Grayscale
Style: alternative metal
Color: black, white, gray
Theme: relativity of lie and truth
Foreword
The face of absolute truth is a calm oval with a barely perceptible ironical smile. The face of an absolute lie is the twisted physiognomy of a monster with saliva flowing from its mouth. The only pity is that the probability of meeting these faces in the real world is small, while their offsprings can be found everywhere.
In the boundless ocean of words, sounds and images, there is only one reliable filter that you can trust to filter credibility of information – your own brain. With the underdevelopment of the thinking organ, there is no barrier in the way of the black, foul-smelling slurry of lies, penetrating into all accessible cavities of the brainpan. But who said that this liquid cannot be diluted with a white believable substance by changing the hue on the grayscale?
Lyrics
Falsehood
Nasty or good?
Black hole or bright Sun?
Or black Sun?
Your lies
A part of you dies
But it’s perfect way
to have power
Rend the dark
Illuminate
Open gate
Dusk gathers
Seal the fates
Provoke the straits
Grayscale
From wrong to right
From black to white
and semi-truth / semi-lie
when they unite
Get discrepant prize:
Black truth / white lies?
No one escapes from this jail –
Grayscale
Real truth
Do not take this path
When you don’t want to be alone
A game
The trick is the same:
Let people hear
What they want
Credits
Behind the song
The first version of the song was composed and recorded within a fairly tight timeframe in April 2016. The track was actively played during rehearsals by the first lineup of Mixte in 2020–2021, but it truly gained a second lease on life when the band transitioned into a trio format with Luc behind the drum kit. Fun fact: due to Luc’s limited time availability, he couldn’t master a large number of songs, so Grayscale was played during rehearsals way too often. At one point, this started to frustrate the band members, especially Philipp.
Nevertheless, from an instrumental standpoint, the original version made it to the release practically unchanged—the instrument parts were simply re-recorded with high quality. In June 2022, a video was filmed in the rehearsal basement, and just a month later, the song was officially released. Stylistically, the track is a close relative of Massive: it features a simple structure, a sleek shift in dynamics between the verses and choruses, and a short runtime. However, unlike Massive, Grayscale carries a completely different atmosphere. Instead of desperate anguish, it plays with contrasts: funky motifs give way to industrial rhythms, emphasizing the ideological concept of the song.