French metal outfit Insolvency released their sophomore album Illusional Gates earlier this week. The band offered numerous glimpses into the record ahead of its release, including Blindness which explores a society addicted to technology and instant gratification. We caught up with the band to find out more, including the writing process, themes and stories from behind the scenes.
Can you give us your quick elevator pitch on this track? Why does this one stand out for you?
Musically, we like how strongly this song resonates (in our opinion). It’s one of the first we wrote for this album, and we thought it represented the album’s atmosphere really well… so we thought it would be cool to come back with this as our first single. We are the kind of people who have a critical eye on society and how human life works, we try to be as aware as we can. We found ways we transcribe that through psychological aspects. Blindness is a consequence of the mental state where people are no longer aware of what they have become, the way they behave or trust in certain things.
How did you tackle the writing process for the song? Was there anything unique about this track compared to your usual/previous approach?
We tried to follow the inspiration we had after the first album. Blindness has been written and demoed since 2019… But we tried to push the efficient aspect of it through the breakdowns. Also, we focused and were careful about the sound design of the small ambient/electro parts. We did a lot of demos between us to check every creative possibility before considering any mix. The line-up change (departure of our previous drummer and friend Mickael) and the COVID crisis delayed our schedule a lot, so we took advantage of the context to polish all the album writing.
Can you tell us how the song’s theme came about?
Overanalysing society and people! During this period we were into the first album promo and we discovered by ourselves how socials work behind the scenes (positively and negatively). We felt like we were taken by the system… The album deals with strong emotional themes we’ve experienced during our journey, so we’ve put it all this way.
Tell us about the video, do the themes of the single transfer to the video?
Of course, we’ve got some parts where we’re all attached by cables in a room, that refers to the control we are held by. Also, there are some 3D images integrated that illustrate digitalisation, all linked to what we describe. That might be all obvious, but we like the way it goes, efficient and kind of explicit enough and visually clear.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories from the video shoot?
We’ve made a short behind the scenes video, which you can check out HERE. I think we did it very wisely and seriously in a video studio, maybe way too soberly to be able to tell you something crazy as you could expect haha! It was all shot in Strasbourg, east of France, close to Germany. We had fun there after the video, enjoying local gastronomy based on things like stewed meat cooked with beer!
Anything else you’d like to add for our readers?
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