As I was wrapping up production of my second album, “Apocalypse Now,” I got to thinking about the philosophical and theological ideas that could or would result from the ideas of the story I was trying to tell through this newfangled idea of “chip tune rock.” It all began as I started mulling over the four simple lines of sung word that I had written for the end of the title track, “Apocalypse,” as it had been the first, and only, time in the entire album that I had included any kind of sung lyric. “Apocalypse” was also the last track I had written for the album and so I had a great deal to think about thematically as I tried to make some kind of superficial sense of all the titles of all the tracks and how they related both to the story I had imagined, as well as to any kind of deeper meaning that could, if any, be gleaned from such an analysis. This short essay is an attempt at such an ordeal.
I believe that the first place to begin with this train of thought is at the beginning, with a story. The album itself is loosely structured and based upon a story that I had imagined for a fantasy world that I had spent the better part of a decade and a half developing. The story in question is my own rendition of multiple tales rolled into one: Atlantis, the Tower of Babel, and Sodom and Gomorrah. I believe it is in the analysis of each of these individual tales that the meaning I so desperately seek can be found. With that, I believe the best place to start is at the beginning.
The first tale to analyze is undoubtably one that most of us are all very familiar with: the story of Atlantis. Atlantis was of particular interest to me because I wanted to tell the tale but from a fresh angle. I didn’t want the city to disappear beneath the waves like it does according to the ancient poet, but I still wanted a city that disappeared due to a cataclysmic event that took place. The reason for its destruction? Hubris. Why hubris? While I do not wish to go into an apologetic discussion at this time, I will say that I firmly believe that the tale of Atlantis and the Biblical account of the Flood are one and the same. They are simply tales told from differing perspectives, one Greek, the other Divine. The Flood occurred precisely because man had become so entrenched in themselves and in opposition to their maker that only eight people remained and that was because they were deemed righteous. Atlantis, then, tells that here once had been a great city that had arisen before the LORD himself plummeted the world into a global ocean.
The second point of inspiration, the Tower of Babel, is of equal interest, as it once again is a tale of hubris, only this time, there is a tower. A tower that sought to demonstrate the pride and self-confidence mankind had in themselves over a higher calling. This tower was also supposed to have spawned a great and mighty city, one of brick and mortar, one not too dissimilar from what we may have seen with industrial-era architecture. Now as to the state of completion this city was in when God confused the languages of the people is a topic reserved for a completely different paper, and as such, I will leave that thought here. What’s important is that, twice now, my inspirations have maintained two recurring qualities: a great city and hubris. But there is a third quality and that quality is best demonstrated in the example of my third inspiration: the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Without out going into depth, the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is once again a tale of a city, two, actually, that demonstrated great hubris through their actions. Unlike the case of Babel, and perhaps much more similar to Atlantis, the hubris described is one of which man thinks that he knows best and seeks to feed their own selfish egos over trying to love and serve their fellow man. This all culminates in their graphic destruction at the hands of fire and brimstone sent from the heavens themselves, completely destroying both cities into total annihilation. Indeed, the third quality that all three points of inspiration have is one of disaster, an apocalypse, if you will, and Sodom’s apocalypse is so graphic and so fatal that it immediately painted a picture in my mind of two children, standing atop a tall tower in the center of a once mighty city, singing a song of doom as hordes of shadowy undead came upon it, removing its existence from the landscape. It was this very first image that inspired me to begin to craft a story that could fit into a near-two decade-old world of fantasy, a story that occurred near the beginning of time, a period of prehistory, of sorts. A time when the world was still young and yet already so defiled and wasted by the corruption of a land created good. This is the backdrop to the story proper.
Now that I had the basic premise, the challenge was to then craft a story that would serve as the vehicle for this image to become a true tale. Using the basic framework provided by both Christian Faber’s Bionicle and Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I began to craft a story about heroes that had been called for the expressed purpose of seeing the destruction of the world’s first ever great city; for the city itself had succumbed to the corrupting nature of hubris and its inhabitants had all but lost their humanity. Only a few members of the royal family remained and only one of them could take decisive action and free a prisoner from their cell of doom before they were discovered and chased after. These two would then join forces with two strange men, one that came from the mountains and the other who came from a place that did not follow the rules of space and time like the world itself did. They would all eventually team up with a man who did the honorable thing and dishonored his employers who only sought to do evil, by fighting them before fleeing, and a woman who, despite being a social outcast, was resilient and full of heart. These six would eventually make their way to the great city, defeat the king and queen, the rulers who led their people to a most horrific end as armies of undead: vampires and amalgamations of varying types and sizes. After defeating the rulers, the man from ‘space’ flew up to the top of the tower that stood at the center of the city, along with the two other remaining royal family members, and they called down upon the city, a great and purifying mass of energy, pulled directly from the eclipsing moons. All heroes narrowly escape, and the city is totally annihilated; it has experienced its apocalypse.
As I sat there and thought about the lyrics that I had written and the story that I had envisioned, I began to have a strange and most colorful thought: what if we all, whether rich or poor, healthy or sickly, regardless of gender, color, or interest, all have our own apocalypses that we must face, great disasters that we must go through on our journeys through life? It was a novel idea, but one that I felt at least had some merit. For as I pondered the lyrics, which I will now include here:
We are all harbingers of our own demise.
