Connecting to Space
Style: progressive metal
Color: deep blue, yellow
Theme: the exploration of space by humanity and its potential consequences
Foreword: Beyond the planet
An idea thousands of years old… From half-naked Neanderthals, fixing their bewildered gaze upon the incomprehensible dots in the night sky, to the utilization of outer space for technological benefit of humanity. From people glued to the earth with their low, grounded thoughts, to lonely revolutionaries whose breadth of mind expanded the horizon of global events… But selfless ingenuity gave way to pragmatism, and the path of cosmic evolution acquired a different vector. The madmen in power strive to spread their madness beyond the planet, while simultaneously pushing technological progress forward — the balance between harm and good remains an open question. New times, new priorities: what began to push humanity skyward was more the lust for conquest than the thirst for knowledge. One can only hope that after connecting to space, the Universe will not be hopelessly and irrevocably infected by humanity – beyond any possibility of healing…
Lyrics
It all started long ago,
When Earth was center of the show
Ancient eyes were raised on high,
First tries to think so wide.
Spark of doubt was cast around,
The brave heretic burns unbound.
Stubborn dogmas now must fade,
Their hollow walls can’t hold the blade
Heaven dims, connection breaks,
No gods rule what nature makes
Where we dwell is still unclear
Through the haze of faith and fear,
Reason’s light begins to steer,
Mankind enters a new frontier.
Rise by rockets from below
Ignite, prepare, go!
Heaven dims, connection fades
Radio transfixes shades
Cold conflict sped up progress
Vanity in cosmic scale
Pushes humans to prevail
Draws all mankind to obsess
Facing lifelessness, the worth of life emerges
Heaven dims, connections hold
Science reaches through the cold,
Still so much remains unclear
Focus on the goals to chase,
Purity defines the space, то
Not to master, but to peer.
Shall minds reach out to outer skies,
While inner meaning petrifies?
Will knowledge bloom through endless flight,
Before the home below burns bright?
Mixtories
The Earthlings soared upward and sealed themselves inside a metal nest. Only the hostile cold vacuum surrounds them now, and all that’s left is to hope the calculations are correct and the steel is strong enough… Or is it merely a dramatic dream, and the metal nest has not yet left the womb of the green planet?
Credits
Behind the song
Connecting to Space is a classic example of a song whose creation history is complex and thorny. The first version of the track was created back in Kazakhstan in the very early 2010s. The song was quite long, and from that old version, the modern one retains only the first two riffs; the rest was average-quality Progressive Metal. In 2016, the song gained a second life within Enterwelt, the band where Anton Ra was playing as a guitarist at the time. And once again, only the first two riffs remained from the modern version, while the entire rest of the song was rewritten. The lyrics were English-German, written by the then-vocalist Marius, and attempted to convey the essence of the song’s title. The track was significantly shortened and lost its former progressive edge. The song was even played live once during a concert in June 2016 in Düsseldorf, and a video from those years has even been preserved. In the autumn of the same year, the band’s life abruptly came to an end, and the song, as it often happens, was put into the back drawer.
The song began shaping into its modern form in January 2021, when Anton Ra decided to resurrect it in a reworked version under Mixte and started tracking the first drafts. In June and August of the same year, the song acquired a more or less finished look, and it wasn’t until autumn 2024 that the instrumental part of the song was fully completed. Again, from the original incarnation of the song 15 years ago, only the first two and a half riffs remained—the entire rest of the track was composed anew. The progressive essence of the song was brought back, but not through a countless number of repetitive riffs, but by adding non-standard musical moves and expanding the stylistic boundaries. Thus, an atmospheric section was added in the middle of the song, followed by an aggressive part with a blast beat (a first for Mixte), progressive riffs leading into the third verse, and a reggae part at the end. Although all of this increased the overall duration of the song, it didn’t make it tedious; on the contrary, the new version sounds fresh and dynamic.
The lyrics were written in November 2025, and the vocals were recorded at the same time. Anton Ra managed to create the lyrics without using pronouns once again (after Mutagen), which he is quite proud of.
The video was created by Anton using artificial intelligence and photos of the band members, and it visualizes the song’s lyrics. This is exactly the case where the use of AI was justified and driven by the global and complex theme of the song, the visualization of which through classical methods would have been a practically impossible task.