Sleeping With Sirens... I'm so glad that I decided to check out this band this year when I've been taking bands and albums more seriously. But my history with this band actually dates back earlier than that. In 2022, Sonic Frontiers released. In the game, you'll explore several islands as Sonic before fighting a huge Titan after getting all 7 Chaos Emeralds in the first three worlds. And as you get prepared to fight them, vocal songs will start playing, and they are performed by professional vocalist Kellin Quinn. I was heavily hooked in by how hard Find Your Flame went. The instrumentation, the vocal delivery, the sheer hype that it brought for the boss, everything about it was orgasmic. And it's remained as one of my all time favourite songs ever since. It took me a bit longer to see Undefeatable and Break Through It All in the same boat, but those two have also become my favourites for the same reasons. I have listened to these songs a lot and gushed about them a lot on social media, and then, at some point in 2023, a friend told me that if I love these songs, I'll really like Sleeping With Sirens, because Kellin Quinn is the vocalist for that band. That immediately caught my interest, but for some reason, I never got to properly listening to them. And that brings us to this year.
February 7th, 2024. I was in a Sonic server, and someone mentioned Sleeping With Sirens. I brought up how I should definitely check them out someday, and that's when I was recommended to check out Let's Cheers To This before any of their songs. So I listened to it from the curiosity, and was blown away by how much I loved it, to the point where it quickly found a place among my top 10 favourite songs. It further boosted my drive to check out this band, and a week later, I put together a list of bands I wanted to do marathons for; Sleeping With Sirens, Sum 41, Alkaline Trio and Linkin Park. And can you guess what band I decided to do first? Well, I wouldn't say it was a proper marathon since it took me nearly a whole month to get through their entire discography, but the following week, I began my journey with this band.
February 16th, I listened to SWS's debut album, With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear. This gave me a taste of the type of sound that this band would go with, and on that front, it was an absolutely brilliant start to their career.
The music style they went for had a hardcore vibe that I loved. It's the type of style that I heard in the Sonic Frontiers songs, and knowing that Kellin established it with his band 12 years prior is genuinely astonishing to think about. I fuck with every single instrumentation in each song present here with how wonderfully the guitars and drums compliment each other to create a rocking rhythm that's orgasmic to listen to on their own. But the cherry on top of these elements that make this album a blast to listen to is Kellin Quinn's vocal delivery. The way he absolutely sells these songs with how powerfully he presents his singing is something I honestly can't describe, you need to hear this for yourself. I genuinely believe him to be one of the greatest vocalists out there, and the incredibly unique and raw feeling sound of his vocals is something that has to be heard to be believed. And for the final thing that cements the amazingness of this album, the lyrics of each song. They fluctuate between really depressing implications and a sense of hopefulness, all delivered in the same tone that brings off a sense of hype and inspiration. It gives off a feeling that the bad experiences presented in songs like Captain Tyin Knots vs. Mr Walkway (No Way) and Don't Fall Asleep at the Helm are delivered more as bad moments that you should use to push through and maintain a hopeful view that's presented in In Case of Emergency, Dial 411 and The Left Side of Everywhere. All of these added up to an album that absolutely hooked me into this band, and gave me incredibly high hopes for the rest of their discography.
The very next day, February 17th, I moved onto SWS's second album, Let's Cheers To This. Just a year's difference between this and With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear and it's very noticeable how this one sounds cleaner and more refined in terms of the instrumentations and mixing.
There's also a lot more variation in terms of the song tempo. It starts off with a hard and fast paced song with Do It Now Remember It Later, and still has plenty of them throughout the album, including If You Can't Hang and Tally It Up, Settle the Score, but it also has a significant amount of slower songs like Who Are You Now, Fire and Postcards And Polaroids. It's this variation that really gives this album a distinct sound from the previous album, on top of relying less on gritty filters and growly screamo vocals. As far as I'm concerned, everything about this album is a significant improvement, especially given that it's already going off of one of the strongest debut albums I've ever listened to Another thing that makes this album stick out is the contribution of another guitarist and vocalist, Jesse Lawson. He provides most of the growly screamo vocals that can be found on the songs, and he sounds really good, enhancing essentially all the songs he contributes to. Outside of Four Corners And Two Sides, which leans far too much into growly screamo vocals that aren't really delivered well for my liking, every single song here is a certified 10/10, with some of the biggest standouts being Who Are You Now, A Trophy Fathers Trophy Son, Fire, Postcards & Polaroids and especially the self titled song. In all, Let's Cheers To This is a great album that builds upon the sound and style that SWS made for themselves and keeps up the standard that was set with their debut.
February 19th, I tried to make a start on SWS's next album, but I picked a really bad time to do so, as I was suffering significantly from toothache when I decided to do it, and 4 songs in, I felt like it was stopping me from judging the album properly, so I gave up and decided to save it for a later date. Once I decided to continue my journey, I realised that I was about to skip an entire EP they made before releasing their next full album, so that'll have to be covered first.
Februray 22nd, I gave a quick listen to SWS's first (and currently only) EP; If You Were a Movie, This Would Be Your Soundtrack. Right before I even got to listening to it, there was one thing here that already hooked me; its theming.
Having an album or EP be laid out as if it's a movie soundtrack isn't something I've ever seen in any album/EP I've listened to prior to and after this, and I really dig it. Plus there's the added touch of having it be directed towards Kellin's special someone, as the EP cleverly tells the story of the someone he used to have a romantic relationship with that slowly degraded as time passed. And seeing the song list be laid out as scenes is the cherry on top that completes the theming that the EP seems to be going for.
Not to say that this type of song list structure was introduced by this EP since, as of the time I'm writing this, I recently listened to another album that shares this structure, but that's a topic for another blog post.
