In heavy music, the clean section usually has one job. It gives the listener a moment of air before the distortion comes back, a few bars of arpeggios and space that make the next riff hit harder. Serag Baddar wanted those sections to be the whole song. “Limerence,” released on August 13 and running four minutes and ten seconds, is what happened when he finally built one.

Baddar is a 30-year-old composer based in Malta who describes himself as someone who’s into philosophy and happens to write music. He got his start the way a lot of players do, badly and by accident. His father bought him a cheap vintage Flying V and a small Kustom amp when he was around 14, and while the amp sounded great, the guitar was awkward to play sitting down, so he never took it seriously. A year later his middle brother bought him a BC Rich Mockingbird, and that was the one that stuck. He pushed himself past beginner level on his own. By 16 he had a garage with two friends where he wrote most of his riffs, and as he got more introverted he moved into production, learned to record guitar and vocals himself, and never went back. These days a DAW is where songs start.

One riff from that period refused to go away. Baddar wrote it at 15 or 16 and understood immediately that he wasn’t good enough at songwriting or guitar to build the song he was imagining, so he set it aside until he could do it justice. “It’s a very nice riff,” he says. “Even the way it’s played on the guitar, every note is placed conveniently where your hand can reach without having to stretch or move anywhere at all. For me, as a 15 or 16-year-old, writing that riff meant I had a melody that sounded professional, and I was very proud of that because at the time I really sucked at my instrument.”

The song went through multiple iterations before it landed, originally under the title “Lotus,” a nod to Buckethead’s “Padmasana,” whose rhythm guitar shaped one section of the track. Padmasana is the lotus pose, which is where the working title came from. Over time, “Lotus” became “Limerence.” Baddar says he got attached to the song even in its unfinished state, partly because so many versions of it contained things he wanted to keep and couldn’t.

What holds the thing together is a structural decision rather than a stylistic one. Baddar loves the clean passages in Opeth and Tool, and rather than treat them as contrast, he made them the foundation and left the distortion off entirely. “Opeth combines metal with clean riffs, especially inspired by 70s bands. I always wanted their clean sections to be entire songs, and from Opeth we only got one record like that, ‘Damnation’,” he says. He points to Buckethead’s “Electric Tears” and “A Real Diamond in the Rough” as proof the approach can stay accessible. “It’s always through wanting more of this that kept me inspired to keep my distortion off and stay clean.”

The most revealing moment comes at the end, where Baddar takes the hook apart in front of the listener. The main riff plays, then stops. The bass comes in. The second guitar riff arrives on top of the bass. Then everything runs together once. It’s a small act of transparency, and it makes a point that’s easy to miss on a first pass, which is that none of these parts are doubling each other. “I’m very happy and proud of the fact that every instrument plays something completely different and sounds really good when put together,” he says.

That kind of patience comes from treating music as a hobby rather than a job. Baddar writes for what he calls dopamine, meaning everything he keeps has to make him feel like he’s listening to a favorite band, and he works on sparks, those bursts of creative energy where good material arrives without effort. “There’s no pressure at all. I do whatever I want and release material at my own pace,” he says. “If there was ever a demand, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it because of the way that I write.” The lyrics came late and stayed personal, including a passing reference to a Metallica song about love going on, before the track closes on a repeated request to be talked to.

Next up is vocal writing for “Electric Smoke,” a bluesier track he wrote with Kyuss in mind, and eventually an EP collecting the rest of his clean material. He doesn’t play live, and he’s upfront that the vocals will take time, so things will be quiet for a stretch. His advice to other writers is the same rule he applied to that teenage riff. Write out of love for the craft, skip the cheap satisfaction of having a song finished, and work on it until it’s right even if that takes years. Fifteen years is a long time for a riff to wait, unless the four minutes it turns into are worth it.

“Limerence” is on all streaming services, with the single and lyrics available on Bandcamp and his catalog on Spotify. More on Baddar can be found at his official site, on Facebook, and on Instagram.

