“Amethyst” is a bridging moment for the band with GILT songs from every era getting lyrical shout-outs throughout Amethyst and signature reverb guitars, sparse drums, and navel-gazey vocals permeating the song. ‘“Wax wings remade ceramic” was our big breakthrough lyric in writing the track,” says vocalist Ash Stixx, continuing: “it’s an homage to “different mistakes in new and almost impressive ways” from ‘Through Mirrors’. We wanted to explore that mindset but get even more bleak about our own limitations. Shaolin (Jay Webster) from UnityTX absolutely crushed the task of conveying the unhinged freedom of not caring if you die, probably one of the most conceited feelings, and delivering that rage under a pile of literary and art school references to social politics. We spent two quarantine years studying the hardcore side of post-hardcore and we’re very proud to flex our new muscles, and lucky to have guests like Shaolin to push it to the next level. ‘Amethyst’ is the bridge between some of the optimism we had about growth and forward motion from previous material into the absolute temper tantrum that will follow for the rest of ‘Conceit’.”
‘Conceit’ as a whole explores the topic of grief in its entirety. Each song features a guest vocalist and it was recorded & mixed by Lee Dyess at Earthsound Studios and mastered by Matt Goings, with production consultation from Hansel Romero (Nightlife).
“We’ve spent a lot of time as an emo band talking about grieving and addressing pain, but Conceit is the first material we’ve made since my father passed, and there’s simply no way for it to not be about that in almost every regard because it affects every part of my life,” explains Ash of the EP’s concept. “Each song is a vignette, a ‘conceit’ in the literary sense where one emotional reaction to death is explored, bolstered by guest vocalists who were each chosen for their ability to stretch our ideas beyond what we could physically do. The title is a double entendre, these are all poetic metaphors, but the feeling of righteous rage has never come through more and the marriage between those two in ‘Conceit’ is, to us, perfect.”
Having navigated topics of gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and mental health in their music, GILT are all about empowering their community. The band put together a livestream event during the pandemic – SnipFest – which raised money for gender-affirming legal name changes for people across the US. Born in 2018, SnipFest’s first incarnation raised money for the top surgery of a friend of the band. Though GILT have been a band since 2017, their 2021 EP ‘In Windows, Through Mirrors’ was an introduction to their new direction with drummer Ash Stixx stepping up to vocal duties with finesse.