Anyways, the uniqueness of this EP doesn't end at the theming that's presented on the surface, because all 5 songs here go for a softer acoustic style. It's definitely a direction I didn't expect this band to ever take at all, given how much it contrasts the incredibly hardcore style that they brought forth with their first two albums and continue to set for themselves with the albums after, but then again, their previous two albums did have Let Love Bleed Red and All My Heart, both of which were amazing acoustic songs, and given how this EP proves they can really get acoustic tracks down, it's a style that I fully welcome. The guitar pieces across each song take a unique approach in regards to the tempo and tone, and it allows them to feel distinct from one another, never feeling like they just blend together when it could have been very easy to make that pitfall. On top of that, Kellin's vocal delivery is a lot softer to fit the acoustic style of the EP, yet the pure passion that you can hear in the usual SWS songs is completely maintained, giving these songs the same level of appeal as the hardcore lineup that they're known for. I personally don't see myself coming back to these acoustic pieces anywhere near as often, but I always find them nice to listen to now and again.
February 25th, I finally got to SWS's third album, Feel. Before I listened through this, I heard this was the weakest album this band ever made being completely unaware of what they cooked up in 2017, but we're not there just yet, with the lower ratings I saw in comparison to With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear and Let's Cheers To This cementing that sentiment, and after listening through this myself, that is a sentiment I do not get at all.
If anything, I'd say this album is SWS continuing to refine their unique sound, and they do this wonderfully with the direction they take with the songs here. They have a sense of atmospheric wonder and theatricality that's presented with the reverb utilisation and mixing, and I do not have the words to describe how well this ends up translating into an absolutely orgasmic song line-up. Kellin's signature vocal delivery and hardcore nature isn't at all sacrificed here. In fact, both of these are actually cranked up significantly. It's especially evident when listening to the self titled song, Here We Go, Alone, The Best There Ever Was, Low, and Satellites, and these are only a few examples. The entire album is loaded with these truly ascension inducing bangers. This is also an album where SWS started collabing with other artists to provide verses for the songs, and everyone who collabed for this album really nails it, whether it be Machine Gun Kelly providing a really cool rap for Alone, or Fronz spittin' fast and fire bars for The Best There Ever Was.
There's a lot that this album has going for it, but if it has anything resembling a setback, it's the beginning of Congratulations, because for some reason, they decided that before the song properly starts, there should be a 40 second period of Kellin trying to call the person who collabed on the song, Matty Mullins. This would've been something cool in a music video for the song, but no, not only was this in the album mix of the song, but it wasn't even in the actual music video. Literally what is the reasoning behind that? All it does is arbitrarily break the pace of the album, making this stylistic choice more jarring than elevating. Although when you think about how immaculately crafted the rest of this album is, it's rather easy to overlook, so it's far from enough to stop it from being a masterpiece that continues to show off SWS's fantastic musicmaking talent.
February 28th, I was not feeling great after getting two back to back media recommendations that I didn't like, so in absolute desperation, I went back on the SWS grind and listened through their 4th album, Madness. With how things started, I was worried that this is the point where the band was going to fumble, because having the first song, Kick Me, be the very first song I straight up disliked from the band almost made my heart stop.
There's no way that even SWS isn't gonna deliver on giving me something good after I already endured two other terrible pieces of media prior to it. But to my absolute relief, it immediately picks up from Go Go Go and onward, and by this point, I could start appreciating this album for what it offered. Although it's honestly surprising that this one ended up being really good in the end because this is the band's most experimental album to date.
It deviates a bit more from the hardcore vibes of the previous albums and dabbles into different styles and sounds while still somehow creating a cohesive and recognisable feel across the entire song line-up. It's especially noticeable when listening to Gold, Save Me a Spark, The Strays, November and Madness all back to back. These are not songs you'd expect to hear from a band like this that's set itself in stone as a metalcore rock band, but the risks taken here actually pay off tremendously. Not only because the instrumentals, mixing, and use of reverb are on point throughout the entire album barring We Like It Loud and the aforementioned Kick Me, but the passionate and truly powerful vocal delivery from Kellin has not wavered one bit here. In fact, the experimental nature of this album also carries over to his range, as he manages to naturally alter his tone and vibe to fit the softer approach of songs like Fly or The Strays, some of the harder pieces like Better Off Dead or Go Go Go, and the songs that have an amazing mix of softer and harder tones, like Gold, Left Alone and Don't Say Anything.
It's seriously impressive how every different direction taken with the songs in Madness was executed to near perfection, and if not for the two songs here that I didn't like at all due to the painful filter usage making the screamo vocals that are closer to SWS's usual style painful to my ears, there would be no issues at all putting this album insanely close to Let's Cheers To This and Feel, especially with how many of the highs here even surpass those two albums. Which brings me to the last thing I wanna mention about this album; this is the first SWS album to actually have a deluxe reissue, and unlike the later albums that would also have one, it came out simultaneously with the standard release, only housing 2 bonus tracks, which honestly doesn't make much sense to me, because these two songs are more than worth hearing alongside the songs on the standard edition. Parasites is a banger that leans more towards the hardcore style that SWS is known for while maintaining the vibe that this album kept up throughout the previous 13 songs, and 2 Chord....
...this is another one of SWS's acoustic songs, and a part of me wants to admit that when I first listened to their previous ones, they seemed to just slip by me as good, but not as strong as their usual songs. I've come to appreciate songs like Let Love Bleed Red and All My Heart a lot more on relisten, but 2 Chord was a song that really, REALLY clicked with me, and was the stepping stone for me being more appreciative of their acoustic efforts. As the song started, the instrumental and vocal delivery had a powerful feeling that was unlike anything I could comprehend, and the more it went on, the bigger the impact both of these elements had as the latter gradually got more and more powerful. Then with a minute and a half left of the song, getting a feeling of exactly what the lyrics were communicating and hearing Kellin's vocal delivery reach a high that's on par with what he achieved in Feel, possibly even more so, tears staarted forming. The bridge, final chorus and outro are so emotionally charged on every account that it cemented this as one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard in my life, and even as I'm typing all this out, I struggle to hold back tears whenever I listen to this. All this without mentioning how this triples down on the soft and hard vocal delivery combo of some of the other songs on the album, being made even more beautiful with how they perfected this with an acoustic instrumental that proves to be just as impactful when put together with every other element at play here. It culminates in one of the absolute best songs SWS has ever made, and serves as a perfect closer to this already amazing album.
