Woods Of Ypres frontman and multi-instrumentalist David Gold tragically passed away in 2011, just prior to the release of the band's fifth album, Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light. Metal Health recently spoke with David's mother, Esther Gold, about his life and career.

The final Woods Of Ypres album, Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light, was recorded at Beach Road Studios in Ontario, Canada, with producer Siegfried Meier. It was released in 2012. David issued the following commentary on the album prior to the release:

"W5: Grey Skies & Electric Light describes where we're at now. The colours are black, white, grey, silver and electric blue. The season is winter. The location is the city, with forests inside. Times are bleak but we have things to comfort us. We pass the time. Devour life, or let it sit, but universal in desperately trying to salvage and savour the last of it.

"We accept that there is no God, no afterlife, no life before this one, as this is all there is. Existence is the occupancy of one body and just as Stephen Hawking recently said, 'there is no heaven for broken down computers', and just as simply, nor is there anything more for us. Death is not a transition, 'Death is Not An Exit (death is the flick of the off switch)', which really, makes so much difference to me in how I conduct my life, knowing that for sure. At its core, that's what the album is about to me, having one shot at life, carrying grief and longing and emptiness throughout it all. In the end, what you wanted was what you wanted, whether it was realized or not, you love who you love, anything else won't matter and that's okay. That's life.

"When writing the album, I'd try to focus on imagining what it would feel like to not exist. I would still picture it as this endless black space, like outer space full of stars, or a silent black ocean, but that's just my imagination. I then thought about how a longing that perpetuates unchanged and untouchable throughout eternity is the ultimate tribute, and really, much more romantic and exciting than dying satisfied and wanting nothing more. I prefer to want forever and I intend to. That's love. It's proof that you loved in the first place. Life changes but love does not. It's the one thing you can try to have in life, take with you when you go, the one thing you will have always left for others to have and the one thing you allow yourself to have. Death can be a comforting thought when non-existence would be like a big, black, warm, fuzzy, endless, bottomless, drunk hug goodbye that lasts forever.

"In the end, we are all alone. It's not who loves you, but who you love and you'll always have that whether that love was reciprocated or not. In the meantime, we live this bleak life and modern times of grey skies and electric light. We wait. We pass the time. We listen to music."