Ritual Contemplation: Listening to Kekal
Message from Jeff, April 2025 (Part 1)
Greetings again! I’d like to personally welcome new subscribers here. Thank you for subscribing and staying with Kekal. Please keep yourself subscribed and don’t forget to check out earlier posts as well. For the articles, you will only see new posts once or sometimes twice per month max.
I do not use AI to “write” articles for me, nor put out nonsensical, gibberish word salad just to be seen as “sophisticated” writing. No. Everything I write on this platform always has substance and message. It takes time. I put intention and energy into the words and sentences as I type them, so that the message can be delivered effectively to whoever attunes to the vibrational frequency of the message. It’s very similar to composing music. If you and I both emit similar frequency of the energetic vibration, you will “get it” because it resonates with you.
I just found out about a few months ago that Substack now accepts auto-embed from Bandcamp, which is super awesome! Many independent artists (who treat music as an expression instead of a commodity) no longer depend on increasingly manipulative, AI bot-infested mainstream platforms such as Spotify in sharing their music online, and start to use Bandcamp instead.
In the past month I have spent my time in doing some contemplation and deep introspection by actively listening to Kekal’s music across the entire discography and reading its lyrics. The music of Kekal has become a living testimony of my own life journey, which is important for me in order to grow spiritually. Even though it is not a personal platform so to speak, but however, I can still see myself through the music of Kekal, see myself growing with it despite the fact that some songs would bring the unpleasant memories of me experiencing all the spiritual growing pains.
Kekal is like a reliable mirror to see myself as I am without much distortions, because I’ve always utilized music as a platform for self-expression. Self-expression is not self-display, it is meant to bring forth what is within me instead of just showing what I have. People often mistake self-expression with self-display. Self-display can be faked or used just to maintain a “positive image”, but self-expression cannot. That’s why self-expression can be scary. There is a transference/movement of energy within self-expression, the way self-display rarely does. You may feel the difference in the energy.
This year, 2025, Kekal turns 30. As a band it may have been older than many of you reading this article. But I never think Kekal can age and become old. It is a band that would transcend the limitation of time, because time itself is nothing but an illusion. What I feel from listening to Kekal’s songs again from earlier albums to the most recent ones, is that time does not exist the way it operates in bringing someone or something to become old and obsolete. There is an infinite living energy running through the music of Kekal, and that energy is constantly moving, flowing like a river.
I haven’t been able to successfully handle the new material for Kekal’s upcoming album even though all the lyrics are done. I feel there is something I need to (re)discover from myself first, and still can’t figure out what it is just yet. Since 2021, I have been in the so-called “waiting-period” or spiritual metamorphosis phase, isolating myself from much of the matters or business of daily life and at the same time doing inner-healing work. I have accomplished many things in this lifetime in terms of learning various lessons for spiritual growth, and have already moved between phases of life that feels almost like living multiple lifetimes condensed into one incarnation. This time, my main objective is to carefully review my own life and see if there’s anything missing, if there’s anything I might have skipped when it comes to the soul’s learning process.
Memories carrying living energy can be embedded within the recordings of any authentic music, the way a written journal or diary cannot provide. This is where I use Kekal’s music as a means to recall and see my past self, like mementos put in a time capsule. I can feel the difference in energy when listening to the same songs right now as opposed to 5, 10 or 20 years ago, almost like these songs also grow with me. Creepy? No. It’s how energy works when embedded within authentic expression.
There are things good and pure that still exist beneath the overwhelming ugliness and artificiality we see in the world today, but “what is good” and “what is pure” need to be sought from inside out. This is why introspective seeking is very important for me. External programming that bombards us under the guise of ideology, religion, science, politics, etc. no longer excites me. Their vibrations are getting lower in terms of frequency. We can sense their dimness as we are more aligned with the Spirit that dwells in our soul consciousness.
Here I’m taking you on a short musical journey, like snapshots where you can listen to the songs while reading the accompanied paragraphs. If you read this on email, clicking each song will take you to the Bandcamp page of the song. So, for better reading experience I’d recommend to visit the web version of this same article on Substack instead (just click the article headline in the body of email to access the web version), and play the song from the embedded Bandcamp player at the same time while reading the paragraphs. I divide the journey into two parts, this is the first part.
The Day The Hatred Dies (1998)
The above song is the last one written for our debut album, and if my memory is correct it was written around June 1997, after we recorded the first half of the album sessions. Lyrically, despite it still had that typical “poor Indonesian’s broken English” kind of error (the title should be “The Day...” but it was first published as “A Day...”, bugger 🙄 - this was fixed later on, though), unintentionally it had already moved into some type of existentialist discourse; the lyrical approach that began to be used more broadly in “The Painful Experience” album (2001). “The Day The Hatred Dies” is based on my observation of youths that willingly chose to fall into the pit of darkness, triggered by anger and disgust, just because they see all the blatant hypocrisy done by people within the religious circles. Below is the excerpt of the lyrics:
Looking a place for our feet to show them: "We’re not like you"
They are on God’s side, so we are on the other
Does that make sense?
