Answered By: Ryan Kirby (vocals)
THE HELL WE CREATE
This song encompasses the overall meaning of the record and the stories that it covers, about how we have the ability to create hell for ourselves and hell for others. This song also talks about what the album name is also about. We can create hell for ourselves, whether that’s through addiction or through poor decisions. It could be diet, it could be jumping off a cliff without a parachute, which is an extreme one. But we can make bad decisions that create a very difficult life for ourselves.
This album deals with a lot of substance abuse and things like that, whether it’s alcohol or drugs, and how that can affect yourself and how you kind of create a hell for yourself. And then there’s a second level to that, and that is that you can also create a hell for others.
Because, let’s say you’re a mum or a dad, you become an alcoholic – it affects your children immensely. It can create a hostile home for the children, or in the case of the kids my wife and I adopted, it could result in you being taken from your parents due to neglect and abuse. That created hell, in a way, where the kids were in 17 different foster homes and shelters in two years. No kid should have to go through that, and that was completely caused by the actions of the parents. Then it’s almost like an endless loop because now the parents lose their kids, and they’re in a hell of their own creation in a world without their
children. That’s something they have to live with, the decisions that led to that. And then on a third level, the album deals with anxiety and that sort of stuff, especially during the pandemic.
The amount of time I created the worst-case scenario in my head and fully believed it, it would ruin my days. It caused me to not sleep, to not eat, it would just span from thoughts that nobody would ever care about the band again, or that we would never tour again, to me being paranoid about my health and thinking everything I felt was me dying. All that led to a point, but all of this is what the record is about, and the title track encompasses the things that can create hell for ourselves, but we can also create it for others because our poor decisions do have ripple effects sometimes, whether it’s for our friends or our family. It’s definitely the heaviest subject matter on a record that we’ve had so far.
END (THE OTHER SIDE)
On February 3, 2021, my wife went to the hospital, and it turned out she’d had a stroke. She had a 99% blockage in her main artery, her jugular, on top of three other 97% blockages all on her brain. They said if she didn’t come in that night, she would’ve died. But that night, I also didn’t know if she would live. The doctors said they might have to perform an emergency neurosurgery, which had a 60 or 70% success rate. They were doing everything in their power to avoid that emergency surgery, and End is about that night and just everything that was going through my head through that whole situation. Obviously in the forefront it was me facing the prospect of losing my wife. And, at the time, I was only 30 years old, and my wife was 28 or 29. To see somebody that young laying in a hospital bed, she couldn’t even speak, she hadn’t eaten in five days. She’d gone to the hospital a week before, and they had just written it off as having migraines. And she was like: “No I don’t. I’ve never had migraines”. And they’re like: “Oh, are you pregnant?”, all those typical questions. She asked them to do a scan at that time, and no one would do a scan. And then it got worse. She wasn’t eating, she’d stopped walking, because when you have a stroke, you start losing your motor functions. And then they finally did a scan, and that’s when they saw all of the blockages.
She couldn’t speak anymore, she wrote things on her phone when she had the energy to, like to say what was happening, and she’d hand it to the doctor. And I would have to communicate what I could about her pain and things like that. So, that night – a lot was going through my head, the prospect of losing my wife. And at the time, we’d just adopted my niece and nephew three months prior, they were 14 and 10 or nine years old respectively. So, I’m like: not only could I lose my wife, I could become a single dad of a 14 and nine year old all within three months. That was also in the middle of the pandemic, so I didn’t even know if I’d ever tour again or get my job back, we were living off unemployment and aid through the pandemic.
It was just a spiral, and I think the last breakdown of the song says: “Death comes for us all”. It was my first brush with death, I’ve been very fortunate to not really have to deal with that in my life, whether it’s been friends or family. The only death I’d experienced was my grandpa’s passing, but I was around 11 and it didn’t fully hit me because we didn’t have that kind of relationship, and I didn’t have that mental understanding at 11 years old. And not to be insensitive, but that’s the natural order of things, so it wasn’t totally shocking, he was around 76 years old, and he’d been smoking and stuff, so it wasn’t out of nowhere, I wasn’t blindsided. With this, this was my best friend and my first experience that completely
blindsided me alongside a million other things. And it was also my first experience where I thought: you know what, it doesn’t matter. One day we’re all going to have to pass away, and nobody’s guaranteed any amount of time. Just because you might be 28, and you take care of yourself, it doesn’t matter. Death comes for us all. It’s a very depressing song.
My wife is still recovering, she’s about to have her third brain procedure, she’s technically slightly better because she can talk and that sort of stuff. But she’s still fighting with it a lot, she works, she takes care of the kids. She is incredible.
