Behind The Artworks: Dislocator - Just Exisiting (2024)

The title of the album was decided in many years ago, and it was selected originally because of how powerful I felt the bridge sounded on the track "Begging for Scraps". I didn't know how I would represent it visually at the time, but I loved the lyrics and the build up to the lone bellowing words of "just existing". That had to be the album title. We didn't know at the time how much it would represent the years to come. Just existing became a literal struggle globally when we were hit by a pandemic, when we faced job losses and a cost of living crisis nationally. Internationally we've watched more wars break out, people struggling to just have the right to live. People struggled with mental health more than ever too. It felt like we reached an age where for many the option to thrive was no longer there, we weren't even meeting the baseline requirements to "just exist". On a personal level, I watched one of my best friends battle terminal cancer, he had to fight for every tomorrow until he no longer had any. Putting all the different ideas of what it can mean to just exist and creating something visually was a little daunting, and I put it off for a long time. I had done a sketch years ago, but I wasn't happy with it. Eventually I went with a "death by a thousand cuts" idea, but as represented as threads. Each thread being a part of life that requires a piece of you, physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. Enough threads and they'll pull you under. The light is hope, because I'm a sucker for an on the nose cliché, which is why the unfortunate figure in the picture fighting to go towards it. Hopefully the art translates to the title somewhat when people look at it, and it captures the energy from the album's tracks. But if not, I hope it at least looks super metal.