In an interview, True Colour of Blood frontman/sole member Eric Kesner explained the title of this CD;

I was thinking last summer about the day before Christ died, he was awakened to never sleep again. So I thought, Awakened. To Never Sleep Again, that sounds like a cool song title. So as the months went on and I worked on the album other meanings sort of came to me like the day that we die, that day we are going to be awakened to never sleep again. Or like how when you are shown the truth you are awakened and you will never sleep again

Before you run screaming: this is not your standard Stryper/Amy Grant Christian rock.  Kesner's vision on this CD is a bleak, grim and unsparing one.  I was reminded at various points of Milton's Hell, C.S. Lewis's National Institute for Controlled Experimentation, and Charles Williams Eternal City of London.  (If you haven't yet read Paradise Lost, the Perelandra Trilogy or Charles Williams' All Hallows Eve, you should immediately open another browser window and order them from the online bookstore of your choice).  If there are momentary flashes of beauty and redemption in Kesner's work, they only serve to better illuminate the darkness.

Kesner recorded awakened.  to never sleep again using only an old semi hollow body electric guitar, a 4-track recorder, and various effects and tape manipulations.  It's an interesting concept, and one which works well.  Notes played on a keyboard are precise and exact: notes played on an electric guitar have overtones and distortions which you simply cannot duplicate on a synthesizer.  This distortion, this lack of precision, makes Kesner's music simultaneously mechanistic and organic, like the best H.R. Giger.  His soundscapes evoke not the clean well-lighted sterility of synthpop but rather the grinding machinery of dying factories off in the distance.  Think Throbbing Gristle's "Hamburger Lady" or "IBM," only quieter, and you'll get the idea.

The CD begins with Kesner tapping on the fretboard, a slow, ominous pattern that barely rises above the ambient drone.  As Part I segues into Part II, the rhythm subsides, or rather is subsumed into the ebb and flow of the growling background.  Notes and chords rise occasionally, only to fall again.  By Part III, the background growl has been replaced by a keening wail, softened by echo until it becomes a ghost of itself.  Phrases ring out high and longing like a Muzzein's call to prayer and reverberate slowly to nothing.  Part IV reprises the slow tapping of Part I; here the almost-Arabic flourishes of Part III are recast as pulsing chords.  Static and distorted voice samples join with the music as feedback rings like unearthly chimes.  There is no closure here: the end is as spooky and unnerving as the beginning.

Kasner is obviously a creative guitarist and a very intelligent producer and recording engineer.  (His MP3.com site also features some of his equally interesting illbient/experimental work as DJ Drexel).  I would be particularly interested in seeing Kasner work with a band, whether as a producer or as a guitarist.  He's shown himself to be a master at producing music which seeps into the background and into your subconscious.  I'd love to see the results if he were to bounce his ideas off a group of similarly talented and creative musicians: it could be as interesting as the meeting of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno.

TRACKS:
1) awakened. to never sleep again. (Part I)
2) awakened. to never sleep again. (Part II)
3) awakened. to never sleep again. (Part III)
4) awakened. to never sleep again. (Part IV)

True Colour of Blood is Eric Kasner: Guitar, 4-track recorder, tape manipulation

Artist's MP3 Site
http://www.mp3.com/tcob