We bring about the zombies in our minds.
Won’t someone save me?
Purge the vampire within!
I noticed that, through my subconscious, I had included the concept of original sin and the poor natural state that mankind finds itself in at conception. It is the state that dictates that, because our father, Adam, exchanged the Truth for a lie, the whole of the human race is condemned to corruption, a perversion of a people once made very good. Man’s hubris was his downfall, and it is hubris that leads man to twist and pervert the good things in this life for evil.
Because of hubris, man is subject to destruction. Hubris is the vehicle through which we become harbingers of our own demise. We also, through the feeding of our own egos, spawn countless droves of undead in our minds. These undead, by all accounts, look alive, but their existence is so mangled and unrecognizable as truly living, that one has to question whether the person is good or bad. For there will be times that a man seems to do good, only for us to find the dark underbelly of an evil orc later on. It is only through a great disaster that one may become free of this corrupting reality. It is only by means of a great and mighty apocalypse that one may find both a hope and a way out of the living graveyards of corruption and the tall towers of hubris.
As I further contemplated on these things I noted that, while all may experience a great disaster or apocalypse, not everyone comes out the other end. Indeed, I also started to think that perhaps we all go through many apocalypses, much smaller in scope and yet equally as grand as the apocalypse of Revelation. Because for someone to come out the other side of an apocalypse, there must be a vessel. For Atlantis, or if one prefers, the Flood, there was a boat. For Babel, its vessel was simply the divine hand of grace. Indeed, Sodom and Gomorrah’s vessels were two angels sent to lead and guide a man and his family to safety. For us, there is only one vessel that we can take if we are to survive an apocalypse, and that is through the many modes that divine intervention or providence likes to take in our lives. For even the heroes of my story had to take two separate vessels. One group of heroes took a dragon whilst others took a portal. But the point here is that without external help, we cannot escape the very apocalypses that we so often find ourselves. We need help. We need a savior. We need someone to defeat the darkness that is found in each and every one of us.
I also started to wonder in what forms these personal apocalypses take. Often, they seem to be the convergence of many, smaller problems into one condensed event. We all go through various troubles and trifles in our lives and sometimes they like to all show up at our doorstep while we try to juggle three phones, two babies, and half a dozen rabid hounds. As I was writing and producing the very album that began my adventure down this rabbit hole, I couldn’t help but note that I had been going through a personal apocalypse of my own in 2024. For the year had started with me being depressed and angry with the world. I had just begun a journey through a certain endeavor, the results of which would later prove to be of great benefit. At the time, however, I was distraught. I slowly began a journey of personal development by reading good, constructive literature and through the listening of encouraging audios. I also began to associate with positive and uplifting people. As the year rolled on, I began to experience all kinds of woes, things of the financial, vehicle, and interpersonal varieties. It seemed that everywhere I turned, another painful lesson was learned, another frustrating experience was gained, and I had nothing to show for it save internal changes that slowly gnawed away at old, rotting corpses.
For the man I used to be was fine for his time. As I grew older and the world changed around me, I began to realize that if I was going to progress towards a destination I wished to achieve, I had to toss aside the old now-zombie version of myself that was no longer compatible with the version of me that was necessary for true progress. I began to realize that that old version had to be destroyed in its entirety so that room could be made for the better version. Indeed, it was as though the old wine skin had become useless and had to be more than tossed aside so that a new wine skin could be procured that could contain the fine wine of a new and more desirable outcome.
At this point, one may wonder where I may be going with this. On the one hand, there seem to be many alliterations to Christian conversion, especially with the third and fourth lines of lyrics. At the same time, I seem to be suggesting that personal apocalypses are far less a matter of spiritual enlightenment and more a matter of growing into a new and better person. The truth is that personal apocalypses are not constrained to either idea. Both ideas are equally valid, and both are fair game for further discussion. For in Christian conversion, the apocalypse is the death of the old Adam and the birth of the new man through faith in Christ Jesus as its vehicle. In more developmental settings, the apocalypse is old ways of thinking coming up against the rising tides of time. The only vehicle that can offer escape, then, is new information. And do not think that elements of both can’t also mingle and become the spiritual growth and development of a Christian, for even the reformer Martin Luther says, and I paraphrase, that we must daily drown out the old Adam through sorrow and penitence. Indeed, I can go through pages upon pages of thought concerning just the Christian perspective of personal apocalypses, but because of the purpose and scope of this essay, I shall currently refrain from doing so.
All I’m trying to say here is that we all will have to deal with some kind of disaster that forces us to confront our old ways of thinking. There will always be times when apocalypses will threaten to sweep away the old traditions that once worked but now must be either reborn or discarded completely. When they do come our way, we must not look to cling to zombies or our vampiric selves for comfort and relief, for the vampire is an image of the selfish feeding upon others for its own survival. For to cling to what used to work is itself a sort of hubris, where one thinks that they know better and cannot let go of it for fear of having to change. In that fear, they become like a vampire, discarding human reason for selfish imagery, and goodwill for being unfulfilled. This is my case for personal apocalypses, and nothing more.