Far From Your Sun is a Parisian original band. Art is not entertainment for them but a deep discourse. They aren’t concerned about getting famous quickly or doing what is popular. They’re more about real feelings, about honesty. They’re like a creative studio where rock music, photography, art and poetry all come together to give us a glance inside and feel the environment around us.
It’s been a creative journey for the two for a while now, beginning with their first album back in 2016 that was all about the sheer emotion. They followed up in 2021 with a widely lauded second album that explored the human spirit through old mythology and rich songs. They have shown us with these past works that they are artists who want to dive into the darkest areas of life and transmute our inner confusion into beautiful art.
Their new album A Dream of Hell is not just a radio-friendly collection of songs, it’s a true and gritty journey of healing. It’s like stepping out of the typical busy world and into a deep, dark place where we can face our deepest sentiments. The album is a reflection of our own inner problems, using wonderful poems and thinking about the big globe. It doesn’t sugarcoat the hard parts of being human but rather gives us a safe space to confront the darkness so that we might eventually find a real, enduring light.
It starts with a song named “Hell,” which was inspired by a 1916 poem by Thomas MacDonagh. Hell in this song is a very cold place, not a hot place with flames but a peaceful and lonely place with heavy memories and regrets. When time goes very slowly and there is a lot of calm, it is a sad condition. A realm of dead minds.
The loudest cry would be a relief, or the hottest fire for that matter, anything is better than this frozen, unmoving silence, where damned hearts pulse only in darkness. The saddest, most torturous part of the song is when the vocalist finds out that someone, they loved so much, someone who was their role model, a pure, spotless saint, is also in the same calm, frozen agony. This loved one is beyond our reach, secluded from us in a location without a voice where no comfort, warmth, or pity from the earth can ever arrive.
Then comes the second song, “Eternity,” which lifts us out of that dark, peaceful pit and into space to look at the stars. Compared to our tiny human life to the immense, never-ending universe, this song definitely makes us feel very little. It is reassuringly soft, suggesting that our time on earth is but a brief warm breath on a chilly window.
It shows us that our personal lives are full of small concerns but also breathtakingly short when seen from the perspective of cosmic time.It makes our regular troubles look very petty and pointless. It is a strange consolation to know that we are a small but connected part of this enormous and magnificent plan that goes on forever. Our small lives have a purpose in this eternal scheme.
Then the song “Laeta” brings us back down to earth to address the great pain of losing someone we love, by way of a rare poem by H.P. Lovecraft: It employs the simple imagery of nature to convey the sadness of mourning. What a sad contrast, for spring has come! With gorgeous flowers and rushing water, but all seems empty, for the loved one’s gone. The wonderful world is merely something that makes the loss more unbearable. The singer begs for fall and winter to come so they can find peace at last and be with their love in the freezing ground.
The last tune, “Tyger,” is a strong finish to the album, exploring a classic poem by William Blake about how things are created. The song asks a big, hard question: how could the same maker make a beautiful, loving lamb and a nasty, dangerous tiger? It’s about how lovely and terrible the world is. The song provides no clear solution but leaves us in awe at the wonder of existence.
It tells us that darkness and light are both vital elements of the world we live in. It teaches us to awe at the grandeur of the world and the twofold nature of the power that drives it and how incomprehensible it is. To look into the tiger’s burning, scorching eyes is to understand a brutal fact—that life is a complex, beautiful, dangerous process, and we must accept all sides to truly grasp the cosmos.
“A Dream of Hell” is one of those albums that you don’t simply listen to with your ears but feel with your emotions. The album is a complete map of our inner darkness, the first song has the silent horror, the second song in the enormous space, the third song in the profound melancholy, and the last song in the large questions. By the end of the music, we have been transformed. This shows that our gloomy times need not be a prison but may actually help us to connect more deeply to the real beauty of life.
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