At this point, Sleeping With Sirens have set a really good streak for themselves. With 4 10/10 albums in a row that provided banger after banger, and a great acoustic EP, the future is seeming bright for this band, and this brings me into what is arguably their best album to date, How It Feels to Be Lost, which had a surprisingly wide 4 year gap after the 2 year ones between Let's Cheers To This, Feel and Madness, but it's fine, it's clear that they needed more time than usual to cook harder than they ever have be- Wait... I feel like I'm forgetting something...
OH RIGHT, I ALMOST FORGOT THAT THEY RELEASED THIS, GODDAMMIT! sigh A harsh truth we have to come to realize is that even the best creators for any art form can have at least one fuck up amongst their creations, and SWS is no different, as I soon discovered on March 4th.
Remember when I said that I heard Feel was the band's weakest album? Well, when I looked up the reception on Gossip, I was proven dead wrong with how low the scores were for this, with even hardcore fans of the band saying that the album was just terrible. This left me so on edge that I immediately got to listening through the album, if for no other reason than to get it out of the way for the marathon. And as soon as the self titled song started, I instantly realised why this got the low ratings it did; this is a Sleeping With Sirens album that almost completely ditches the unique sound and style they're known for! Of all directions to take after Madness, they thought the best one was to abandon what made anyone love them in the first place in favour of insanely generic pop rock trite? I've seen comments about people completely giving up on this band after listening to this on release, and I do not blame them in the slightest.
And I swear, I better not see anyone reading this say, "Come on, bro, you're just hating because your favourite band dared to something different. Why not just let go of your bias of what you think the band is supposed to sound like and accept the album for what it is?", re-read everything I just said about Madness, as that was a more experimental album that strayed a bit away from their usual sound, but stilll ended up being great because the unique spirit and passion that made their albums prior to it as great as they were was maintained. Gossip, on the other hand, abandons the sound, spirit and passion across almost its entire lineup of songs, so the soul they had up until this point is significantly lacking here. The worst part is that this isn't even where the issues with this album end. Not only are these songs lacking on the basis of the direction they took, but they're not even competently put together.
It uses a ton of loud filters similarly to Kick Me and We Like It Loud from Madness, which is already enough of a turnoff as is with how much they fuck with the vocals, but it uses these on a good chunk of songs to the point where they become more and more ear grating. And more often than not, these filters don't even fit the tone of the songs provided by the instrumentals. Then you combine this with terrible mixing where some sounds overpower others so much of the time and having no natural transitions between sudden mixing switch-ups, and you get album production that's nothing short of godawful. Worse yet is that the fundamental elements of the songs are also quite bad. The instrumentals, on top of being some of the most generic, desperate-to-be-on-radio type beats you'll ever hear, can't even maintain consistent rhythms for plenty of the songs, with sudden changes of the composition of a specific element, or multiple of them, with next to no cohesion, so some of them can feel incredibly disjointed. This becomes even more evident when even the flow of the vocals falls apart on occasion, so if the instrumentals and filters not matching wasn't enough to put you off, the sudden flow breaks will be the camel backbreaker, and this is assuming you have a tolerance for lyrics that either feel like nonsense is being spouted, sound awkward as hell, or just feel like a bunch of random words put together with zero cohesion, because they somehow couldn't get them right either.
But the biggest offender of all these problems comes down to the vocal delivery. You'd think that with all the praise I gave Kellin Quinn for his fantastic vocal talent across all the previous albums, that talent would be the sole factor to carry over to this album and somewhat redeem it in spite of everything else it fucked up. But alas, even he couldn't provide something good for this waste of an album. He can get out a few moments of solid delivery with songs like I Need to Know, but more often than not, there's either the issue of the delivery sounding painful or feel like not enough effort and passion was put into it, giving a half assed and honeslty soulless feel to a good majority of the songs here, and it's quite evident from the moment you hear Kellin's vocals for the self titled song, Trouble or One Man Army. And the less said about the war crime that is Cheers, the better.
Any time I think about Gossip, it just reminds me of how depressing its existence is. A soulless feeling album that detaches itself so much from what the band had been nailing up until this point that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that they were even the ones behind it, which also ended up being a complete failure in its own right wth essentially every aspect of it being terrible in one way or another. And all for what? The loss of hundreds of fans who most likely still haven't checked back on what this band has been up to to this day? It's no wonder that the band straight up refuse to acknowledge it as a part of their line up nowadays, and it's even more of a shame as someone who knows exactly what they did after screwing up this badly, which brings me to...
March 8th, I went into How It Feels to Be Lost. After the mess that was Gossip, my expectations for this album didn't go any further than just "It better be an improvement from their last one." When a band reaches a low like that, the most realistic expectation one can have for their future albums is a gradual climb back to the highs they had reached between 2010 and 2015. So when I started listening, I was not prepared for what awaited me. Right out the gate, Leave It All Behind was a song that instantly got me jamming out to it. Amazing start to the album that raised my hopes a bit higher, but I didn't want to fully judge yet. Then Never Enough played and was so great that I was fully convinced that the band was fully back, with Gossip merely being a fluke and not the standard for the band going forward. But that still wasn't where the surprises ended, because with so many other albums, this would be a point where a song that's great, but not as amazing as the prior ones would have come up. And yet, the further I went into this album, the better the songs got, going above the already super high standard it set for itself, and when I got to Ghost, the joy I was feeling was indescribable!
