It’s a treat when you get to hear a song that recalls some of your favorite music, but has a feel all of its own. Awaken’s new single, “The Veil,” starts out sounding like a Tool song, with Maynard-like vocals. “There is a shield that keeps us / from seeing what’s around us / Like a veil that covers our eyes / So we start to lose our way.” But when the chorus comes in, it’s a powerful voice that is something more like a hardcore singer meets something operatic.
The single is a song about how our true feelings get numbed and obscured by life, but it offers the hope that this “veil will be lifted.” It is a hopeful song, with a very dark edge. Something that doesn’t belittle our pain with trite quotes on positivity and embraces the mystery of life’s darkness and light. “I know the world can be a stage / that’s so constantly shifted.” The band knows that life is complex and full of disappointments, but they are not gonna bow out because things don’t always go as planned.
The drum beat has four on the floor, during the verse, and shifts from high hat to snare drum, on the chorus, and his a bit of a march feel to it, throughout. It drives forward with the beat and soars high with the vocals. It’s nice that they took a band like Tool and built upon it in their own signature style. Tool is like the gateway drug into something new and wonderful. This song is one that you could play on repeat. And it comes with an intriguing lyric video, so that you’re brought into the world of the song, one scene of a door opening into a room filled with light. A good capture for the meaning of the song.
The lyrics are pretty poetic, but the line that stuck out to me the most is one of the simplest in the song. “Why is it so hard for us / to share what we feel?” A good question. This song is their attempt to do just that, a vulnerable inner look, carried along by an emotional soundscape. That’s the service that bands provide, bringing us in touch with our untapped emotions, providing a bright beacon for the dark road we’re on. The singer, Chad Griffin’s voice, will always haunt me now. But in a good way.
Prism Reviews 