Vestiges
The Descent of Man

"We are the first – and hopefully the last – species that has evolved to the point of deserving extinction. But we are also a species that has the power to change its future."

A band would say this, one to which the Vestiges have surely drawn a lot of inspiration.

"The Descent of Man" is a concept, a huge concept, the concept. It doesn’t tell a story, it tells the story, it tells what concerns us all. The birth, evolution, and eventual extinction of our species, the Homo genus.

Our past.

Our present.

Its future.

The future belongs to the Earth, not us. When we fall, our planet will still stand, and perhaps then it will find peace. End of the world. Eh? End of what? The Earth? The universe? The human race?

Yes, the End of the world is the end of the human race, because if we die, everything else dies too. God only cares about us and only us. Or rather, man only cares about man. Man who worships man and rains blood on oceans and fields.

The only protagonists of Judgment Day. The only ones who need to be judged.

The Earth will not die with us, it has survived things beyond our imagination. Species yet undefined patiently await their chance after the stage is empty once more. Such a natural thing, it goes unremembered.

"The promise of salvation in a land we have yet to see has clouded our judgment in a land that is right before our eyes."

Find your place in the world. Find it, or at least try to find it. Ignore it. Seek something more and then justify it. God wants it. He created all this for you. Do what you want with it. Even better, act without logic. Destroy yourself as your environment perishes.

"Industrialization, militarization, overpopulation, theism, speciesism, and nihilism are regarded as evolution and progress."

But the rest will be reborn, you won’t.

"There will be horrifying consequences for what we have done."

All of ours.

"The Descent of Man" is indivisible, compact, linear. An intro, an outro, and five numbered tracks. A single flow of devastating intensity. Visceral yet varied, dark and deep. Screams that could be those of each of us, that are those of each of us, and even more so, are those of every oppressed life form, of a wounded planet desperately trying to shake off a disease in a slow and relentless process.

There are those impenetrable sound walls that crush to the ground, there are those dizzying D-Beat beginnings that scorch the earth, there are the titanic crescendos of the most epic post-rock atmospheres "Celine Dion sings love songs, while our cities burn" and there is the malaise of life, a lot.

"Bred to worship man, miracle, and the life beyond this life, beyond the here and now."

Egocentrism that comes from a never-seen transcendent dimension.

"There is blood in the water, there will be
no forgiveness. We have fallen to ashes (to ashes), there will be no return. Rejoice, reclaim, and rebuild what mankind has taken for granted."

End of play