FALLING THROUGH THE SKY
I grew up in a very conservative Christian upbringing. Like, every problem you ever had, anything at all, it would just be like: “Just pray about it, give it to God, it’ll be fine”. I never really had had a crazy bad experience with death or bullying or anything, I lived a very normal upbringing, so I was like: “Yeah this is easy. If you have a problem, you just pray about it, it’s cool”. But because of that, I kind of put mental health on the back burner because I just thought I could handle anything. Sure, I’ve had stressful stuff pop up, but it wasn’t like I should complain, I would look at other people’s situation, which I’m glad I at
least had the perspective to see people had it worse. But, in reality, I don’t think people need to belittle their own life’s issues because others have it worse; those things can build up and you never know when it’ll actually get as bad.
When my wife had her stroke, and the pandemic was happening, and we’d adopted kids, it was all of a sudden like that “coping” and pray it away stuff from growing up – that didn’t work anymore because I never put an actual priority on building any kind of resilience myself. I would say it’s the same principle when people say: “Pray about it”. It’s like: “Well, my bills are due, I can’t just pray about it. I have to actually go out and work and make money”. It’s the same with mental health: you can pray that things get better, but you actively need to prepare, and you need to actively be open about your issues, and you need to practice just good mental health practices and being open about stuff. Going to a therapist if you need it at the moment. Not belittling your issues because other people have it worse. You should never act like it’s as bad as everyone, but it doesn’t mean you can just stay quiet. If you’re struggling in school, and you just can’t figure out why your grades are bad, don’t put it on the back burner because one of your friends had something way worse happen. Be open. You can say: “I’m really struggling with school. I need help”. And it doesn’t matter if your friend had something way worse happen to them. That’s what friends are for.
So, Falling Through The Sky is kind of about how everything just felt like it was falling to pieces. And it’s just about that feeling where everything was in a spiral and I didn’t know how to handle it. Because when you don’t learn how to handle little things, you sure as hell can’t handle the big things, and then it becomes 10 times worse. Now I’m really making sure that I take care of the little things in life, and just keeping my mental health up. Take a bath with a bath bomb, that’s what my wife does. She puts on Netflix with a bath bomb.
SINK BELOW
Sink Below is like a continuation of Falling Through The Sky. It’s more of when I got to the most depressed, sad state of the pandemic. And it’s really just emphasising that you need to speak to somebody, and when you don’t – it can pile up. Some people unfortunately make the decision to give up when they don’t speak to people. This is just another song talking about hitting the lowest point I felt so far. And about how taking care of yourself can kind of prevent you from ever getting as low again, even in the worst moment. I think circumstances can bring you to your low, but it’s how you handle them that make it rock bottom or not.
And Sink Below is also kind of how the kids’ life spiralled out of control. They had a normal family. Their mum saw her mum die, walked into the house and her mum had passed away, and she was really close to her mum. And she didn’t know how to cope, because mental health was never in the forefront. So – she coped with alcohol and started drinking a lot.
Then she would stop showing up to work. All this stuff stopped working, which caused the dad, he started drinking too because she was just an emotional wreck. So, he’s depressed too. Things are bad and things just spiralled. And that’s why I think if she had learned, and a lot of people don’t learn because they don’t have a mentor or somebody to teach them. But if she had the resources to speak to someone and then she had never drank and just spoke to a therapist, she would’ve never hit rock bottom. Life would’ve sucked because she lost her mum, but she never would’ve hit rock bottom.
And the kids, I see it with them too. We try to encourage them. They go to therapy and all that, and they don’t like to talk. And I’m like: “You guys really need to talk”. I don’t wanna say to them this is what caused a lot of the issues because I don’t like bringing up stuff with their parents, obviously they will talk about it when they’re ready. But I do want them to talk about it. Because you can’t forget about that stuff, they’ll never forget. And that’s what trauma is. Trauma lives with you. But you have to learn how to live with it.
REAPER
Reaper is kind of like a love letter to my favorite show that I’ve ever watched. It’s called Dark, it’s a German drama on Netflix. It just has a mixture, it’s a gorgeous show, beautiful story, and the ending is incredible. But also, I watched it during a time where I was writing this record and thinking a lot about death and stuff, writing about the stuff with my wife and all of that. And the whole show’s about time and how time doesn’t stop. Time is like God basically, and everybody has an hourglass, everybody has a final destination, which is death, and you can do literally anything you want and it will not change. And that’s why the breakdown, the last breakdown in the song says: “Trapped in infinity / Let me out / Unending deity”. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best person on earth, the worst person on earth, whatever; we all meet the same end. We meet it differently, but it’s all the same end.
I think that’s why the show hit me pretty hard because it’s about people almost trying to alter time and alter their path, and it always somehow ends up in the same destination.
TIMES LIKE THIS
Times Like This was… I’d just noticed with politics, everybody’s at each other’s throats all the time. And I really think our common enemy is…this is more in America. I’m sure everyone watches American politics and just like what is going on over there? I think that every day.
