Author's note: There is some censored swearing in this chapter. I tried to write it without those words, but it did not seem honest somehow. I hope you feel the same way.  

Also, I'm going to be dedicating each  chapter to a new writer who is skilled at his/her craft and could use some more reads. 

This chapter is dedicated to @MackieJay who wrote an amazing piece of fiction called High Tide. It couldn't be any more different from this  story. It is expertly written and is far superior to the piece of junk you're currently reading. Seriously. Exit my book and read her book. Then, if you get the time, come back to read this thing. 

Thank you. 

***

Excerpt from Rolling Stone issue 1238

Holy Wood: What is the Abyss?

Why the biggest rock band in the world went acoustic.

By Alan D. Tompkins

For the first time since their debut in 2006, the four members of Holy Wood seem just a bit uncomfortable to be back in Britain. "We had to record it here, mate. Otherwise we never would have left America." Jeremy Whitney, electric guitarist and now violinist, is a tall, imposing figure with an exuberantly loud smile.

"It's kind of like, tradition, you know?" keyboardist and sometimes bassist Viola Mannet says. At 24, she is the youngest member of the band. ("We thought it'd be cute to have a little girl on stage with a tambourine and shit." Whitney jests, receiving a playful punch in the arm from Mannet.)

"Not really because of that, though. I mean, we really have a team set up here you know. With Consie and everyone." Frontman and rhythm guitarist Howard Moores says. Rail thin and unshaven, he's the least dapper looking member of the four-piece. He's referring to Conner P. Durand, the group's long-time producer.

Despite not putting out any music for almost a year, the group has been busy writing and recording their fourth studio album, That Dangerous Journey Into the Abyss.

"It feels like a huge relief." Mannet says. "We played the new songs live a couple of days ago. On one level it felt really great to just pass them on to the audience. To let go of them, if you know what I mean. But then, it also felt really weird to play the songs outside America and outside the studio."

"Yeah." Abe Marling, drummer agrees. "That and it was a pretty big change, you know, with the acoustic instruments and stuff."

The four brits were the poster boys (and girl) for the nu-rock movement in London. "We met in a freaking punk-bar. How much more rock n' roll can you get?" Whitney says.

I ask why they made the shift.

"It had to do with the lyrics." Moores says. "I mean, we always write like that. First the lyrics and then the instrumentation."

"Yeah, I mean for the last two records," says Mannet. "we just made up the lyrics and smashed them out on electric guitars in sound-check. It wasn't like that this time."

"I think 'cause we decided to take a break, you know." Moores goes on. "We had a lot more leeway to experiment. We tried with our usual set-up. Two electric guitars, a bass, a keyboard and a shit ton of drums. Didn't work."

"Which was really weird for us. We kind of felt like we were losing our touch, you know." Marling says. "I mean, we seriously couldn't put any of the words to music."

"Then, we started stripping layers away, you know? Like Jeremy started playing acoustic, and it sounded just a bit better. And then Whitney-bird over here dusted off his fiddle. And I shifted over to an upright-acoustic." Mannet says.

"I think we really started getting somewhere was with the violin and stripping away the drums." says Moores.

"Can you believe these bastards even wanted to fire me and get a freakin' kick drum and tambourine. What the hell are we, f***ing Mumford & Sons?" Marling says to peals of laughter from the other three.

The album is very different from the previous three. Except for the second track, Monsters in the Closet which lashes out with some power-cord smashing, the album is sparse and bare.

"We did that sort of thing on purpose, you know." Whitney says. "I mean, we tried to take the bare-essentials thing to the absolute limit. I mean, one song, Why Are You Wounding Me?, is just violin and Viola singing. Our diva's debut!"

"That song was awesome live." Moores says. "I mean we could leave these two on stage and just f**k off! It felt really liberating. And Vii sings like a songbird!"

"Oh Yeah!" Whitney says. "I was kind of worried she'd leave us and launch a solo career, you know. Like we'd opened some dark Pandora's box letting her sing."

"Do you want to see the practice room?" Mannet says, eager to change the subject. The five of us tromp around the little studio the four set up behind Marling's house. "Welcome to the den." He says, not without pride.

He motions to a plush, wood panelled garage, with guitars and amps lining the walls. A sofa set sits at the middle, with a Martin parlour guitar, an acoustic bass and a Cajon.

A cat wanders around the studio and Mannet picks it up and holds it up in the air. "Meet the fifth member of the band. Her name's Pepo."

"That cat's our muse, mate." Whitney says. "It's the cat from the album cover."

The album cover depicts a cat sitting by itself on a porch, with a quiet sunset behind it.

The band plop down on the sofas and Moores lights a cigarette. I ask them how far their personal lives have affected their music.

"I knew you were going to ask that! How could you not! That question that eternally plagues us." Whitney says.

"It's interesting actually, because for almost a year, we had no personal life." Moores says. "We moved in to this lonely little house in the American Midwest. Literally nobody except the wives and girlfriends and Consie knew we were there. And we just wrote."

The new album is even more bleak as far as the lyrics are concerned. The band shifted from heartbreak and deceit to focus on a cryptic, weird kind of poetry.

"It was the house, I think. That house was so haunted." Mannet says, prompting a dead-rising pantomime from Marling. Moores and Whitney join in.

"But seriously though," Witney says. "Some messed up shit happened in that house, man. Like, we found a human little finger in one of the bedrooms."

A brief silence is filled with another violent fit of laughter from all four. "He's not joking." says Mannet between chuckles. "We found a freaking little finger in that room. Howie took the room, of course."

"Yeah, so, a lot of the inspiration came from that room, you know?" Moores says. "Like Monsters in the Closet. It's almost like I didn't write that song. It just, kind of came from the house."

"Yeah, we wrote that one at the end." adds Whitney. "I Rage but I do not Cry was a bit like that as well. Vi-Vi came up with that one. It was like nothing she'd ever written before. You know, all the love songs. She writes those."

"Arsehole." she says. "But, yeah. That's not entirely wrong. The house did do funny things. You could always hear these little patters on all the windows. The house doesn't even have a ledge under the windows, so I have no idea what that was."

I ask them about the album title. 

"The abyss, man." Moores says. "Even I don't know what the abyss is and I wrote the f***ing song. I think the abyss is that house, you know. It was like something there, something I can't describe." 

Moores finger-picks a few chords on the guitar. Whitney joins in with the violin. Marling begins to thump the Cajon and Mannet launches into an impromptu version of I Rage But I Do Not Cry. Holy Wood has not changed much since I last met them a few years ago. But their music seems to have shifted and not only in their lyrical content and instrumentation. It feels like the spirit behind the band has changed, almost like as if there's something new and eerie and beautiful fueling the music. I can somehow understand what the abyss embodies, although I cannot explain it.

"I told you 'no' when you asked me to die,

I rage, but I do not cry."

Mannet finishes and a silence descends, covering the room like a shroud.

"Did you like it?" Moores asks.

I tell them it feels different, but somehow more beautiful than their previous work. They ask me why, but I cannot give them an answer. 

"Good." says Viola Mannet. "That means we succeeded."