Minds are blind for the mistakes taken in hating hypocrisy
In fact we are the victims of our own hatred
This song is probably the first one that brought Kekal into the realm of existentialism when it comes to the lyrics, where I could put more thoughts to what I had witnessed from observing people in my surroundings. But still, that was years before I became mentally ready to look into my own self and write lyrics for Kekal from introspective observations. If I had to pick one song from the debut, I’d pick that one.
The Final Call (1999)
Earlier this year I shared this song on IG and FB, because it is very relevant to our present time as we are getting very very close to the day of the Great Harvest. “The Final Call” illustrates the moment on Earth, almost similar to the “this is the final call” announcement made during the boarding of a flight at the airport, where people already walking through the gate before the gate is closed and separates the people who are able to board the flight and those who are “left-behind”. This song is also very much related to the February 2025 message here regarding the “split” or divergence of the collective consciousness of humanity on Earth during the Great Harvest (Please click on article thumbnail below to read if you haven’t yet).
I listened to this song when I wrote that article. This song struck me, even though it has that “religious tonality” used quite often in earlier Kekal’s lyrics, but it is supposed to be universal. In the end, at the day of Harvest, all of us who dwell on Earth will meet our own “Right Judge” that can see our soul’s vibrational frequency for what it is, and to determine whether we can move forward through the gateway of ascension along with the entire Earth collective (and exit the false-matrix), or else remain in the false-matrix (“left-behind”). The choice is ours, and now is the time to choose because we don’t have much time left. The final call for our destiny has been announced since the year 2020 where people began to choose the pathway for their own souls from two diverging options.
Behind Closed Doors (2001)
Written in the year 2000 as one of the first songs made for our 3rd album “The Painful Experience”, “Behind Closed Doors” is still amongst my personal favorites from that album. Not only for its raw, energy-focused production approach with one-take and no punch-ins rhythm guitars and vocals tracking (capturing raw energy over detailed precision), but also the lyrics which describe about beings in the astral plane watching us on Earth as we stupidly choose stupid things and make stupid decisions out of stupidities of ignorance and fear (hence, repeating history over and over again). Indonesia was having a political turmoil and many civil conflicts resulting in mass deaths happened around that time. I learned a bit about near-death experience accounts back then, and had read some books in that regard. I found it interesting that when they were on “the other side” (astral plane), other than they were shown their life experiences segments, in some cases they were also being shown their potential future. Some accounts were given snapshots of the future of humanity on Earth as well. I found it intriguing. It was long before my own spiritual awakening journey began, so the lyrics here outline my wish to inquire deeper regarding the purpose of being born in this broken world, and to peek into my future life as well.
In Continuum (2003)
One of the biggest contributing factors to Kekal’s 4th album “1000 Thoughts Of Violence” is that I wrote and recorded all the music entirely in my modest home studio at that time, relatively free from unnecessary distractions, although not completely free as anyone would think. During recording some of the guitar tracks, there was a cockroach roaming inside the studio. I hate cockroaches (and spiders), but at the same time I could not manage to let that strange creature out (it was the one that could fly as well) because chasing it out of the studio room means it would end up roaming my living room area. Killing that cockroach was out of the question because the fumes from insect spray would also kill me softly. This cockroach story is the one I cannot forget, and here I’m going to give it credit for contributing some kind of angst to my performance while recording the album. You can play faster if you’re in terror!
Broken (2005)
After releasing Kekal’s 2nd album “Embrace The Dead”, even though it was well-received in the underground metal scene both locally and internationally, I knew the music didn’t align with the direction where our hearts were heading. I personally did not know where Kekal was supposed to be heading at that time and was a bit “lost”, because we never had any strong direction for the band to begin with, other than making music the best we could. So I just wrote some stuff as my own music, mostly non-metal. “Broken” was one of the songs I wrote and demoed during that time (around the year 1999 to 2000), before we began working on “The Painful Experience” album. Hence, lyrically it is more personal because my intention in writing this song was not originally for Kekal, but mainly for self-introspection and self-expression.
Fast forward to the year 2004 when this song was picked to be part of “Acidity” album (which also consists of a number of previously unreleased old songs written as early as in 1996), I realized that Kekal was finally able to fully cater my personal self-expression without having to add extra burden to me. I still had some defenses back then, and did not want to publish songs that I deemed as too “personal” to become part of Kekal. To some degree, I somewhat still separated my unrestrained self-expression with the work I did for Kekal, at least until “Acidity” was released. Perhaps mainly because most of my personal songs were not written for metal music in the first place and I did not have enough confidence to bring them forward, especially in facing the potential harsh and judgmental responses from the band’s fans at that time. Kekal was at its peak and still had a very good relationship with an extreme metal label in Europe who supported us more than we expected, including giving us a chance to tour Europe. So I did not want to bring too much of my “personal stuff” into Kekal by making the music less acceptable within the metal world. I consider myself as a singer-songwriter type of musician/artist, and have always had a hard time working new songs based on riffs and jamming, the way metal music compositions are traditionally constructed. I had to juggle between the two and make compromises, despite my inner-self kept protesting. “Acidity” was the moment where I began to have some confidence in bringing more of myself into the music that I wrote, including to express it in melodic clean singing. With the following album “The Habit of Fire”, I was finally able to pull through.
