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This album is what happened when I took one of the most confusing and painful years of my life and decided to turn it into something I could actually own. I wrote these songs to process the betrayal, isolation, psychosis, broken systems, unexpected kindness, and the strange humor that somehow survived alongside all of it. I didn’t want to make something that only sounded wounded, though. I wanted it to feel alive, defiant, catchy, messy, and honest, because that is what surviving it actually felt like.
ZER:0 became the vessel for the parts of me I couldn’t always say out loud, with VA//A:RE stepping in when the songs needed a different kind of voice. I wrote the lyrics and shaped every concept, then used AI as a creative instrument to help give those characters their voices.
More than anything, I wanted to reclaim the story. These songs don’t erase what happened, but they turn it into something that belongs to me now. If someone hears themselves in even one of them and feels a little less alone, then the album accomplished exactly what I hoped it would.
-Matt P.
Stream on all major platforms ✦
Before you start
To any and all who listen to this album,
Thank you for joining me. I mean that.
We begin our story where most stories begin: at the beginning.
The trouble is, who could pick just one?
To say exactly where it started would be to discredit thirty years of setup. Still, my mind eventually settled on a date. One moment that seemed to connect the three acts I had divided everything into.
There was “The Act.”
There was when “the people came.”
And eventually, there was the realization of “what they tried to take.”
“The Act” set everything in motion. It opened the gates.
By all rights, it should have been the star of the show.
But none of this happened in order.
It was not until after “the people came” that I began to understand there had ever been an Act at all. By the time everything finally clicked, we were already approaching the close of the show.
To be only half-aware that you have reached the finale is a hell of a feeling.
So here we are.
In the middle.
Where [insert any number of things that happened after 3/14/2025] made me reach out my hand and hope someone would catch it.
But it was already done.
Whether it was my psychosis, or perhaps something much closer to the truth, no hand reached back.
And then it happened again.
And again.
Until, before you know it, the middle has become the end.
For those who, spoiler alert, arrive later and help save me, this does not discredit you.
You are part of this story too.
But this is not the sound of being saved.
This is the sound of a ghost who had to live through that moment, and then somehow learn to live outside of it
and then after he wrote the whole album decided he had a little more to say about it...
what they tried to take
(PART 1)
So here we are.
This is not a dig.
This is not blame.
This does not erase the people who showed up after.
This is what it was like inside the head of someone still haunting the life they used to have.
(p.s. this the album cover was a collaborative effort. A good friend of mine showed me a photo he took and the minute I saw it I knew it was a part of this story) Thanks babe.
Some of the lyrics in this song are more than ten years old. I held onto them because they always felt unfinished, like words sent somewhere that had not answered yet. I would return to them every few years, but I never knew where they belonged. It turns out I had not lived the rest of the song yet.
Despite the title, this is not really a song about space. It is about looking toward the night sky when I was too hurt to keep looking at the world around me. I was not asking the stars to fix anything. I think I just needed something vast enough to recognize how broken I was without asking me to explain or prove it. For a moment, it felt like the sky looked back and acknowledged me.
Not healed. Not whole. Just seen.
I once dreamed of reaching the stars by becoming an astronomer and working for NASA. Life took me somewhere else. But maybe this was another way of reaching them. I spoke into the dark, and after more than ten years, the song finally answered.
“Anything Else” is not really a breakup song. It is about the ridiculous number of times we failed to stay broken up.
My ex and I knew the relationship was toxic. We knew the pattern, knew how it would end, and kept going back to each other anyway. At some point, it became so predictable that it was almost funny. Not because it stopped hurting, but because there are only so many times two people can knowingly walk into the same wall before the whole thing starts to feel absurd.
This is not me pretending I had no part in it. We both kept reopening the door. We confused familiarity with inevitability and kept finding one more reason to try again, even when neither of us had anything different to offer.
Sometimes something can be heartbreaking and still be a little hilarious. “Anything Else” lives right in the middle of that.
I thought I was falling for someone. There was something in the way they looked at me, or maybe in who I became when they did, that made me feel awake again. I called it attraction because that was easier to understand. I gave them credit for every color, every soft part, and every piece of myself that seemed to return whenever they were near.
But they were not putting those things inside me. They were reflecting back what I had forgotten was already there.
That does not mean the connection was imaginary or that the person meant nothing. Something about them genuinely helped me see myself again. I had simply mistaken the mirror for the source.
For a song with such a self-centered title, [ME ME ME] is really about reclamation. I spent so long believing I was chasing another person, only to realize I had been trying to find my way back to myself.
Sometimes, when you already know things are kind of f****d, you reach a point where you think, “Well, if the plane is going down anyway, I might as well enjoy the view.”
That’s really what this song is about.