But I’ve noticed that most people at the core believe in a lot of the same things. There are some big issues they don’t agree with, but I think so much emphasis is put on the things that are not agreed on that overall good things never get done because they’re too busy fighting about others. I guess I’m always saying the real enemy is the establishment, because I think in America, Republicans and Democrat establishment people get along, and they like each other. Like, you see George Bush and Barack Obama hanging out with each other and stuff like that. They’re over here giggling and laughing and stuff while we’re all trying to choke each other and scream at each other. They can go do whatever they want while we’re all yelling at each other.
And I think it’s about how we all kind of just need to go: “Hey, these people are really taking advantage of all of us”. Because a lot of them, while we’re arguing about things that are important, they also are profiting on pharmaceutical stuff or rigging the stock market and that sort of stuff. I always use the example of Roe v. Wade. It’s a very American thing, we need to get our stuff together over here. But I always put forward that it could have been codified by Barack Obama. Why wasn’t it codified? Because they would rather us keep fighting about it. It’s easier because we can stay distracted, and then they can try to get votes on it next time. Because if they take that issue off the table then people will forget about it because it’s just a right and we wanna argue, and it’s done. But they want us to keep arguing. They want to keep campaigning. And it’s the same with Republicans on a lot of things where they’re like: “We’ll do this”, then they never actually do it. They don’t wanna do it because as soon as they do it, they have nothing to try to get your vote on.
If we actually realized what’s happening and together kind of pushed out these fake corrupt people and got real genuine people in office that actually represented what people want, then the world would be a better place. And that’s what Times Like This is essentially about, the issues are never gonna go away because the people on top have no interest in them going away. You have to actually elect people that want change and will actually go through with change. Some people say that a perfect world would be all Republicans or a perfect world would be all Democrats. And I’m like: that’s not it. A perfect world is where we have a bunch of genuine people that properly represent what people want, and they should have people’s have best interests at heart. Times Like This says “When our scars have healed and our wounds are sewn”…when we stop fighting with each other, we’ll actually focus on who the real enemy is. And it’s the people who aren’t actually making changes now.
EYES ROLL BACK
In 2010, I had a night where I had really bad sleep paralysis. I saw some really freaky stuff and I just kind of wrote a song about it because I thought it was crazy. I saw this thing standing on the other side of the room with like red eyes and I couldn’t move. I don’t know what it was, just sleep paralysis probably, and you see crazy stuff. But it was at a point in my life too, this is 12 years ago so I was 19, and I just wasn’t being a great person. Not anything crazy, I just wasn’t the person I was portraying myself to be, that was back when I was being an outspoken Christian guy. And I definitely wasn’t acting like a good person behind the scenes, practicing what I teach, I was lying to people, and things like that. Mainly the lying part and just not being a reliable friend. I’ve done some maturing, and I was like: maybe that was something trying to freak me out into being a better person? Again, I was 19, most people when they’re 19 are stupid. But maybe it was telling me: “Hey, get it together. Just because you’re 19 doesn’t mean you can be stupid”. Maybe it was the demon telling me to stop it, and I thought: “Oh, you wanna tell people you’re a nice Christian guy, but then you talk bad behind people’s backs?”. I really just needed to grow up and learn the whole thing “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”. I thought it was a really cool subject matter and the song is brutal.
FRACTURE
For Fracture, basically I took everything that the kids have told me about how they don’t want anything to do with their parents anymore. They just wanna move on, all this stuff. And I kind of wrapped it into a song from their point of view, that’s why the chorus says: “I don’t need you in my life”. And basically, the verse is talking about how they were stung by trusting their love in the past. Which I know some people relate to it, not just on that specific kind of level, but even on a breakup level and stuff like that.
REACHING OUT
Reaching Out is interesting because that’s the one song on the album I only wrote the verses for. Tuck, our bass player who sings the chorus, he wrote the song because he really wanted to write a song basically to the kids for me, like a message to them just saying: “I know it’ll get easier”, stuff like that. I’d say that’s really what that song is about, saying: “I understand all the hurt you’re going through, but it will get easier. I wish today would be the day it gets easier, but it will happen.”
WHAT YOU LEFT BEHIND
What You Left Behind is from two perspectives, one being my wife and I, and the other being from our kids. It’s a song speaking again about their biological parents and how it’s hard for them to move on with their life because of the hurt and the trauma. They just don’t trust adults. They don’t, and that’s really hurt them. Now they do have adults in their life that do care and are giving them good advice, but they don’t trust it because nobody’s ever been genuine. They had 17 different homes placements. So, the song is about their lack of trust and them speaking to their parents. The verses and the breakdown are my wife and I speaking to their parents. And then the chorus is them speaking to their parents.
I definitely take the role more seriously as I get older, the whole role model thing. Especially now having a teenage daughter and a younger son, I see how important role models are, good or bad. There’s a lot of kids out there who don’t have good role models and if I can help somebody through that, then that’s great. I’m just gonna do what I can because I also need to be a good role model for that.