Historicity & State Of Mind (2007)
“The Habit of Fire” was an album which I deemed as necessary in order for me to take the path I haven’t walked before, and keep moving forward. The song presented here is “Historicity & State Of Mind”, it talks about the same pattern within the society that keeps repeating itself throughout history and many people seem to never learn from it. In Kekal, the song also acts as a reminder for me to avoid repeating the same patterns in terms of presenting the music. This is the album that can say proudly to itself “when it’s done, it’s done!”. It was also the point that I felt as a band, Kekal should always look forward, dare to explore the unknown and take risks, because most of the objectives had already been achieved with the first 5 albums. This is the album that I could let my imaginations take charge, confronting my inner-hesitations, and really pushed myself to break all the boundaries in terms of style, sound, composition, performance, and production/recording method. This was my personal favorite album from Kekal for years, just because of that. And the fact it was awarded CD of The Month by a respected music tech magazine Sound on Sound (UK) also gave me some rewarding assurance that we don’t really need to compromise in order to excel.
Against (2008)
The thing I never find myself enjoying while listening to the “Audible Minority” album is that the album lacks the “feel-good” factor in the songs. The overall atmosphere is bleak and densely cloudy (like chemtrail clouds). Being depressed is a contributing factor, because the material was composed and recorded entirely by myself after I moved to Canada. It’s a Canadian-made album, recorded in studio facilities in Toronto, which was also the audio production school I attended at that time. Most of the songs were actually my school assignments! I had an aspiration to become a professional music producer and recording/mixing engineer, only to become mentally defeated upon learning that the whole music recording trend (outside the mainstream) was beginning to move into home-studios and self-recording practices with affordable professional DAW software and digital audio plug-ins, bypassing the need of using expensive mixing consoles and hardware units previously only professional studios can afford. A number of professional studio facilities were closing at that time as they couldn’t manage to keep the business running.
My first 3 years living in Canada was not pleasant, and combined with its long cold winter months I fell into a deep depression. The song “Against” talks about how I was struggling with my depression, tried to deal it with “it’s going to be okay soon” kind of positive thinking, only to become more depressed because I was actually denying it by pushing it away, instead of accepting it and let it flow pass through me. It was a dark period of my life when my teeth started to fall-off (my friends thought I was drunk and fell face-down, or had a fist fight). At one point I decided to abandon music completely and could not touch my guitar for quite some time.
The first era of Kekal ends with Audible Minority
With myself being depressed and emotionally unstable, I could no longer manage Kekal properly as a band, and everything started to fall apart (like my teeth). I did not know where I was heading in terms of pursuing a career in a music-related field, so I decided to close that chapter and leave the music scene for good. In 2007 and 2008 I worked as a kitchen staff at a fast-food restaurant. My hands started to become harsh from exposing them to the grease and cleaning chemicals, and I thought I was done being a musician. My self-esteem was at the lowest point, and at that time I did not yet have a strong enough spiritual understanding that everything I experience in life is meant for my soul’s learning process. I hold an Indonesian equivalent to Bachelor’s degree in general Psychology, and somehow that training contributed in helping myself heal naturally only by listening to music while taking long walks (especially walking through cemeteries). I was fully aware of my own depression and decided not to take any medications. Albums like The Cure’s “Seventeen Seconds” and A-ha’s “Memorial Beach” were my everyday companions. I always believe in the power of music to heal, so, even in the midst of personal darkness I still had a glimpse of hope and somehow expressed that in the song called “Narrow Avenue”, along with a self-produced/self-made video below.
Around mid-2008, I received a notification that there’s a package in the mail. It turned out that the package was a gift from a well-known audio equipment manufacturer Line 6, and I was given a digital audio-interface for recording music via USB. Line 6 sent me that gift because they had some kind of advertising agreement with Sound on Sound magazine to send freebies to artists with self-produced albums who were awarded the CD of the Month, which as mentioned in earlier paragraph they gave Kekal on “The Habit Of Fire”. I did not expect that at all! This actually made me think twice. It was a clear sign from the Universe that I should not give up on making music only because I got beaten up by life, and that music has already become part of me.
In 2009, I started to get back on my feet, although maybe still a bit trembling. While recovering from my depression I finally was able to secure a job as a graphic designer at a company outside of the music and entertainment industry. I still could not touch my guitar at that time, but knew somehow I should continue doing music even if I would end up doing it for myself. That same year, all 3 remaining Kekal members, Levi, Leo and I decided to leave the band altogether, and started to work as no-strings-attached contributors in a free-associated anarchist way. Kekal then became a band without any official members. With that, a new era of Kekal began.
To be continued…
Thank you for reading. Feel free to share this post to your friends as you see fit. You can also read past months’ messages posted on Substack if you haven’t yet. Please keep yourself subscribed to this newsletter and stay tuned. I’ll be back for the Part 2. See you again soon!
(updated April 15, 2025)
Part 2 is now published. Click thumbnail below to read.
Rites of Passage: Through the Dark Night of the Soul
. . .continued from the previous article Ritual Contemplation: Listening to Kekal
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