“Alea iacta est,” which translates to “The die is cast.” Caesar spoke these words upon crossing the Rubicon River with his army in 49 BCE, a decisive act of defiance against the Roman Senate that triggered civil war. To cross the Rubicon meant to pass an irreversible point; an act from which there was no turning back.
The title of Heavy Halo’s new single with Shannon F of Light Asylum, Die Cast Down, aims past posturing and heads straight for consequence. The track locks into a tense, metallic churn: guitars bite, drums sprint, synths bristle like live wire. Over it, a voice leans forward; yearning, unafraid to show the bruise and the bloom in the same bar. It’s a steel-and-static charge that nods toward NIN’s precision and the stadium-sized crunch of peak Smashing Pumpkins, yet keeps its own city-born stance, lean and unsentimental.
Listen closely and the arrangement keeps daring the listener forward. Guitars grind, then slip into a glassy line. Beats go from rapid-fire to regimented stomp. A small, stark bridge opens, and the vocals throw a final question at the ceiling. Sparse alliteration flashes by—bones and brass, temple and tremor—then the chorus drops again, harder, heavier, sealed.
“The song is about all the sacrifices you make for your artistic, political, or moral convictions,” says McKeever.
The video extends that conviction into ritual. Picture a montage stitched from marble and myth: rites and relics, augury and ash. Ancient Rome peers through the frame. European pagan motifs surface—oak, antler, fire. Tarot cards turn like tiny tablets, each one promising fate with a flourish. It’s part museum, part midnight—esoteric yet immediate—less costume than conviction. The imagery doesn’t explain the song so much as consecrate it, like pouring a libation on the step before stepping across.
Watch the song’s visualizer below:
What gives Die Cast Down its charge isn’t volume or speed; it’s the choice baked into every bar. Heavy Halo and Shannon F wade right into the riverbank, shoulder-deep, and let the current take them where it must. The song plants a flag for artists who decide that risk is the rent for meaning. Caesar had his Rubicon. This crew has theirs, and the die – true to history – has already been thrown.
Heavy Halo’s story reads like a map of modern New York’s underbelly and upper mind. McKeever studied composition at Columbia by day and played airless DIY rooms by night, while Gosteffects hammered out weaponized techno at off-the-grid raves. The two would collide only after a personal spiral sent McKeever pinging from New Orleans to Los Angeles to a psychiatric ward and back again. When they finally regrouped in a former hospital-turned-studio during the pandemic, they wrote the most emotional material of their lives—songs built from pressure, claustrophobia, and the blunt belief that, without music, neither would make it.
Enter Shannon F, whose work with Light Asylum has turned heads since 2011: music hewn from drum machines and steel, with a stance that once drew comparisons to Grace Jones and Depeche Mode. With DFA Records reissuing Light Asylum’s self-titled debut and a calendar that recently included Cruel World and Cold Waves, Shannon arrives here like a flint: quick strike, bright spark. Her presence deepens the stakes.
Damaged Dream is out now via Silent Pendulum Records. Order the album here:
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