The Sound After Breaking: Sundered and Reforged

Sundered and Reforged: What It Means to me.

by Lyia Meta

We don’t always break with sound.

Sometimes the fracture is silent — a slow unraveling that no one sees.

Until one day, you realize: you’re not the same.

Something’s been torn from you.

A version of yourself, a dream, a sense of belonging.

Gone.

That’s what it means to be sundered.

To be pulled apart — by loss, grief, rage, betrayal, life.

Not softly… but brutally.

And not always with warning.

But here’s what no one tells you:

You don’t come back as the person you were.

You come back sharper, stronger, sometimes quieter.

But forged. Hardened. Re-shaped.

And if you’re lucky —

Reforged with grace.

I’ve known what it means to lose someone in a way that defies reason.

The kind of absence that seeps into your bones.

Not just because they’re gone —

but because of the violence, the senselessness.

I carry that moment with me.

Not in images, but in breath —

in the hush between phrases,

in the ache behind a note that won’t quite settle.

They found him still.

Peaceful, almost — though everything around him said otherwise.

That’s when the ground gave way beneath me.

And somewhere between silence and survival,

I began to find a new shape.

There were other kinds of loss, too —

the kind you don’t name, but carry.

The quiet resistance it takes to remain yourself

in spaces that try to make you smaller.

I didn’t bend. I made room.

What emerged from all this wasn’t polished.

It didn’t come wrapped in triumph or clarity.

It came from survival — from standing still in the middle of ruin and choosing to listen.

To honour what was broken.

To make something honest from it.

These songs came from that in-between space-

between shadow and salvation, where most of us live more often than we admit.

That’s where it found its name: Sundered and Reforged.

If you’ve ever had to remake yourself —

not in spite of the breaking, but because of it

these songs are for you.

They know where you’ve been.

And they’ll wait for you, if you’re not ready just yet.

---

He sleeps where shadows do not reach,

the storm behind, the silence near.

A name he whispered once in dream,

now echoes softly, year to year.

A song he’ll never get to hear,

still sings inside me — clear.

— Lyia

Image by WiX

From the album SUNDERED AND REFORGED: BETWEEN SHADOWS AND SALVATION.

Vocals

Lead & Backing Vocals: Lyia Meta

Additional Backing Vocals (Arrangement & Performance): Mark Allen Lanoue

Guitars

Lead & Rhythm Guitar Texture: Mark Allen Lanoue

Melodic Guitar (Bridge Section): Bob McGilpin

Bass

Bass Guitar: Bob McGilpin

Drums & Percussion

Drums: Bob McGilpin

Keyboards & Synths

Keys & Synths: Gene Rabbai

Additional Synths: Bob McGilpin