This perfectly encapsulates how I felt throughout the entire album. As of the time I'm writing this, I had not listened to an album where every single song on it was a 10/10. How It Feels to Be Lost, however, remains the sole exception. Not only would I say that this is SWS's best album to date, which is already a high that I never would have anticipated them reaching after Gossip, but it's also the best album I've ever listened to in my life. Fully going back to their hardcore roots already would have been enough to win me over given that they nailed that style for so many years, but they took it several steps further. They took every element of their prior albums and significantly refined them in so many ways, with one of the most noteworthy things I can point out being the filters. There are a wide range of them present throughout the album, and not only are they mixed wonderfully to sound great on their own, but the creative way they're used further compliment every song, often juxtaposing multiple of them between verses, both perfectly fitting the tones of the verses and maintaining seamless transitions that never failed to impress me. Another Nightmare, Medicine (Devil in My Head) and Dying to Believe are the songs that stick out the most to me on these fronts because the filter and reverb usage in them is genuinely incredible, but even more impressive to me is how they're used in the acoustic versions of Leave It All Behind, Agree to Disagree and Ghost on the deluxe edition to replicate the same orgasmic vibes of their non-acoustic counterparts on the standard edition with less heavy instrumentals. The album has consistently amaziing production, which is only the tip of the iceberg when looking into every other aspect of it.
There are also the general instrumentations, which not only have some some incredibly hardcore guitar riffs and drum rhythms that are simply orgasmic to listen to, but also have additional elements that give each and every song a unique feel, such as the opening lead ins to songs like Never Enough, How It Feels to Be Lost and Blood Lines which all provide special compositions that transitions wonderfully into the rest of their respective songs, Ghost having backing vocals and minor piano bits that replicate eerie sounds to fit the song's title, Medicine (Devil in My Head)'s fluctuation between many different sounds while still maintaining a coherent rhythm throughout, etc, etc. It's hard for me to properly describe how these instrumentations are unlike anything I've seen from other albums and SWS's lineup while also feeling like a great progression for them without listening to the album yourself, so I'll just say this now: Go listen to it! Or I will go inside your walls!
Something else I don't have the proper words to describe and praise are the lyrics. Putting aside the incredibly effective relatability that each song brilliantly conveys, there's a sense of rawness to every lyric written that really makes them feel special and flow with the instrumentals perfectly. Screw it, I'll just show off some of these in completely random order so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
But above all else, Kellin's vocal delivery is the cherry on top of every other masterful aspect of this album. If you're someone who once listened to SWS, but then gave up after Gossip because you felt like everyone in the band had completely lost the soul they once had, including the storng vocals that Kellin had for every album prior to it, I can safely confirm that this albums fully proves he still has it in him to provide incredibly powerful vocals. In fact, he even has more range here than ever before that he uses to brilliant effect across every song. In other words, he takes what he did with Madness and doubles down on it, being even more seamless between soft and loud vocals for each song, even carrying that other to the deluxe acoustics, making the way those turned out even more impressive.
I've just covered every aspect of this album and how they all add up to it being amazing in every sense of the word, but I'm still not done. Because one other aspect of this album I glossed over that cements its place as the best album I've ever listened is its strong sense of relatability. The title of the album is "How It Feels to Be Lost", and as such, every song tackles a theme that ties into feeling mentally lost or having a feeling that you don't know how to properly handle, and oh boy, does it also apply to me in spades? So many of the lines and verses hit too close to home in every single song except for Ghost, which covered themes of a broken romantic relationship involving cheating and lies. But let's go through the rest so I can show exactly how each song connected with me on a personal level.
When you look at my life, tell me, what do you see?
I'm only human, so don't expect too much from me
Throughut 2024, I've been getting plenty of media recommendations, and some of them have been, really fucking bad. In fact, a few of them have been some of the absolute worst pieces of media I've ever experienced. Yet almost every single time I endured these recommendations or I was recommended something I very firmly turned down, I was almost always placed at a higher standard than literally any other human being who consumes media in any capacity, whether it be me being forced to look into media I have no interest enough simply because I "have to", me only having surface level knowledge on a piece of media somehow not being enough for me turning it down to be valid, being pushed to continue something even when I've made my lack of investment as clear as I possibly can multiple times, getting constant trolls and needless jabs while I'm currently suffering through a rec, being overwhelmed with recs left and right after I had just checked out one that I didn't like as if I had the mental capacity to take more than one at a time, and being treated as insane for not seeing a rec for the amazing thing that it is because of entirely supplementary stuff that should be the enhancers to something, not the priority over the fundamental aspects that I thought were bad. All of these resulted in me having to say stuff that I know I shouldn't have had to say because it should be basic human knowledge to not double down and put them on an even more overwhelming pedestal because they didn't vibe with whatever you recommended them, but I guess that didn't apply to me for more than half of 2024, because this was fucking constant throughout this year, to the point where I feel like I can only trust 3 people with media recommendations. I don't want to think that literally everyone else who recommends me anything is just gonna put me to a higher standard than I can handle, but it sure has felt that way throughout this year.
Would you be so surprised if I gave up tonight?
I'm barely breathing, I wanna kill the pain I feel inside
But I won't quit for the people I love
So I'll say I'm fine until the day I fucking see the light
This verse reminds me so much of how I was feeling in April. Got very close to just wanting to give up on everything from the insane amount of agonising shit I was enduring throughout the month, and it didn't seem like it was ever gonna stop. But I knew that I had people who had faith in me getting through it all, and for as much as I didn't feel it in the moment, the drive to keep going for all of them didn't die out completely, which is what kept me going until it was all over. I'd say it paid off very well as May and June were, for the most part, a lot better.
