“I think,” offers Andy, “that this is the first time that I’ve used, not religion in any sense, but the idea of faith and God in a positive, helpful way. There’s a hopeful idea that when you die there’s this total removal of all the guilt and all the shit that’s on your shoulders that you’re carrying your whole life. I loved the idea because in my own life I was actively trying to better myself – and I stopped months ago!”
He laughs heartily.
“No, I’m still trying to be a better person,” he continues more seriously. “It’s about letting go of the person that you were that you cringe about in the shower sometimes – so this idea of God and forgiveness was really beautiful to me, and as I was actively trying to embrace those things, it was making its way into the writing.”
Initially, the concept of The Million Masks Of God was a fictional one, charting one man’s encounter with the Angel Of Death and the journey they take together through all the different moments – good and bad, sad and happy – of his life. It’s not the first time that the band (currently completed by drummer Tim Very and bassist Andy Prince) have confronted such a heavy, solemn topic. In fact, their 2006 debut album, I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, includes Sleeper 1972, an incredibly beautiful and achingly sad song Andy wrote about his father’s death that begins with one of his most harrowing lyrics: ‘When my dad died / The worms ate out both his eyes.’ Yet while it’s full of pain and sorrow, it’s also a song that very much tells truth through fiction. Andy’s dad, you see, is very much alive.
“What kind of psycho would write a song like that?!” he chuckles, putting words in Kerrang!’s mouth.
“Great question! That song was based on a feeling, and a feeling that wasn’t even real because it was from a dream, but the dream felt real. And so, in my limited songwriting capacity, I set out a very bare, minimal explanation of what I thought might happen when my dad finally passed on.”