Violescent

Album: Gone Is Gone (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Gone Is Gone is a rock supergroup formed in 2016. The band consists of Troy Sanders, the singer and bass player from Mastodon, Troy Van Leeuwen, the guitar player for Queens of the Stone Age, Tony Hajjar, the drummer for At the Drive-In, with guitarist-keyboardist Mike Zarin rounding out the quartet.

    The project came about when Hajjar and Zarin, who had collaborated for several years on movie and video game score realized that one of their compositions needed the thrust of a full band. Hajjar recruited longtime friend Van Leeuwen for some additional tracking, but they still needed a vocalist. "When thinking of singers, a few came to mind, but Troy Sanders' voice and presence kept on coming up in conversations," Hajjar told Rolling Stone. "Both Troys had always talked about doing something together, so it was an easy connection. Sanders flew in and tracked some demos to the finished music, and it went from there."
  • This is the first piece of music to be released by the band. The song title is a word meaning, "tending to a violet color." Sanders said of the lyrical content:

    "Calming the inner beast and creating separation between yourself and the caged animal, hungry with destructive intent. Bridging negative experiences of the past into a new and colorful light, becoming your 'violescent self.' Desiring to better your personal environment and those who surround you, you must first better yourself."
  • So where did the band's name come from? Troy Sanders explained to NME: "We were honing in on things that were very human, relatable, real, and as far away from anything pretentious as possible. We were discussing subject matter of frailty and things that every human can relate to – love, loss, life, experience and opportunity and all things frail and fragile. The phrase 'what's done is done' or 'what's gone is gone' – you need to seize these opportunities now and make the most of it, reward yourself and fulfill yourself while the time is now."

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