You don't know what you got 'til it's gone
Never knowing why until it's all done
I've felt this a lot of times whenever I get an opportunity for something that would have heavily benefitted me if I had made use of it more than I actually did. Not always to an extent where I'm frustrated over it, but enough for me to feel disappointed with myself at the very least. Examples include both periods where I was a mod in a Sonic server, any day where I got a long stretch of time by myself at home, including the 2 week one I got in May I did do some cool shit, but I sometimes still get the feeling I didn't do enough in the time I had, the York trip I went on during that same period, or any weekends where I get so long to do anything I want, yet end up doing nothing despite there being so much for me to take care of. And I never know exactly how much time I waste with this stuff until I suddenly get caught up with a bunch of other irl shit. Even when I tell myself I'll use my time more productively next time I get these opportunities, I still end up repeating this.
For every step that I take
I take two steps back
It's like a punch to the face
It's like a knife right in the back
Like a bullet to the head
Why can't I understand?
The blood is on my hands
Now I'm standing on the edge
With nowhere to go (To go)
This is how it feels, this is how it feels
How it feels to be
Lost, lost, lost
Nothing encapsulates how I feel when I make a major fuck up after trying to improve myself more than this pre-chorus and chorus. Just when I felt like I was making progress towards overcoming a flaw of mine, I suddenly end up doing something completely moronic that pisses off the people I care about, throwing me into a huge phase of self-doubt because what I did just resulted in making things worse for me and everyone involved. The pain of doing something I was really trying to avoid and doing it worse erases any confidence I thought I had and eats up at me for long periods of time, not knowing what the hell I'm supposed to do to avoid causing this level of damage again. This also ends up resulting in me going backwards on progress I made in other areas, which lead into internal self-hatred and believing every negative thing everyone says about me, even if they're not actually true.
I'm doing fine by myself
I never asked for your help
This part of the chorus is something I've consistently felt regarding what my mum likes to do sometimes. I want to head somewhere or get ready for something I wanna do, with said things being stuff I have no problems handling myself, only for her to involve herself in whatever it is, and as a result, she ends up heavily overcomplicating the situation and thus making it harder for me to get anything done. Whether it be because she makes the biggest deals out of the smallest specifics, holds me by taking too long to do something that she supposedly has to do before I can take care of the thing, or pressing me about shit that I don't know how to answer, resulting in me essentially being trapped in her bullshit and held up even more. It's really frustrating to deal with, and I've proven to myself time and again that when it's just me knowing about something and handling it, it goes as smoothly as it possibly could have.
You think I'm wrong (You think I'm wrong)
It doesn't make you right (It doesn't make you right)
This is something I've dealt with at the hands of plenty of people, most of them being colossal dickheads. Making me out to be in the wrong in multiple situations, while thinking they're completely correct and justified, even if they're far from it in every conceivable way, sometimes resorting to gaslighting to strengthen their narrative. It's never fun dealing with this bullshit, and it's something I still end up being on the receiving end of, whether it be from my mum or anyone on social media.
What's it like to be all alone
All by yourself in a broken home?
Try not to be like mom and dad
Realize you're just fucked like them (Like them)
It's something I'm not ever gonna mention outside of this post, but my home life is kinda rough. I'm living with a mother who can make things quite stressful with how she can lash out over the smallest things, make small scenarios into huge catastrophes, constantly feel the need to blame something she did on anyone, which ends up being me more often than not, constantly provoke me with inaccurate bullshit, gaslight me, among a bunch of other shit that adds up to things being a disaster for me when I'm not online. She is someone I do not want to be like, but unfortunately, some of her worst traits are stuff I've ended up getting, such as making huge deals out of small things, overthinking what could happen, insane levels of anxiety when I don't know what to do, and becoming insanely irrational when I lash out. Having all these come out of me combined with being shit at communicating does not do much to help my mental state at times.
No matter what I do, you will never ever be like me
And I will never be like you (Like you)
In spite of how much of my mum's worst traits I've picked up, at the end of the day, I am not really like her at the end of the day. I care a lot less about what random people think of me irl, I'm a lot more hopeful about what awaits me in life, and I'm not completely paranoid about everything that may go wrong. I plan to keep it this way.
You can't change what you were born into
Don't let it bury you
I was born into a painfully toxic environment with my mum that I can't really escape from fully, but I am not letting that affect me so much that it stops me from living the life I want. That's not a healthy way to live, and I'd never let her bullshit tear me down that much. I can stay strong throughout all this because there's plenty I wanna do, and I'm not gonna be held back.
You won’t break me down
I’m not afraid to try and feel something that's real
I’m not ashamed, you won't break me
When all hope is gone, I'm stronger than I've been before
I’m not afraid, you won't break me down
This ties back to what I mentioned about me not letting my mum's bullshit affect me, because she's almost broken me down with that on multiple occasions, but I've pushed through and not let that happen. This can also apply to the people who tried to gaslight me into thinking that working on my K-On Movie analysis was only a detriment to my mental state, among other things. But fuck what they think, I'm not letting that get to me. And I've honestly come back stronger from pushing through that shit. No-one's breaking me like that! No-one!!!
Nobody's perfect, there's no excuse
I've been such a fucking nightmare to you
I've felt this way regarding one of my closest friends a few times. Particularly after moments where I've fucked up so badly that I really trigger him. And with the frequency to which I've done it, it's made me question if I even deserve to be his friend after how many times I've fucked up with him especially when I've driven him to mental breakdowns and making him hate discussing anything with me in plenty of instances. Thankfully, I have not been in that mindset for a long while, and there have been plenty of reassurances that, in spite of my fuck-ups, I'm still seen as an awesome person in his eyes, and I can comfortably confirm that the feeling is mutual.
See myself in the broken glass
Shattered pieces fallin' down again, down again
I'm breakin' down again, down again, yeah
I've seen too much, I know myself
And I've been too fucked up to ask for help
But do you even care?
Is there anybody out there?
