“Scars and Ashes” is Decline and Fall's debut album and breaks through from the explorations begun on their previous EPs, “GLOOM” and “PULSE”, adding to them an increasingly vast and sophisticated musical vocabulary. Capturing the spirit of the dystopian times in which we are living, but also looking at internal personal concerns and turmoils, from the loneliness and isolation we impose on ourselves, these nine tracks represent a journey through different shades of black, but timidly feeding a small spark of light, wishful that some hope will be born from it.
Decline and Fall is currently the main creative focus of Armando Teixeira, a musician who found his most enduring incarnation in Balla, but who was also a pioneer of EBM in Portugal in the 1980s with Ik Mux, then industrial rock with Bizarra Locomotiva, and being a musician who mastered the art and technique of sampling early on, was a member of Da Weasel, a rock/hip hop crossover which has been one of the most popular Portuguese bands from the last 30 years. Frequently requested to compose soundtracks, he has already won three Sophia Awards in this capacity, and we can hear his sound creations in several Portuguese series and films.
Decline and Fall, who follow a line close to post-punk and darkwave, although not allowing themselves to be confined by any stylistic constraints, are completed by Hugo Santos who, for over two decades, has explored heaviness and rhythmic intensity, punitively repetitive and cathartic, as a privileged form of expression in Process of Guilt, finding in Decline and Fall a creative vehicle for other musical sensibilities; and Ricardo S. Amorim, author of the books “Culto Eléctrico” and “Wolves Who Were Men – The History of Moonspell”, who puts into words the emotions that these themes seek to convey.
“When all that remains are ashes, and no phoenix seems to rise from them, scars serve as living memories of the past, which we so often try to cling to. But only when we leave the past behind can we finally move forward.”
Released February 2026 on Bleak Recordings.
Track Listing:
1 As All ends
2 Analysis Paralysis
3 Lost Astray
4 Free at Last
5 Rome
6 Wrong Turn
7 One to blame
8 Walk through the Fire
9 Whenever Your Eyes glow
10 Serum 114
English