When Christian pop artist Vanessa Béjine stepped onto the red carpet at the 2026 Hollywood Independent Music Awards, she arrived as a nominee. What she didn’t know was that the story of the night would continue well beyond the ceremony.

Dressed in an unforgettable blue custom-tailored Versace gown, Béjine completed the look with gold Versace heels, and a matching handbag. She attended the ceremony with co-producer Eleni Thompson, celebrating the nomination of her single Help Me Help Them in the Christian/Gospel category.

Another entry was mistakenly announced as the winner. Then came an unexpected development. Following the ceremony, it was discovered that the song originally awarded the honor was completely AI-generated. The original result was subsequently voided, and HIMA apologized and awarded Best Christian Song to Béjine for Help Me Help Them.

For an artist whose work is rooted heavily in lived experience, the circumstances surrounding the win made the recognition particularly meaningful.

Music Made From Real Life

Béjine believes the relationship between an artist and listener is built on something technology cannot manufacture: shared human experience. Her songs often begin with things she has lived through, witnessed or deeply cared about — faith, loneliness, perseverance, injustice and the decision to keep going through seasons that don’t make sense.

It’s also why Béjine holds a firm position on AI-generated music. While artificial intelligence has become increasingly present across entertainment, she believes music itself should remain a human art form. To Béjine, listeners don’t simply connect with a melody. They connect with the person behind it. A song about heartbreak carries weight because someone has experienced heartbreak. A song about faith can resonate because someone has wrestled with doubt, waited for an answer or found the strength to keep believing.

Music, in her view, is not simply an end product. It is an art form shaped by human talent, creativity, emotion and experience. There is a fundamental difference between an artist creating a song and someone prompting a computer system to generate one — particularly when the two are placed in competition for recognition of artistic achievement.

That philosophy is woven throughout Help Me Help Them.

A Song Rooted in Compassion

At its core, Help Me Help Them is about compassion. The song gives a voice to those who are easily overlooked — including people experiencing hardship, abandoned children and animals waiting for someone to notice them. Its message acknowledges an uncomfortable reality: no individual can save everyone. But everyone can help someone.

That simple idea captures much of what Béjine wants her music to accomplish. For her, success isn’t only about being heard. It’s about creating something honest enough that another person can hear their own experience reflected back to them — and perhaps feel a little less alone because of it.

The Long Game of an Independent Artist

The HIMA win represents another step forward for an artist who has continued building her career independently. Béjine has developed a sound that crosses contemporary Christian pop, dance, R&B-pop and cinematic influences, allowing individual songs to take on different identities while maintaining the same foundation: faith and honest storytelling.

There is also something fitting about the way this particular award arrived. The recognition came only after the initial result was revisited and corrected. HIMA’s decision ultimately ensured that an award intended to recognize artists and their creative work went to an eligible human artist — an important distinction as the music industry continues confronting questions surrounding artificial intelligence and creative ownership.

For Béjine, the moment isn’t about diminishing the awards organization that ultimately corrected the result. Nor is it simply about opposition to a new technology. It’s about protecting something she believes is worth preserving: the human talent, artistry and human connection with listeners at the center of music. Songs have historically allowed people separated by geography, background and circumstance to recognize themselves in someone else’s story. That connection begins with a human being having something to say.

And as Béjine continues building her catalog and reaching new listeners, Help Me Help Them now carries another distinction with it: Best Christian Song. For an artist whose music has always centered on faith, resilience and giving a voice to those who need one, it’s a recognition that feels especially fitting.

“Orphans of wisdom” is the kind of phrase that either lands or it doesn’t, and AKASHIC GODS has built an entire album around making it land. The line names the fourth track on The Ether Element, the concept record the one-woman project releases this August, and it describes how the artist sees a culture that is, in her words, “information proud” yet starving for truth. The album’s thesis is simple enough to fit on a placard. Its execution takes ten tracks and a lot of distortion.