It's comin' 'round, comin' 'round, comin' 'round again
'Cause I feel so alone
Screaming at nothing
I feel so alone
Searching for something
Now I'm breaking down and you're not around
I get lost in the sound
And I feel so alone
And you can't save me
I hate myself for the things I've done
So hopeless, feeling so down again, down again
It's breaking me down again, down again
Take what's left, take me away
'Cause I've been too fucked up to try to change
But do you even care?
(Is there anybody in there?)
I posted essentially every verse of this song aside from the bridge because almost the entirety of it perfectly encapsulates how I felt during the lowest points of April for me. I constantly felt broken and unstable, fucked to a degree where I don't know how to change my current predicament or stop the pain a good chunk of the time, and in plenty of instances where I vented, it was at such a constant that people here either couldn't deal with it or had no idea what to do either, so I was essentially screaming in a void when I was desperate for someone to be here, and the screaming prevailed when I didn't know what else I could do. Although even that got to a point where I absolutely hated myself for how much venting I did throughout the month. The frequency of the bullshit that happened to me was not healthy, and neither was how I affected certain people with how much it was happening.
The devil's living in my head, I'm scared to death
I haven't been myself lately
If I were you, I wouldn't get too close
'Cause I don't know what I'd do if you push me
This chorus links back to something I brought up about Blood Lines. At points, I can lash out and become insanely irrational, and the thing that triggers this is being pushed by my mum, or someone who callously crosses a very thin line of mine without a care in the world. The latter one is incredibly rare, but when it does happen, you will never see me more furious under any other circumstance. On top of that, it expresses the pain of not feeling like yourself, and I definitely experienced that the further into April I got, as all the stress I endured almost made me lose every notable aspect of my personality, almost reaching inconsolable levels at times.
Start another fight, make a fist, keep swinging
Alone in the dark, what the hell was I thinking?
This is a perfect summation of the instances this year where I woke up before it was even morning for me yet, found some shit that pissed me off or really got to me in the worst of ways in the moment, started some bullshit upon acting on those impulses, and then regretted it heavily later as it keeps me up throughout the rest of the night. Never gonna not hate looking back on those embarrassing moments of my life. You know, for a song that's themed around the effects of drug abuse, it's kinda surprising that I related to any parts of it as someone who's never gonna take drugs for as long as I live.
But I'm thinking you, you're just like me
I'm thinking you, you're just like me
You're a disaster, you're in another fight
You wish that you could get it right
One certain type of people I seem to attract on social media are ones who get outcasted on any site they end up on, whether it be because of their own issues causing problems for the people around them, or getting unfair bullshit from genuinely awful motherfuckers that want to cancel them over such miniscule stuff, and this part of the first verse really reminds me of them. I get the drive to help and support these types of people because I feel their struggles a fuck ton, and whether or not it ends up fully working out, I feel like I can always be in a position to handle them and even connect with them.
So let go, come on, let's run away
We both know we're better than they say
One of my ways of supporting these people is letting them know that they're above the people who unfairly judge them or think they're beyond saving, or that they can be so much more than what they're currently perceived as due to what they might have caused. And for a bit of assurance, I lump myself in there as being better than these mfs with the similar experiences I've had.
I'm holding on so tight, but I'm still, I'm still slipping away
I'm holding on so tight, but I'm still, I'm still slipping away
The feeling of being mentally destroyed, yet still
trying desperately to grasp on to some level of stability at the lowest
points of life and ultimately failing is encapsulated perfectly in this
bridge. For specifics, I felt this heavily from the end of April 9th all the way up to the 10th, because I had listened to an album called Metropolis Pt. 2 by Dream Theater via a friend's recommendation, and when I finished it, I was mentally decimated from the album being terrible and the constant trolling and jabs I got during it from the friend who recommended it as a result of them not being in the best space mentally themselves. I struggled to sleep from how heated I felt and when I woke up the next day, I was still pissed with the addition of feeling drained, with every thing I tried to do to try and get over what happened backfiring and further dampening my mood, including making a mango cake that turned out horribly, watching a movie that was also a recommendation and being so uninterested in it that I fell asleep, and then struggling to record a song because of some weird thing on my phone where if you press the bottom of the screen, it immediately sends you to the home screen, even when the home button isn't even up. I found a workaround eventually, but I was not in the right mindset to figure that out at the time. Either way, my attempts to improve my mental state only resulted in it deteriorating further. It got so bad that not even listening to SWS songs did anything for me, which should really say something about how fucked up I was in the moment. And all this happened on a day where I had all the time in the world to myself, which should speak even more volumes about this entire situation.
For everybody doing good, yeah, I wish you well
I hope you never have to go through this hell
With all the terrible things I've gone through in my life, whether it be stuff that's happened irl or on social media, on my own or with others, the bullshit I've actively caused for myself or unintentionally fucking up other people, which also leads to me feeling awful, when I see people on here who are undeniably having it better than me, the one thought that comes to my mind on multiple occasions is that they never have to go through as something as awful as I did. And if they already have, I pray that they never have to endure that agony again for as long as they live. Sometimes, painful experiences are the key to experiencing amazing stuff in the future, but many people deserve to live lives that don't involve the worst of the worst, and that's what I wish for essentially everyone I care about.
Well, that took a while, but I think this should tell you the insane emotional attachment I have to tihs album, both for its relatability and being immaculately crafted as a whole when taking the thematic stuff out of the equation.
March 14th, I wrapped up my journey with the most recent album SWS has made as of the time I'm writing this; Complete Collapse. When I first listened to this, I came out with the sentiment that it was just more of everything that made How It Feels to Be Lost work so well, but when really thinking about this, that was definitely a misjudgement.