It’s not pretending everything is okay. It’s knowing things are absolutely not okay and deciding you’re not going to waste the rest of your energy crying about it.
Sometimes the only thing left to do is turn the music up, let go for a minute, and dance through the disaster.
Plus, who doesn’t love an easy, radio-friendly song that lets your brain take the night off?
No boo-hoos. No dramatic speeches. No trying to fix everything before the beat drops. Just dance.
If you’ve ever had to navigate the medical system, change therapists, or explain your entire life to yet another person holding a clipboard, this one may hit a little too close to home.
There’s a very specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being asked to write down “the worst day of your life” for what feels like the hundredth time. At some point, you start wondering if there’s a loyalty card.
Then there are the medications.
You finally get your refill called in (seriously, don’t forget to take them), only to discover that somewhere between you, the doctor, the pharmacy, and the system, someone didn’t get it quite right. Again.
Sometimes a little dark humor is the only thing keeping you from completely losing it.
I don’t really know how to talk about this one.
LOVE(D) was about him, but it was also about the moment that set this entire story in motion.
I’m going to tell you the truth.
My truth, anyway. And what I fear may also be true for other people who have been through something similar.
Even when someone betrays you in a way that splits your life into before and after, part of you can still love them. Or maybe not them exactly. Maybe you still love the version of them who existed before you knew what they were capable of. The version you never thought could hurt you so completely and leave you alone with the wreckage.
It’s confusing. It’s frustrating. And it’s extremely difficult to talk about.
There’s shame, because “How could you still love someone who did that to you?” becomes a little too familiar. As if loving them means you’re excusing what they did.
It doesn’t.
I love(d) him.
And that was then.
The words that became this song are words that should never be arranged in that order:
“Go kill yourself, f*****.”
Those were the last words he chose to leave me with.
Not an explanation.
Not an apology.
Just something meant to hurt as deeply as possible before he disappeared.
If anyone has ever said something like that to you, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it.
People like to say they’re “just words,” but some words don’t leave when the person does.
They replay. They find their way into quiet moments. They change the way you hear your own thoughts for a while.
This song is what I did with mine. I took the words he meant as an ending and made sure they weren’t.
There is such a clear line between “Then” and “Now” that they sometimes feel like two completely different lives.
There was the me who lived without knowing the weight I would one day be forced to carry. Then came the version of me who had no choice but to become strong enough to carry it, even on the days I really didn’t want to.
I don’t romanticize that strength. I would have preferred not to need it. But now there is a version of me who can finally see tomorrow waiting just over the horizon.
For the first time in a long time, I believe I might actually reach it.
That’s the version of me I want you to meet. I remember who I was, and I know what it took to get here, but I’m not looking back.
Psychosis.
Where do I even start?
It’s one of those things that can fundamentally split a person in half.
Mine bent my reality until nothing felt simple, safe, or completely certain anymore. It became complicated in ways I still don’t always know how to explain.
I’m deeply sorry to the people who had to see me that way, especially anyone I may have scared, confused, or pushed away while I was trying to understand what was happening to me.
But to those who stayed and carried me through the hardest days of my life, even without knowing the heartbreaking circumstances that led me down that rabbit hole, thank you.
You didn’t have the full story. Some of you barely had any of it. But you stayed anyway. You reminded me that I was still here when I couldn’t find myself. You saved my life, and I will always carry each of you differently in my heart.
At the very beginning of this story, a few unwanted guests found their way in and made themselves far too comfortable.
For a while, I was too overwhelmed, too confused, and honestly too tired to say what needed to be said.
Silence can look a lot like permission to people who benefit from it, but it never was.
This is the version of the story where I finally found my voice, drew a line, and refused to move it.
No long speech. No dramatic goodbye.
Just a very clear message: you have officially overstayed your welcome.
Sincerely, Get the f*** out!
You know this one.
The person who disappears without a word, leaves you to make peace with all the questions, and then suddenly decides they’re ready to talk again.
As if the conversation has just been sitting there patiently waiting for them to come back.
There was probably a time when I would have answered immediately, because closure can look really attractive when you’ve been denied it long enough.
But eventually, you realize that someone returning doesn’t automatically earn them access to you again.
Sometimes the silence already said everything.
But don’t worry, we aren’t bitter.
We’re simply no longer available.
WHERE ARE MY SAD BOYS?!
This one is for everyone who keeps showing up, even on the days when staying inside feels like the only reasonable option.
For the people who can be sad, tired, anxious, and still somehow pull on their boots and make it out the door. I love you.
Existing can be a lot, and sometimes the victory isn’t fixing everything. Sometimes it’s simply making it through the day without disappearing from your own life.
So bring the emotional baggage. We can check it at the door or drag it onto the dance floor with us.
