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I’ve been thinking a lot about Nina Simone’s quote: “An artist’s duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.” Originally, I thought to write an album about some futuristic dystopia, one fermented in “what if” predictions that travel down the path of where we’ve been and where we’re at, based off of books I had been reading like Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. I started to write about systems built on control, consumption, and cruelty that we’ve been taught to accept as normal: climate crisis, houselessness, cults, harmful beauty standards that are now exacerbated by AI, fame & exploitation, social media’s effect on the youth, power and how it disguises itself as love, religion, beauty, success and safety, and how suffering is aestheticized. Empathy is punished, and humanity is traded for convenience. And beneath the rage and satire is a refusal to go numb, a demand to feel fully, to see clearly, and choose autonomy, connection, and truth in a world that profits from our disconnection and ignorance. Over time, I came to realize mania doesn’t imagine some distant dystopia; it holds up a cracked mirror to the one we’re already living in and asks not just how, but “Will we create something beautiful from the chaos we’ve been given?” - Melanie Martinez (via the HADES CD box sets)