So… our 4th full length! That’s pretty exciting. For the first time ever I actually had some sort of theme and central idea while writing this. I do try to shake things up from album to album, so I hope this isn’t too similar to the last one :)
Cool yet another song about cutting. Listen it’s big part of my life so it’s gonna come up a lot. I guess this one speaks to pain of cutting. The physical and the mental. Feeling like you’re destroying yourself and there’s nothing you can do to make it stop. But honestly I don’t know what half the lyrics really mean. They’re just there to create a feeling. Anyways I went pretty heavy on the vocal effects (it’s a bitcrusher) but I think it’s cool. The vocal chop segment is the best part of the song I think.
Sorry for making the title an entire paragraph. Also it’s about cutting again. Oh my god get a new story we get it!! I know it’s a really fun sounding song to be about cutting but what can I say that’s what I do. Plus that’s kind of what it’s about. I wouldn’t cut if there wasn’t something fun about it. It’s fun but there’s obviously something dangerous about it. I had so much fun recording this song!! Doing the more talk-y parts of the vocals (like the “ouch!” and stuff) was really fun.
Now that the robot from To Tell Computers And Humans Apart has discovered what it really is, it has to figure out what that means. Also sort of a metaphor for feeling completely out of control of your emotions. Anyways this was the very last song written and recorded, because I thought the album needed one last small, quiet(ish) song. The second voice in the song (the speaking one) is actually my brother! He is certainly not a singer and getting him to do it took a lot of convincing, but I actually love how his voice sounds on this song.
Hey look at that a sequel to Hello Earthlings! I haven’t done a sequel song since The Aftermath Of Blocking All Your Friends so I figured one was overdue. I guess it was a round trip. I really love the chorus of this song with the combo of different vocal effects. I think it’s a pretty standard SNS song, with the subject matter and mix of guitar and synths, but that’s alright.
I don’t really know how to explain the idea behind this song without sounding pretentious so I’m not going to! I’d rather just leave it to be interpreted lol. I had a lot of fun with the guitar parts and the drums fills were fun too. I have to say though, this was a super frustrating song to write.
The intro synth was inspired by The Future Is A Mesh Stallion by Neon Blonde! Very cool song! I don’t feel like getting into the lyrics because I feel like they speak for themselves. I was not doing well lol. Anyways this was my first time experimenting with autotune which was fun. It makes me feel like The Ready Set haha. Oh also, I don’t remember if this was the first track I did it on or not, but on a few songs I used a bitcrusher on the drums to give them that premade keyboard drum track sound, which I like.
Just a little noisy song, because I like when albums have “interludes”. Made it on a pretty miserable day to just let out some frustration. I was especially frustrated with songwriting so I pretty much improvised this. There are some reversed vocals in the background, you can hear what I was thinking that day if you reverse the song (and manage to make out the words behind all the autotune and bitcrushing lol).
I think this is the first song I’ve written that’s fully 100% happy with no double meanings or tricks. This was definitely a song that I put more thought into how the lyrics sounded versus what they actually mean. Don’t think about the lyrics too hard or the metaphor starts to crumble lol. But I had a lot of fun with the lyrics regardless. How many songs do you know that use the word “polysaccharides”? As for the music part, maybe you noticed it’s pretty fast! 216 BPM! It’s based on 2000’s dance stuff, like Cascada. Except that it’s basically the nightcore version of itself because its so fast. Side tangent—I think that a song getting nightcore versions of it on youtube is the only real marker of success ;) (Absolutely not daycore though because it sucks. You slowed down the song? So you mean you made it worse?)
The first song I wrote for the album, but it was recorded after A Torn Face because I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. I was very miserable! But that’s old news so whatever. I’ve always loved the sound of songs that have both a masculine and a feminine voice, but microphones have a hard time picking up the voices of dead people. So I used a plug-in to turn my voice into a guy’s voice. It’s the free trial of Vocalo Voice Changer (I refuse to pay $180 for it. It works okay but I don’t think it’s that convincing). It works alright but I had to layer on the distortion to get it to sound human and I definitely wouldn’t be able to use it for lead vocals, so my stupid girl voice is here to stay.
This song is sort of (for a lack of better words) a celebration of being human. A lot of the time I feel like I’d be so much better if I was emotionless and robotic, so this was basically a way of reminding myself that a life like that would actually suck. It’s a way to remind myself that even though emotions are often painful and messy they’re what make life special. For the music part, I was going for Nine Inch Nails but it ended up a little more 2005 Panic At The Disco. Whatever, PATD was cool in 2005 anyways. I really like the synth sound for the bass.
This is the first song that was recorded for the album. It pretty much informed the whole sound for the rest of the album. Of course there are much more energetic and intense songs because I just can’t chill out, but this was what made me decide I wanted a more cohesive album. My favourite part of this song is actually the drums. I think they hit that sweet spot between chaotic and still keeping the beat.
WOO ZOMBIES! Another supernatural creature to cross off the list. But I was super sad when I wrote this. I was thinking “I wish I had someone else’s brain”, then it occurred to me, so do zombies! I love when that happens, when I get to turn something depressing into something upbeat and shiny. The “oh whao ohs” were fun to do. Maybe a little obnoxious but I like obnoxious music so whatever. The guitar solo was fun to play too! Yeah I don’t have anything else to say.
The bonus tracks on this album are both covers which I uploaded to youtube before the album was released, which is why you'll find them in the playlist as those old videos. Didn't see any point to uploading them twice lol.
Anyways the first one is a cover of The Future Freaks Me Out by Motion City Soundtrack, a song that I have loved for a very long time. I made it for fun in December 2023 and hesitated to even post it because I know that my musical style is kind of similar to MCS, with the mix of guitar and synth, but hopefully I changed the song enough. Either way I'm happy with how it turned out :)
The second bonus track is a cover of Ambulance vs. Ambulance by The Blood Brothers, a song which I love but only recently discovered. I wasn't worried about being too similar to the original with this one lol. I actually think this was the first song I tried out the bitcrushed drums on, because I knew I wouldn't be able to do the drums justice on real drums, but still wanted them to sound sort of dirty and raw.
Hopefully this goes without saying but any time I make a cover of a song it's out of admiration and love for the original <3