Heavy and melodic songwriter, Matthew Mast has debuted the lead single “A Part/Apart” from his upcoming album Of All The Endings. The track starts discreetly with shimmering, melancholy guitars before falling into fuzzed-out, almost doomy, catharsis examining a chasm that threatens to devour him and his relationships. Due out October 23rd through the budding cassette label, V.A.S.P. Legacy, Mast’s forthcoming album Of All The Endings is a stirring piece of art for a bleak year that eventually pulls back the dark curtain of anxiety. Watch the video below and pre-order a limited edition cassette of the album here.
This world is a heavy place where even the beauty can feel overwhelming. For Matthew Mast, the anxious brain confuses beauty for heaviness. The sun isn’t setting, the sky is burning. On his new album, Of All The Endings, he explores these indistinguishable opposites through his brand of bleak and introspective songwriting. Internalizing his anxieties and strengthening his musical language, Mast delivers a towering and emotional collection that serves as a powerful reminder of the murkiness lying just beneath the surface of everyday life. Layers of weighty guitars, sprawling synthesizers, focused piano, and surges of strings paint canvases of despair and perseverance, as waves of reverb and delay wash over a trembling voice searching for a sense of peace. In this rare calmness, Matthew Mast can’t help but to see the light in the dark; the dark in the light.
“A Part/Apart” lives in the light, yet examines the ever-looming disquiet and its corrosive effects on Mast and his relationships. “Stay Awake” dwells in darkness with a sustained drum loop bedded beneath frail guitars, existing in a world where despair is normal but finite. “Born Again” peels away the layers of self-doubt and gloom with monolithic rhythms in an effort to be remembered as something more.
Matthew Mast writes about burdened love and the paralyzing aches of anxiety. Instead of withdrawing, on Of All The Endings, he finds comfort in presenting these strikingly familiar struggles. Enduring trials of self, Mast arrives with an expansive set of songs that filter his depths of hurt into catharsis and release. Darkness begets light.