It's hard to put into a short paragraph what Pull The Strings means to me, or what it even is. It started equally as a joke and as a natural conclusion. A joke, because my vocals in this project have always been quite strange, especially when I first figured out how to croak them out. And it's also the natural result of the experimentation that I apply to all of my projects, a distillation of my tastes and musical abilities.
I want to say a few words about what Pull The Strings is to me.
My whole life, I've dealt with severe depression. I didn't know that anything was wrong when I was a kid, but there was always this opaque sense of unhappiness. As I got older and found myself in abusive, traumatizing situations, I developed deeper illnesses. And when I turned 24, and I realized I was bipolar and autistic, I finally accepted that I am truly disabled, by any reasonable definition. Living and finding fulfillment in this society is very difficult for me, and music has always been my escape.
It started as a young kid, just me and my guitar, and heavy music. I found black metal at one point or another, and was fascinated. But it wasn't until I discovered post-black metal that I truly connected with the genre. That's the stuff that spoke to me, and would ultimately influence my writing for Pull The Strings.
So in time, I began putting my pain into lyrics, and my lyrics into song. The first Pull The Strings demo was Cornus Florida, which appears on this album. The lyrics reflect the bitterness that I was feeling, as well as the last hope for me on that particular day: seeing the blossoming dogwood tree outside my window, as I was pacing, writing this song. Sometimes, it's impossible to see through the screen of depression. But that day, that natural beauty was undeniable.
Pull The Strings has always been a progressive take on black metal, even in these earlier, more raw and primitive songs. It's not for everyone. The vocals are unique, to say the least. But I stand by this album. I know that for every critic, there's someone who will connect with it in a cool way. I want to say to anyone who's ever supported this project: thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was just my weird little side project, and now it's on cassette tapes and hard drives all over the world.
For the 2-year anniversary of this album, I wanted to revisit the sound of it, and give it some fresh life. I found my old lyric journals and typed out all the lyrics. I also had a track that I wrote during the same period of time that I never released, that I think is one of the best Pull The Strings tracks to date. That song, "Indigo (Realization)" is included here as a bonus track.
Black lathe-cut vinyl is available through ElasticStage. To order, visit: https://elasticstage.com/pullthestrings
Video retrospective on the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXfyNDX_1c4
Credits
All music and lyrics written and recorded by Alan Brucke, except for the guest vocals on track 7, which were written and recorded by Adrian Gutierrez