Eye For An Eye is about a toxic friendship I was in for a while. They were my best friend and it wasn’t until later that I realized how awful the relationship was. They were extremely manipulative, and always claiming that they were the victim, hence the line, “playing the helpless victim is your favorite game.” Writing this song was a way of releasing some of the negative emotions I was feeling at the time.

Eye For An Eye

Solemn Farewell is at its core a suicide note. As someone who has had suicidal thoughts, the song explores some of my thoughts in my darkest times. In the chorus I sing the line, “I was never here to begin with,” essentially meaning that physically killing myself wouldn’t make much of a difference, because I was already dead.

Solemn Farewell

This is my cover of "Hate to say I Told You So" by The Hives.

Hate To Say I Told You So

The guitar riff and musical concept for Hostage was written during a rehearsal with my band. I was doing a funky octave slide on guitar, and we started a jam based on that. After playing around with it at a few rehearsals, I asked the band if I could add lyrics and record it professionally. I hadn’t fully fleshed out the song until the day of recording, and wrote the lyrics the night before. There was definitely pressure to get it all done in time to record, but the song came together rapidly and it is one of my favorites on the EP. 

The lyrics describe feeling like a hostage to the cycle of neglect. The line “Is it karma or is it fate” expresses the feeling that I might have done something to deserve this. The chorus highlights that central thought. I left the lyrics vague enough that the listener can interpret them in many ways. This is my first time co-writing with my bandmates, and it was fun to create something together.

Hostage

Claustrophobia was conceived after a spell of writer’s block, and was written during a period of discomfort in my own skin. It opens with the line “You can’t become a new person every day,” and goes on to express that “I am imprisoned in this vessel, I can’t flee” which is about the terrible feeling of being trapped in my own body. 

I have never put as much time into writing a song as I did with this one. When I am inspired to write, it usually comes together in a matter of hours or days, but the song structure and melody of Claustrophobia had to be reworked multiple times over a period of weeks before it felt complete. This inspires me to be open to revisiting old song ideas to try to shape them into something new.

Claustrophobia

False Hearted is about fake friends and broken promises. It’s about feeling deceived and betrayed by people you trust. The overarching theme is feeling a need for vengeance after the realization that they feel no remorse for the hurt they’ve caused. The line “You’d empty me and I would let you” acknowledges my role in allowing this to happen, and this realization shapes the way I interact with people in hopes of protecting myself from further betrayal.    

I added many layers and buildups in the song to give it an aggressive feel. Some of the production characteristics of this song were inspired by listening to Pierce the Veil. The stark bass line leading up to the scream is loosely inspired by Rage Against the Machine. In the studio, I added more monotone audio effects to my vocals in the verse to further contrast with the heavy hitting, open choruses.

Hostage

AP Tobler

Related tracks