Track By Tracks: Dislocator - Just Exisiting (2024)

Most of the songs on this album were written, or at least began life, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. With recording was originally scheduled to take place in April 2019.

1. Ocean of Embers:

The origins of Ocean of Embers go back to 2018, when we had recorded the "Plague of Man" album, and decided to add a spoken word intro to the title track. The first and second verses of Ocean of Embers are re-use of that spoken word intro, as I've always enjoyed when bands include nods to previous or future works. The overall arc of the song tells of how humanity has lost its way, and is burning up the earth and the natural resources at an alarming rate "We're past the point of no return". The title of the song was inspired by my mishearing another band's lyrics, which for many years led me to believe that they were singing "Ocean of Embers", which I thought was a really cool line. At a certain point, I think I actually looked up the lyrics for the other bands' song, only to find that they don't say anything even close to "Ocean of Embers", at which point, I thought, "Well I'm using that then!" The riffs are heavily inspired by Slayer, and classic thrash metal, with a nice heavy breakdown thrown in for good measure. I remember the end of the song coming about because we decided that the breakdown always leads somewhere, but what if we did the breakdown and that was the end, just abrupt and jarring.

2. Begging for Scraps:

I don't recall much about the writing of Begging for Scraps, beyond the fact that I really wanted to fit the word "perfidious" into a song. Written in the midst of COVID-19, it tells the story of suffering at the hands of corrupt politicians and corporations that only care about their financial gain. This is one of the songs where Rich (lead guitar) wrote a vast majority of the riffs, and I mostly just put the lyrics to the riffs (and then figured out the rhythm guitar part after). In the writing process, this song was referred to as the "Thrashsquatch song", after fellow thrashers Thrashsquatch (from Chesterfield), as we all joked that the main chorus riff sounded like it should have been in one of their songs. There's a nice dissonance going on in the verses of this song, where the lead and rhythm sections go a semi-tone in the opposite direction, which is designed to feel uncomfortable for the listener. This was another concept song in a way, in that we collectively decided, "What if after the breakdown, we go into the solo, and then just end the song?" Usually, our songs tend to go back to the chorus after the solo, so we were making a very conscious effort with this album to mix it up a little. When we had eight songs written for the album, I'd given Mai the full songlist, so he (as the artist) could decide which title worked best for the album art. He instead came back with "Just Existing", the aggressive cry from the end of the breakdown, which came to be prophetic for the next few years of life during COVID-19. We briefly talked about whether the song should be called "Begging for Scraps" or changed to "Just Existing", but eventually settled on "Begging for Scraps" for the song title, and "Just Existing" for the album title.

3. Riches to Rags:

Riches to Rags was one of the last tracks written for the album, at the back end of COVID-19. I wanted to write a song in a different style and was aiming for something akin to Billy Talent, although admittedly it sounds nothing like them now it's finished. It's a simple pentatonic riff with vocals following the melody. When I first showed the rest of the lads the song, Mai said it sounded "Black Sabbath-y". I think aside from anything else it might be the catchiest song we've ever written. The lyrics again target government/corporate greed, which was on the forefront of my mind at the time, working through the pandemic and seeing how people were using it as an opportunity to profit from human misery played heavily into the lyric writing process.

4. Limbo:

Limbo came to me while working away from home during the pandemic, with the chorus vocals coming first. I was away and watching Chris Nolan's Inception, when the chorus lyrics struck me out of nowhere, and I grabbed a pen and quickly scrawled them on the back of some work paperwork. Almost immediately after, the verse lyrics came and flowed out just as quickly. Inspired I sat and figured out the rhythm guitar melody to the whole song on a guitar app on my phone. When we started learning the song altogether, I didn't have anything written down for Rich to play and gave him free rein to come up with something to go under the chorus, which led to the lead that is currently on the track, which at one point we all thought sounded like something from a "Muse" song. As the track came together I envisioned it almost as a "What if a metal band got the chance to do a James Bond theme", and for whatever reason, envisioned it with orchestral movements through it. The addition of synth elements to the band, post-recording, allowed us to play with this idea somewhat, and while it didn't end up as prominent as I would have liked on the final record, it's definitely something that sets it apart from the rest of the album. Even though the song was inspired by Inception, after I had written it, and was reading the lyrics back, I felt it was very clearly analogous to mental health struggles. Certainly, at the time of writing it, I was struggling with my own mental health, as a result of COVID-19, and not being able to see the other lads in the band or play music together, and I put a lot of that emotion and feel into the song after the writing process was done. It's probably, in that regard, the most personal song I've ever written.

5. Adapt to Survive:

This song came about watching a debate about the horrors of social media, and specifically Twitter, where one person in the debate was talking about the negativity that prevails online and said "We adapt to survive, but I don't want to adapt to this". Social media is very much a double-edged sword for me, as it's an immense tool for getting our music out into the world, but also it's a place full of so much unnecessary vitriol and hate. When we learned this song, it became known as "the song we never mess up", because no one could ever remember how the riffs went, but as soon as we started playing it we nailed it every time. I remember writing it and expecting it to be one of the longer tracks on the album with the structure being "Riff, verse, chorus, riff, verse, chorus, riff, bridge, solo, verse, chorus, chorus" it felt like there was a lot going off, and yet it's the shortest track on the album (bonus track notwithstanding). As we got into more of a comfortable groove with it, I remember laughing as we sped it up and joking that I'd struggle to do the vocals at the speed we were playing it, with Mai saying that it's almost like "aggressively rapping" the vocals rather than sing/shouting them. Then at some point at a later date, the lads decided that the vocals were very Tom Araya (Slayer), due to the speed with which they were delivered.

