The main riff to Amethyst came into being during an evening we’ve been staying in a friend’s house with another mate of ours, chilling while the exam period was on for the course we’ve been all attending at the time (all three of us dropped out of, but that’s another story). I was digging my mate’s guitar as we were chatting, basically trying to remember a part I had previously come up with, to be used as an interlude to “Homeseek Dark Blues“. Messing around with a strange tuning (F# A F# G B E), the idea was for it to match the song’s root note, while the guitar would resemble in a way, an instrument from Ionia (Asia Minor).

The song lyrics are about the human condition’s tragedy again and the drama turbulent relationships bare, focusing on the hope of “making it work”, despite of the damage-done, rather than crying over a long lost relationship like “Remnants” does.

Amethyst’s title comes from the greek myth that wants the homonym virgin getting crystalised to be protected from the Persian imported hedonist god of intoxication, Dionysus.

Marios who was a fan of the debut album long before he ended up playing with us, was encouraging me to write a song that could match “Ibidem” on a songwriting level, contradicting his former idea of us avoiding having previous songs as blueprints or following recipes, so I guess I subconsciously granted his wish in a way with it. Having similar hooks for outbreaks where the song climaxes and ending up to a totally different outro after an instrumental bridge that transforms the tension that is created throughout the verses…

I had brought in the rehearsals the two parts and Damos came up with these fantastic bass lines, making me ashamed for thinking I used to be a good bass player for years, like he always effortless does, and figured the rest of the parts in the rehearsal space.

Although we weren’t satisfied with the production -again-, having so much going on on the same bands of frequencies, the song still managed to draw rave reviews and it has a brilliant lyric video accompanying it, created by Afsoon Shahriari who is also responsible for the single’s artwork along with loads of art, of all sorts for Phase. It’s a real shame that Amethyst never made it to any of our setlists as of yet, as I think it is a huge song…