This is more like the band building upon How It Feels to Be Lost and making something that's heavier, rougher and more intense out of it, and it's a direction that pays off wonderfully. I don't think it's as good as How It Feels to Be Lost, but there are definitely aspects here that I think top that album, such as the instrumentations of each song. The guitar work for every song is honestly godlike, especially in Tyrants, Crosses, and Apathetic, reaching levels that I never would've known were achievable by humankind, and are enhanced further by the vocal delivery. I've seen Kellin go hard with his vocals throughout SWS's entire album line-up barring one, but for Complete Collapse in particular, he has not delivered vocals this goddamn powerful across every single song since Feel. He really embraces the intense roughness of the album and completes that vibe with how hard he goes with this song while also still maintaining the level of range he had from the previous albums. It helps that these songs are mixed really well for the most part, with instrumentations and filters being greatly balanced out, on top of really creative usages with the latter, another amazing element carried over from the last album.
This album also takes some of the best elements from previous SWS albums, like how it has other song artists provide verses for some of the songs, which is something that Feel also did, and much like that album, each one provides incredibly effective vocals for the songs they feature on, especially Spencer Chamberlain for Crosses and Royal & the Serpent for Be Happy. The way they deliver their verses and bits for their respective songs contrast wonderfully with Kellin's to really complete the feel that they're going for. It also pulls a Madness Deluxe with how the standard edition of this album ends on an acoustic song in the form of Grave, being a surprising contrast to the heavier vibes of the album and, much like 2 Chord from Madness, being a beautiful song to end off the album.
I'm not gonna go into this as much as I did with How It Feels to Be Lost, but there are also a few songs on this album that personally resonated with me. The songs in question that clicked with me on that level are Family Tree for how much it touches on being part of a broken family, especially with the line "You don't care who you hurt, I think that you might be cursed, and what's worse, I think you cursed me the same", Be Happy for touching on many parts of how my emotional state can function and its chorus perfectly describing how I felt during the wake of the Metropolis Pt. 2 scenario I brought up earlier, Ctrl + Alt + Del being a perfect description of how I can feel when I'm pushed to the point of snapping incredibly hard in a fit of rage, and Mr. Nice Guy with how much I was pushed around by people giving me media recommendations during a time where I was too lenient, perfectly encapsulating how sick I am of these people nowadays.
On all accounts, this should be SWS's magnum opus, and songs like Tyrants, Apathetic and Don't Let the Party Die are some of my all time favourite songs from the band (hell, I even wrote my own review for that first one), but this brings me to some things that make it a tad weaker than How It Feels to Be Lost in my opinion. I praised it for its filters and how they're utilised, but sometimes the album can overuse them to excessive levels. Crosses, Us and Bloody Knuckles fall into this a bit, and Ctrl + Alt + Del definitely suffers from filter overuse. It doesn't dampen any of these songs too much for me at all, but I can certainly understand it being a heavy turnoff for someone, plus the factor of the album sometimes getting too loud for its own good.
It also has weaker acoustic versions of songs with its deluxe edition than How It Feels to Be Lost's. Not to say they're a huge downgrade, since they are really great, but they're not as effective at being acoustic alternatives to their non-acoustic counterparts due to not being as creative with the vocal delivery, instrumentation or filters, on top of the fact that, barring the titular track, all the songs they made acoustic versions of are the ones that had the other song artist collabs, really proving that those other artists' contributions really completed the feels of the respective songs they featured on.
Regardless, Complete Collapse is definitely SWS's second best effort, being almost as consistent with How It Feels to Be Lost with the standard edition having 10/10 bangers across the board out of its 12 songs, and 4 of the additional 5 from the deluxe edition also going incredibly hard, all as a result of ridiculously brilliant instrumentations and vocals backing up the most intense that Sleeping With Sirens has ever gotten with anything they've ever made.
And this wraps up my Sleeping With Sirens journey... is what I would say, but believe it or not, there's one more album that I completely disregarded, and it's because I thought it wouldn't be important at all to cover. Until I decided to check it out...
July 28th, 4 whole months after I went through all the studio albums, I gave SWS's live album, Live and Unplugged, a listen. You could argue I should have covered this a lot earlier since it released after Madness and before Gossip, but as I mentioned, I was an idiot and disregarded this album as something that I didn't think would be even worth anything.
My mindset at the time was, "Come on, exactly what point would there be to just listening to edited live versions of songs I've already listened to on the albums?" Then I started listening to the live version of With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear, and I immediately realised how stupid I was for neglecting this album foor 4 whole months. By the time that song was over, I started feeling insanely emotional from what I had listened to, emotions which persisted the further into this album I got. As my ears were blessed with what SWS playing live sounds like, my eyes would not stop watering for a single second, because every single song performed here sounded absolutely beautiful, with some of them having some differences from how they were originally that were definitely in their favour (Who Are You Now was already quite the emotional song on Let's Cheers To This, but the Live and Unplugged rendition completely broke me, just please give it a listen if you wanna know what I'm talking about).
If this wasn't enough to make the album an emotional rollercoaster worth listening to for any fan of this band, the way you can hear the audience interact and sing parts of the songs, Kellin's moments of commentary in-between songs (some of which made me cry even harder), and two original songs that are also really great definitely are. By the time I got to the live mix of Go Go Go, the emotions that this album invoked out of me took full hold, being the longest I had ever cried this much over any piece of media. Admittedly, I fell asleep before I could get to the final two songs because I was tired, but I quickly got to finishing it up when I woke up, and the strong emotions continued all the way up to those lovely cheers that never stopped and only faded after the band finished If You Can't Hang...
Yeah, it's getting me feeling like this just thinking about the note that this ends on. Live and Unplugged is an beautiful experience that's just too emotionally powerful for any seasoned SWS fan to pass up, particularly if you want any taste of what this band sounds like live and you can't afford to see any of their live concerts, and once again, I was beyond retarded for leaving this out of my SWS marathon.
