Monks Of Mellonwah – “Sky and the Dark Night”

The 4 piece Alt-Rock band Monks of Mellonwah hailing all the way from Sydney, Australia have recently released their third EP, Sky and the Dark Night Trilogy. Lead guitarist, Joe de la Hoyde, gave us some insight on the meaning behind this three-part song.

Background
“”Sky and the Dark Night” was written in the very early years of the band’s formation. It started out as a brooding arpeggio line that featured heavy guitar swells and a heavy guitar riff that occurred at the end of the song. It became sort of our “dark horse”, there was never any recording released and apart from a demo that we recorded in 2011, it was only a live song. But it slowly became one of our best. Its original heavy and progressive nature made it one of our most explosive live songs and for the good part of three years it became the closing number in the majority of our shows and tour sets.

Over the years, I have grown to love film music and am studying to be a film composer. To me there is nothing more emotive than a symphony orchestra, and the feeling this song gave always reminded me of an epic film moment. I decided to try arranging the song as an orchestral piece, and came up with Part 1 of the Trilogy “Breakout.” From then on, the song begun to feel as though it was part of a bigger thing, a journey that told more than an emotion, a story, and this is how the idea of the trilogy came about. After recording Part 2 “Control,” which was always the original song, I begun to write a third part in which I hoped to combine everything which I feel this band embodies’ The Monk’s are to me more than just an Alternative Rock band. I want us to be a story telling machine that uses music in all its mediums to connect with EVERYONE in the world on ANY level. Thus I finished the third part, Part 3 “Condition,” which explored modern film music and elements of dubstep and electronica.

I wrote this for various press outlets as to its meaning. We are each riddled by our own curses and battle our own demons. There are diseases and syndromes, and many things that we can’t understand let alone hope to control. Sky And The Dark Night, is the journey from the beginning of our battles to their fruitless ends; the ups and downs, the triumphs and the failures. It is the undying hope that maybe somewhere along the way, we might find ourselves.”

Lyrics

I just can’t breathe,
Just can’t breathe,

I just can’t breathe (just can’t breathe)
I just can’t breathe

I’m lost in your head,
I’m trapped in your heart,
I just can’t breathe,

I just can’t breathe
I just can’t breathe