Review Summary: The world needs to stop ignoring mental illness!
We live in a world where all forms of psychological and emotional distress damages those affected by it, and society does nothing to help or even change that. To make this psychological terror of life even worse is what the media presents to us on television, magazines, newspapers, etc. as facts and therefore encourage us to get out there. Mental illness and distress have been around since the dawn of time and as a community, we are getting better at understanding it, but life changes and its changing fast. We aren’t prepared for this and we are about to crash (and in many ways American is seeing the crash with the COVID-19 pandemic), and the world as we know it is not only changing but changing in a bad way.
The British four-piece electro-punk band produces a rather apocalyptic yet comical approach to this issue in their sixth studio album: “Nothing is True & Everything is Possible” (based on the book of the same title; Thank you sowing for giving light to that). From the opening track “THE GREAT UNKNOWN” lead singer Rou Reynolds opens with asking: “Is this a new beginning? Or are we close to the end?” which sets the stage for what we are in for on this dance-punk record. As days, weeks, months, years, and decades go by there are more horrific showings of mental illness getting the better of people and there is no stopping it. Rou later asks: “if there’s anyone out there, just give me a sign.” For the world to survive we need a stronger separation between politics (and therefore media) and science. Rou shows that it’s not one man that can save the world, this is a team effort. As a studying neuropsychologist, I know first hand what it's like for the media to take research “the-wrong-way” (and anyone else in the scientific community can also attest to this). We shouldn’t be asking for who is out there because there are people helping and studying these issues, we need to be allowing these people to talk about their findings.
From there we get songs like “Crossing the Rubicon”, “{The Dreamer’s Hotel}”, “modern living…”, “the pressure’s on”, and “thē k*ñg”, where Rou gives several examples of when mental illness got the betterment of individuals. Everything from anxiety and rage to depression and influence. We live in the information age, and there is unlimited evidence at our fingertips. But this isn’t always the best when people use it to cause conflicts in both the digital and real world. All these tracks are backed by the most booming electro-rock instrumentals that I can feel my heart beating to the beat of the song.
Rou doesn’t stop there though he continues to play with these ideas on “Waltzing off the Face Of the Earth (I. Crescendo)”, “T.I.N.A.”, and “Marionette (I and II)”, in which we see what happens when not only does psychological distress get the best of someone, but when society fails to do anything about it. With all this information on the internet, we have no ability to see what is true and what is false. Plus, society has failed to give any help with alleviating that inability since they themselves also don’t know. We keep ascending into a world that gets more and more on the edge of destruction and each song plays with that idea sonically as they all feel like if a dance club was flipped upside-down and everyone was fighting each other to understand what is going on.
“satellites * *” is the one lone track here that takes a bit of a different approach to all this madness, the fighting issue of gay rights. This track is everything someone would ever want for a gay pride track and it's all backed by this fast-paced booming beat that really makes you feel like a star-traveling through space. Being gay back in the mid-1900s was seen as a psychological disorder and diagnosed in people. Today we have grown up and understood that its okay for someone to like the opposite gender (or no gender at all), but LGBTQ+ individuals today still feel they “drag the closet” since they have no ability to fully go outside and feel okay within their own skin.
In closure we get the off-kilter but slowly descending classical piece “Waltzing off the Face of the Earth (II. Piangevole)” in which Rou says: “Nothing is true, and we're waltzing off the face of the earth”. A bold but needed statement to end this rollercoaster of a record. From beginning to end we have been given the opportunity to explore the world of mental illness as if we were a passenger on a space ride at Disney. Each track taking you deeper into the madness (but true) world we live in. This is gratified by the fusions of post-hardcore, dubstep, electropop, and dance-punk. As the world around us collapses we continue to dance and pretend that everything is okay…when, in reality, we are on a crash course to the end of the world.
My first flaw is the stylistic approaches can come off as unfocused at points. For example, from “{The Dreamer’s Hotel}” to “Waltzing Off The Face Of The Earth” there is a three-sixty in sonic pallets. In the future, they should take more time to fully flesh out these styles. They are fully encouraged and bring much-needed depth to this band that they previously never had. However, make the change more gradual and easier to follow. Also, I hope next time the lyrical content wasn’t so cluttered. This isn’t a story album or a concept album, but the content of the lyrics doesn’t flow together as much as I hoped it did.
