The Single (and its music video)
Okay, more specifically, I watched the first 38 seconds of the music video. It felt like a lot longer. I respect that some people like or don’t mind that kind of thing – but thanks no thanks. For those that are unaware, the video is in the ‘saw style’ like a horror movie, and because I’m not into that kind of thing, I’d never seen anything like it. Again, I don’t judge that some people like it, but I think there could have been a stronger warning on the video – no one would pay attention to “The following footage contains themes that some may find distressing – Viewer discretion advised”. I certainly didn’t. When has anyone thought twice or stopped watching at ‘distressing themes’ and ‘discretion advised’? Also, I just realised they said ‘footage’ like it was a documentary… I bet its lore related. Moving on from the video to the song itself now.
As I’ve said before, I’m more of a metalcore girlie, and I have to be in the mood even for that. However, on this track I can tell there’s great production quality, and the lyrics are super impactful and well written, playing on common turns of phrase or sayings and twisting them like, ‘like a lamb to slaughter’ and ‘the sky is falling’… as well as being, not graphic, but… vivid.
A few moments I especially like include: at about two minutes there’s the start of two lines that are the only bits of clean singing in this whole song, but they sound like they’re clawing their painful way out of the melee only to get dragged back down again into the darker screams. And then at about two minutes forty there’s an instrumental section where the guitar is huge and anthemic over a continuation of the seriously mega drums – I can see that riff being played in a stadium, totally strutting and filling that space. Another thing I like is the two (!) false endings. At three thirty the guitar draws out like the song is over (kinda makes me think of the end of ‘Hold On Till May’ by Pierce The Veil), it goes on for ten seconds before the drums kick back in – and everything stops for a half second… – and then we dive in to another verse, which ends with no instrumental outro.
So, although this song isn’t really my thing, its objectively and technically amazing, and I can definitely enjoy it when I’m in the right mood.
