THE MYTHOLOGY OF EMPATHY

The debut album

You can listen to the album above by selecting a track. Or:
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The whole point of the Sunsetters as a project is to create an entire fictional discography, to create a whole fictional rock band. So there must be a first album, an album where the band is still getting used to each other, isn't doing anything too experimental. It's where we see what kinds of music the band is good at, where we are introduced to themes and ideas in an early form which they will continue to develop over the course of many albums. And, as the Sunsetters are intended to be a prog rock band, a debut album is allowed to restrain itself from being too progressive, instead finding a foundation in a hard-rock sound, with little hints of what they may later do.

We started writing this in I think 2014. At first, Lindsay did most of the work, writing full-band compositions for several songs, and even beginning work on songs for later albums based on the titles we'd come up with first. I wrote two songs: "The Last Sunset" and "Perfection." Eventually, gradually, I grew used to MuseScore and to sheet music, and I began to edit Lindsay's compositions and add to them. In 2016 we released a full version of this album, with the same tracklist but everything in a much earlier form. In 2018 we released a revision, with more polish across the tracks (and some bonus tracks that have not carried forward). It wasn't until we released the next two albums in 2020 that I was able to make far more ambitious revisions, using my developed skills as an editor, and produced version 3. Then in 2025, while making these big Website releases of the albums, I elected to go through Mythology one more time and bring things up to an even better standard. This version, v4, is the present release, and I am satisfied with the quality.

You can keep reading for a general summary of the album. Or, for further reading:
LYRICS
FICTIONAL INTERVIEW
NONFIC PDF

Mythology Art

A woman sits on a couch, staring at TV static, with a glass of water on the table in front of her. This is something of a recurring image in my stories, a symbol of EAT, who gets a few songs dedicated to her on this album. I mean, EAT's my monster, of course I'm gonna want to make songs about her.

I love Quinn's art, though. I love the texture to it, and the shades of blue he used. I love the beam of blue light coming from the TV. I wanted the first Sunsetters album cover to be iconic, pleasant to look at, memorable, recognizable, and Quinn nailed it.

Drowning Under the Influence

A punchy punk rock song about a dysfunctional family. Father comes home, drinks, and crashes in front of the TV, scaring his son. The concept pulls from James Joyce's short story "Counterparts."

We had decided from the start-- over a decade ago-- that the first song on the first album needed to be punk. There's something to this contrast that feels a lot like starting a complicated album off with a basic catchy pop single. It definitely gets things started, doesn't it?

Burning Books

More involved, a midtempo heavy hard-rock song, like something Metallica may have once made. The lyrics this time are about the Blind Man, the Fear that got represented in Rapture as Tiresias.

Honestly this song kinda really fucking rocks. Lindsay's strong compositions are combined with my sense of variation and harmony to produce a banger that covers a lot of ground in a short time. "Burning Books" is what this whole project represents; all the potential is in this song.

Hidden in the Trees

A playful hard-rock song, jumping between distinct sections. The lyrics are loosely, broadly, about the protagonist of one of the defining Fearblogs, LizardBite's Hidden in the Trees, as he serves two masters. This song moves directly into the next track.

I've rewritten this song several times over by now. It's very busy, threading sinister riffs around a bouncy core. This one only really started sounding "right" in 2025, for me it was an exercise in editing cohesion.

Memento Mori

Part 2 of "Hidden in the Trees," this one's an instrumental lingering in a motif introduced previously. The mood is dangerous and doomed.

As the second half of "Hidden," this one has also been rewritten numerous times, though the 2020 rendition is not far from the current release. This one's not really meant to be all that impressive a piece; it's meant to be something you could picture the fictional band extending and jamming over on live performances. Lindsay wrote a solid doom riff, I wrote some guitar noodling over it, and that's all this song needs to be.

Perfection

An angry singalong song about a very controlling abusive mother.

I've had the chords, the riffs, the tempo changes, and the lyrics ever since I first wrote this in 2014. The 2020 rendition is significantly polished, though, to reflect a song the full Sunsetters band would play. When I go back to this album, I'm always surprised at how much of a bop this one is. It bops, man! It's a banger! And so this is the only song that did not need any updating for v4.

Is This All?

Sad acoustic alt-rock. A breakup.

This one's a core Lindsay piece. It's got a complete vibe to it and feels appropriate for the year 2000, when this album's supposed to take place. For v4, Lindsay sent an extension of the original composition, which I polished for cosmetic value. This song kinda rocks, in its own mellower way.

The Last Sunset

Grieving piano. Instrumental.

The first song I ever wrote! Hasn't changed much since I wrote it. There's some conscious Genesis influence to the slow fading chords, and this song is accompanied by a poem that just does not fit anywhere in the song.

Rise of Her Rain
i- Distant Mind | ii- Intrusive Thoughts | iii- Soliloquy for the Dying | iv- Progress | v- Regrets

The big prog-rock song of the album, in five movements. Lyrics tell of a woman's increasingly introspective experience visitng her dying friend in the hospital. The concept has some influence from James Joyce's "The Dead."

The full story of how hard this one was to make can be found in the NONFIC PDF. Needless to say, it took a long time and taught us a lot. I'm particularly proud of movement 3. This song goes on a journey. It's certainly necessary, as we wanted Sunsetters to be a prog band and weren't sure if we could even write something like that. This song passes our goals. It feels.. whole. Closes off the album.

Reverie

Hidden track. Acoustic guitar lingering in a void, then synth strings see us off.

Every version of this album has had a substantially different "Reverie" which I was never satisfied with. The v4 rendition uses additional audio editing skills I developed during No Entry, here retroactively applied because "Reverie" is meant to be an enigma even to the Sunsetters. I am satisfied with it now.

It's taken us a long time to get here. Every release of Mythology took a ton of time and effort, and yet every release got dated pretty quick, simply because the next album we'd make would completely make it look bad. And there is a degree to which that is appropriate, as a debut album must not be the most impressive thing a band has done. But I'm not talking about that. This album got dated because of my complete inexperience, as a composer, as an editor, as a producer, as an overall "director" of this project. I learned as I went. I did not want Mythology to stand out because of my inexperience. And so, every few years, I'd decide it was time to go back to it, revamp the whole album, and rerelease it.

Perhaps it will still need that in a few years. I guess I can't say for sure. But I think now, version 4, 2025, I think now Mythology is actually pretty damn good. Its strengths have been made apparent. It sounds about as good as the other albums do, it is held to the same standard as a piece of MIDI art, and now any differences in "quality" are purely a question of what the fictional Sunsetters chose to do in their careers.

Mythology is punchy, filled with some great hard rock. Every song has its strengths. I think it is now plausible to imagine some fictional fans of this fictional band being elitist and "preferring their first album." And that's a sign that we did this album as best we could.

(Of course, in my opinion, the second album blows this out of the water.)