6. Eternally Condemned:

Eternally Condemned was written about the increasing power of government to control what we do, giving us the nightmarish 1984, big brother-esque state that it feels like we're heading towards at times. The opening verse "They painted a picture of the future, brush lines left us in their wake, tormented by this dystopia, now we live defined by their mistakes" refers specifically to the likes of George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, etc, who all created works of fiction that some seem to think is a manual for governance. "Six million eyes watch our every move" refers directly to CCTV, with a study from 2013 showing that estimates were as high as 5.9 million CCTV cameras in the UK, with a fair assumption being made that the number has only risen since then. "Their ears track every word you use", is it the "thought police" we're referring to here, or is it the smartphones to which we so comfortably divulge every aspect of our lives? Are they mutually exclusive, or one and the same? There's a sociological argument to be made that the more freedoms we gain, the less autonomy we actually have, and that is what this song proposes. This song was referred to as Castlevania for a while, as the riff reminded everyone of the old Castlevania games and that was the inspiration behind the lyrics video that we created for this song when we released it last year.

7. Virtues of Violence:

Virtues is about institutionalized corruption, originally it started off life, like many of our songs as a verbal assault on the government, but the lyrics are easily translatable to religion as well. The riffs were an attempt at writing a "simpler" song, and I think the chorus in particular gives off a nice old-school heavy metal vibe, heavily leaning into sounding like it could be from an Anvil song. It's a nice simple song with a chorus that is hopefully gonna get people singing along. Back on our first album, we had a song called "Fire" that used to get great audience participation, this was a very conscious effort to give the crowd something to sink their teeth into.

8. Head in the Sand:

This is the oldest song that we wrote for this album. After we'd finished recording Plague of Man in 2018, I kind of struggled somewhat with writer's block, and eventually just told myself, just write a simple repetitive thrash riff, just to get the creative juices flowing. What came out was Head in the Sand, which is essentially a three-riff song really. I took it to the rest of the band, but pre-warned them "it's really simple, and it might be too boring", but they all loved it and we were off to the races, with the writer's block going by the wayside. It's the first song where it was intended for Rich to pick up some of the lead vocals, a lot of the time whilst playing "Addicted to the Pit" (from Plague of Man), Rich will do the last chorus when we play it live, so with this one, I wrote the entire bridge part with Rich in mind.

9. Roots Run Deep:

This was one of the last tracks written for the originally scheduled recording sessions, before covid delayed us, and allowed us to add more songs. It continues along a similar theme to Ocean of Embers, taking a look at the effects of fracking on the natural world. It's also the second song on the album partially inspired by Lord of the Rings. I remember writing the lead for this one and saying to Rich "It's really simple, except you might struggle with the pre-chorus riff a little"... Well he didn't, at all, but instead it was the chorus riff that he struggled to get down, which we later realized that sometimes when one of us writes riffs for the other because we have differing playstyles, what one of us thinks is a simple riff, the other will struggle with. I think that this song was part of the inspiration behind Mai's original sketch artwork for the album. The song was actually called "These Roots Run Deep", up until about a week ago, when we officially changed it to "Roots Run Deep".

10. Knives Out:

This is a weird one title-wise. I wrote and we started learning this track, then the Rian Johnson film came out, and we collectively had a discussion about whether the film was the inspiration for the title. I didn't think it was, as the title has been saved on my laptop since 2017. But I'm a big movie business fan, and listen to podcasts about the making and production of movies, so I did concede that it's possible I heard the title Knives Out on a movie talk podcast and inadvertently remembered it for a song title. Then I later found out that Rian Johnson's title was inspired by a Radiohead song of the same name, so I guess if that is where I got the inspiration it's come full circle. Incidentally, Rian Johnson's Knives Out is one of my favorite films, and this is one of my favorite songs to play live. The first time I played it for the rest of the lads, I was unsure how they'd receive the quieter, sung, chorus, but it went over a huge success with it being described as having a "Rammstein vibe", and sounding like "heavy metal Nightmare Before Christmas". This song shares a lot thematically with Head in the Sand and they came together about the same time. Musically my inspiration for this song was two-fold, firstly I wanted to continue exploring the riff style that I had played with on "Failsafe" (from Plague of Man), which was heavily inspired by metalcore band Architects, and secondly playing with Newcastle-based thrash band Kilonova for the first time.

11. Shadow of the Past:

Inspired by Lord of the Rings, and sharing a title with a chapter in the Fellowship of the Ring, the song tells of the "unending cycle of war". It's another one of the songs where the riffs are almost exclusively Rich's riffs, with just a few inspirations from me. I think this was one of the earliest songs written for Just Existing, and if memory is correct, it was the first one where I attempted to add any sort of clean vocal, after toying with it previously on "Purge Cleanse Destroy" (from Devouring the World), and "Dead Light"/"Cynical Tongue" (from Plague of Man). We've recently filmed a music video for this song that will be out as soon as the editing process is over.

12. No Masters:

This song was written about wage slavery and how we're all bound to work, but was initially inspired by the video game Bioshock, and the line "No Gods or Kings only man". The song is a call to arms for anarchy and freedom from subjugation.

13. Now I Have a Machine Gun Ho Ho Ho:

The writing of this song goes back to April 2020, however, the concept of doing a Christmas song based around Die Hard, called Now I Have a Machine Gun Ho Ho Ho is way older than that and was something we had joked about for years. I wrote the lyrics which literally just recount the plot of Die Hard in about fifteen minutes, then decided that due to the nature of the song (being a bit of a jokey Christmas song), it needed to be less grandiose than some others we were writing, and decided to make it a four-chord punk riff. On the single version (released in 2021) we added jingle bells and the like to make it more Christmassy, but decided to opt for an alternate version as a bonus track for people who buy the physical version of Just Existing.