Either way, the music is already playing.
Let’s boogie~
I kept hearing myself tell the same stories over and over again.
I realized how much time I had spent replaying this past year and all of its horrors, letting it happen to me again every time I told it.
I decided I wanted to move forward.
Not forget. Not forgive. Just finally say, “It happened.”
So I’m letting it go the best way I know how.
Usually, letting go means you stop talking about it. But since it’s me, I thought, “Well… why not make a song about it first?”
Will they?
Won’t they?
Is anyone even asking the same question anymore?
And does the answer subtract from the feeling?
Labeling the abstract is not welcomed here. I subscribe to the nonsense because I participate in it. Because “just close enough, but we’ll never say the real words” is better than nothing.
Ya know?
Of course you do.
Because I do not.
(But I do.)
+ what came after
(PART 2)
Disenfranchised grief.
Go look it up.
Put that in your “new word” piggy bank for today if it describes something you’ve felt but never had the language for.
There is a version of me that was left for dead. And that version of me died.
I never had time to mourn him. I was too busy clawing at every thread I could find, trying to save whatever part of me was still alive.
People can look at me now and say, “Oh, but you made it. You shouldn’t be sad. You should be thankful.”
Kind of hard to feel thankful when I’ve been dragging around the corpse of who I used to be.
I don’t know which version of me still lives in your head. So I’ve had to Frankenstein together some version of myself that still looks enough like that guy for you to recognize him, while somehow making room for everything that came after.
I made it. But he didn’t.
And I don’t blame you if you didn’t know to wear black.
I wear it every day for you.
Take care of others.
Sit beside someone when the lights come back on.
When the music stops.
When whatever felt fun five minutes ago becomes something someone has to survive.
Take a second to think about what you’re doing. Then take another to think about who will have to carry it after you leave.
The party dies once when the fun ends. It dies again when everyone decides the aftermath belongs to someone else.
We don’t leave each other when the fun becomes responsibility.
Sometimes the bad times just keep coming.
At some point, you learn to ride the wave.
After a year of terrible shit happening, you get a little better at taking the punches. Not because they hurt any less. You just stop being surprised when the next one lands.
On the bright side, I learned to stop asking how much worse it could get.
Have you stopped clutching your pearls?
Good.
The purpose of this song, and the imagery I used, was never to be blasphemous. I wanted to show what it felt like to sit among the upper crust with “the good ones,” only to be betrayed by those same people.
But there are people in the shadows, too.
Good people.
The people who accepted me, held me, and helped me find my way back home when the light had nothing left to offer.
I’ll never forget them.
They taught me how to see in the dark, and I promised myself I’d come back for them in whatever way I can.
Life went on.
Despite everything it endured, my heart still managed to make a little room for whatever beautiful, messy thing I believe love can carry.
If you can’t tell, this song is for someone.
(Thankfully, a different someone than the one this story has been riding on.)
Maybe your someone.
But definitely mine.
You showed me there was still something beating inside my chest.
I won’t tell the world what you did that gave me that spark again…because I’m not even sure you remember doing it.
But every time I see you, there is still a piece of me living in that moment.
Thank you.
I’ll always be yours, even after.
I wanted to end this show with something that felt like ownership.
This little sick track is half a public service announcement to remember to take your meds and half an attempt to conquer my own stigma around having to take mine.
It’s part of the residue I still carry from “the people who came.”
Between them and The Act, taking them became necessary.
And that burns me.
But I’ve seen what I can be like without those meds, and I’d swallow my own pride before I ever made the people around me deal with that version of me again.
I’ve learned to live with these scars. With the damage. With the broken heart and the bleeding soul. With the “back thens” and the “if onlys.” With the tears that find me more often than not. With the life I should have had but lost. With the people I thought would show up but didn’t. With the regrets. With the fears. With the lonely.
You all tried to take everything from me.
And you got goddamn close.
But somewhere in the wreckage of yesterday, I found my strength. When I couldn’t find a light, I made my own. When I couldn’t see a path, I forged one. I conjured every ounce of myself I could find so I wouldn’t fade out.
I wanted to stay that badly.
I needed to know the world wouldn’t erase me or reduce me to the things that happened to me. I refused to let any of it win.
So I stayed.
And I will keep staying.
For myself and for anyone who finds themselves on the other side of this coin. I will make sure no soul carrying this weight passes me believing they have to carry it alone.
You took enough from me.
You don’t get this too.
I take the meds.
I carry the scars.
I live with what happened.
But this life is still mine.
I don’t take them because you won.
I take them because I did.
Come hell or high water...
I’m still here, alright!
Gallery
There was a lot of effort and care put into the designs of ZER:0 and VA//A:RE. I wanted to share some artwork that was created.
