chaos reigns eternal. Before then we will have captured stars, shaped galaxies and bent reality to our will on fundamental levels.
But will we survive? Will we transcend physics itself?
Makes our problems today seem small and simple by comparison.
We fight entropy every day. Every breath is a usage of energy born in a fusion reaction in a star to separate and bring order to the miasma of elements around us, harnessing their power to further bring order to the structure of our bodies and minds. Every effort we apply to improve our bodies, minds and surroundings is an ongoing fight against decay, against the randomization of the order that gives us life. Every positive effort we make is ultimately a fight against entropy, on microscopic and gigantic scales.
An Entropyrian then is one who fights entropy. One who rages against the dying of the light. Someone who refuses to shy away from the duty every one of us has to bring order to the world in whatever way we can. It's total rejection of cynicism. Refusal to die before death. It is to look at the world and say "I don't know how, but I will win. We will win." It's the recognition of each of us as an instrumental part of an arc that spans from the birth of our species to the heat death of the universe, and then beyond that. It's a way to take heart by seeing our current struggles as small, but not unimportant.
Acknowledging this as the true context of our lives, it's embracing hope. It's welcoming the desire to live life. It's reveling in the epic and rejecting dismissal of such views as "corny", refusing the shield so many construct around themselves of irony, dismissiveness and trite insincerity. It's knowing that when your time comes, you will rest in the knowledge that you pushed as hard as you could, built as much as you could, made the path of the future clearer for those who come after you in whatever large or small ways you were able. It's a call to see life as an epic struggle, to embrace pursuit of greatness.
I don't mean to say I'm an example of any of this. Rather, that I hope more people choose to aim a little higher. To face setbacks with courage instead of defeat.
I personally use metal musical styles as a means to stir up these kinds of emotions, like listening to something epic while pushing through the last set of a heavy lift at the gym. A natural reaction is to come out of that feeling like such epic emotions are naïve or childish. "The real world isn't like that. The real world is boring and you don't matter" your grown up internal cynic reminds you. But I want to propose that no, reality is that your actions matter, and they matter a lot. Denying your soul the feelings of deep, epic struggle is a mistake, a reaction to disappointment, a guard against feelings of insignificance.
It's insecurity that makes people want to be "cool". To be aloof. To not care. If you can tell yourself you don't care, then you don't have to wrestle with your limitations in struggling with the things you would otherwise care about. As long as you can pretend you weren't really trying, then no-one can point to your failures. They aren't truly failures. You weren't really trying. You don't actually care that much. But for most of us it's a lie. And those who believe it is not a lie need a fire rekindled in their souls more than anyone.
So that's what Entropyrian means to me. It's a word that sums up these thoughts that have been forming in my head about what is a good way to view and approach life, and what is not. And it's what I decided to name this musical project that I'm using to try to do my part in the fight against entropy.
It's industrial metal, since I love the power metal brings and the calculated, mechanical sound of industrial. The topics are all over the map, some explicitly political, most not quite so. I don't see a lot of people trying to make metal in this direction, a soundtrack to the struggle against entropy so many are bravely fighting today in a genre so uniquely powerful, so the music I'll be releasing is my shot at it.
I hope the sentiment, and the music, resonate with you.