And that properly marks the end of my amazing journey with Sleeping With Sirens. But before I go, there are some additional things I want to cover. If you're curious on how I'd rank the songs in each album from best to worst, well, it is kinda something that changes on a whim at any given time, because any time I relisten to most of these songs, my adoration for them increases, and deciding which ones I prefer over the others is about as hard as a Celeste B-Side level. But I can provide my song rankings as of the time I'm writing this regardless.
1. You Kill Me (In A Good Way)
2. Let Love Bleed Red
3. With Ears to See, and Eyes to Hear
4. In Case of Emergency, Dial 411
5. Don't Fall Asleep at the Helm
6. Captain Tyin Knots vs. Mr Walkway (No Way)
7. The Left Side of Everywhere
8. The Bomb Dot Com V.2.0
9. If I'm James Dean, You're Audrey Hepburn
10. Dance Party
1. Let's Cheers To This
2. Do It Now Remember It Later
3. Fire
4. Postcards And Polaroids
5. A Trophy Fathers Trophy Son
6. Who Are You Now
7. All My Heart
8. If You Can't Hang
9. Your Nickle Ain't Worth My Dime
10. Tally It Up, Settle The Score
11. Four Corners And Two Sides
1. Scene Four - Don't You Ever Forget About Me
2. Scene Five - With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear
3. Scene Two - Roger Rabbit
4. Scene Three - Stomach Tied in Knots
5. Scene One - If I'm James Dean, You're Audrey Hepburn
1. Satellites
2. Low
3. These Things I've Done
4. Déjà Vu
5. The Best There Ever Was
6. Sorry
7. I'll Take You There
8. Here We Go
9. Feel
10. Alone
11. Free Now
12. Congratulations
1. 2 Chord
2. Heroine
3. Go Go Go
4. Left Alone
5. Gold
6. Don't Say Anything
7. The Strays
8. Better Off Dead
9. Save Me A Spark
10. Parasites
11. Madness
12. November
13. Fly
14. We Like It Loud
15. Kick Me
1. Go Go Go (Live)
2. Who Are You Now (Live)
3. The Strays (Live)
4. Free Now (Live)
5. If You Can't Hang (Live)
6. Gold (Live)
7. With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear (Live)
8. Santeria (Live)
9. Save Me A Spark (Live)
10. Iris (Live)
11. If I'm James Dean, You're Audrey Hepburn (Live)
1. I Need to Know
2. War
3. Hole in My Heart
4. The Chase
5. Closer
6. Legends
7. Gossip
8. Empire to Ashes
9. One Man Army
10. Trouble
11. Cheers
(in terms of quality)
1. Medicine (Devil in My Head)
2. Ghost
3. P.S. Missing You
4. Talking to Myself
5. Break Me Down
6. How It Feels to Be Lost
7. Never Enough
8. Blood Lines
9. Another Nightmare
10. Leave It All Behind
11. Ghost (Acoustic)
12. Leave It All Behind (Acoustic)
13. Dying to Believe
14. Agree to Disagree
15. Agree to Disagree (Acoustic)
(in terms of relatability)
1. P.S. Missing You
2. Blood Lines
3. How It Feels to Be Lost
4. Dying to Believe
5. Leave It All Behind
6. Break Me Down
7. Another Nightmare
8. Medicine (Devil in My Head)
9. Talking to Myself
10. Never Enough
11. Agree to Disagree
12. Ghost
1. Tyrants
2. Don't Let the Party Die
3. Apathetic
4. Be Happy
5. Mr. Nice Guy
6. Grave
7. Family Tree
8. Bloody Knuckles
9. Complete Collapse
10. Crosses
11. Let You Down
12. Complete Collapse (Acoustic)
13. Let You Down (Acoustic)
14. Be Happy (Acoustic)
15. Ctrl + Alt + Del
16. Us
17. Us (Acoustic)
My overall album ranking would be:
1. How It Feels to Be Lost
2. Complete Collapse
3. Feel
4. Let's Cheers To This
5. Madness
6. With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear
7. Live and Unplugged
8. If You Were a Movie, This Would Be Your Soundtrack
9. Gossip
And to cap this off, here are my top 20 all-time favourite songs from this band as of when I'm writing this:
1. Medicine (Devil in My Head)
2. Ghost
3. Let's Cheers To This
4. Tyrants
5. 2 Chord
6. P.S. Missing You
7. Talking to Myself
8. Don't Let the Party Die
9. Apathetic
10. Satellites
11. Break Me Down
12. Be Happy
13. Grave
14. Mr. Nice Guy
15. How It Feels to Be Lost
16. Heroine
17. Never Enough
18. Go Go Go
19. Blood Lines
20. Another Nightmare
And that's pretty much everything. I hope you liked reading about my wonderful journey going through what Sleeping With Sirens had to offer. I loved every minute that I was writing all this because of how much this band means to me right now I've been listening to their songs religiously ever since I marathoned their discography and any time I do, my soul feels like it's ready to ascend from how much joy I get from listening to these songs again and again every hour. At this point in time, no band has come close to the sheer adoration I have for any of the albums they pumped out. I started writing this on March 17th, 3 days after I listened to Complete Collapse, but as I soon realised, I needed more time to give some thought to these albums, relisten to them to further re-evaluate my thoughts, and look into everything that makes my love for them as strong as it is, all so I can put it all into words for this, and I'm glad I did take a bit more time to think because it's led to me saying so, so much more than I thought I ever would. I'll be damned if any band can top the likes of How It Feels to Be Lost, Complete Collapse, Feel or Let's Cheers To This for me, but until that time comes, if it ever will, I'll continue to cherish Kellin Quinn and his bros as the ultimate band, and support whatever they're cooking next in a heartbeat.
Thanks for reading if you made it all this way without scrolling down really quickly like a little bitch, and I'll see y'all again for whatever I decide to make next, because there's a ton of analyses and posts I wanna make, but if none of them come into fruition by the time this year, I'll be back with lists on the best and worst media I've experienced throughout 2024. Until then, Solaris/Indigo out.
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