Akashic Gods came up somewhere else entirely. Her earlier work sat in dance music, drawing support from DJs including David Guetta and Fatboy Slim, before the project as it exists now took shape in 2024. The three singles released ahead of the album have performed well on independent radio, with “Karmic Justice” holding No. 1 on the independent airplay charts for four consecutive weeks and “Weapons in Space” spending three weeks at No. 1 on the UK Talk Radio Hot 100. “Gods and Machines,” her first single under the name, reached No. 2, picked up international airplay and was featured on a national television music show in Norway. Away from radio, she was interviewed on the red carpet at the UK film premiere of Dream Hacker earlier this year and turned up as a guest on the Martin Talk Show podcast.

That track opens the record and sets its terms. “Gods and Machines” pits ancient religious imagery against automated modern life, and the artist describes it as a warning against trading a soul for the illusions of the digital age. The phrase driving the song is “mindless express,” and the rhythm track was built to match it, rigid and unstoppable, a train nobody gets to step off. The song’s official music video which stands as the essential doorway into the album’s sonic landscape.

The production leans into the same opposition. Working with producer Carlone Lewis, AKASHIC GODS set glitchy industrial synths and stiff electronic programming against warm orchestral strings and stacked, choir-like vocal harmonies. The stated aim was to make cold machinery and human voice fight over the same space in the mix. The record is built in two movements, The System, described as the weight of modern manipulation, technology and betrayal, and The Sanctuary, described as the awakening of the human spirit through divine justice and forgiveness. Whether that reads as a smart structural idea or a heavy-handed one, the method matches what the songs are saying.

“Orphans of Wisdom” makes the case more directly. The track borrows the biblical warning that people perish for a lack of knowledge and pairs it with Socrates’ admission that all he knew was that he knew nothing, plus a nod to Alexander Pope on fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. AKASHIC GODS frames online arrogance as the newest version of a very old problem, describing a swarm of screen-addicted tech titans who have traded virtue for silver screens and data streams. The verses stay tight and claustrophobic before the chorus opens out, a structure meant to mimic being stuck behind a screen and then getting out from behind it.

The preoccupation keeps resurfacing in different costume. “Weapons in Space” describes a numb society as sleeping satellites drunk on vanity and screen glare, dragging apocalyptic imagery into fast, distorted punk territory. “Live Your Epitaph” goes after the habit of killing time with fantasy, reinforcing that a life spent deferring to tomorrow is a life spent on autopilot. “Ancient Civilians,” the closer is a war track about technological advancement running alongside moral regression, asking what bombs could possibly know of a golden age. After a first full listen, Josh Robinson, CEO of LMSUK, the marketing agency working the album, said the album was “SO good” that he was “in shock,” while naming “Surf the Future” as his favourite of the ten.

AKASHIC GODS is candid about wanting the record to work as an intervention. “In a culture that constantly feeds us a loop of digital noise, outrage, and distraction, leaving us as ‘orphans of wisdom,’ this album is designed to act as an immediate circuit-breaker,” she says, adding that she wants the music to shock people out of tech-driven hypnosis. By introducing an immersive vocabulary filled with empires of lies, bleeding edge of the web, and cybernetic matrices, the album ensures that listeners who come for raw guitar grit stay for a thought-provoking philosophical awakening—bridging stadium-sized rock power with a brilliant, multi-layered spiritual manifesto.

What keeps the record so gripping is its absolute specificity. The core message here is not a simple rejection of technology, but an intentional exposure of how human attention has been quietly outsourced to an automated hivemind, and the songs keep returning to the mechanics of how that trade happens. The Ether Element arrives this August with “Bring in the Elohim” as its focus single and the official music video dropping alongside. Its central claim is one Socrates got to first. Knowing everything and understanding nothing are not the same thing as wisdom, and the orphans in the title made that swap themselves.

AKASHIC GODS can be found on Instagram, Spotify, Facebook, TikTok and X.

Listen to the Ether Element album on Spotify.

To explore more of AKASHIC GODS’ earlier work, creative development and the technology-and-war themes behind “Weapons in Space,” visit this Just News International profile.

Album artwork by DesignerAde Ltd.