PREMIERE: Drowning In Sound – The Room

Distorted Sound is delighted to premiere the brand new single from THE ROOM!

With their debut album, Caught By The Machine, due out this Friday via White Star Records, this progressive band have their sights set on making 2019 theirs. Which is why on top of the single Andy Rowe (bass and backing vocals) has penned down an exclusive track by track breakdown of the album.

Kim Seviour who guest vocals on Drowning In Sound says, “I want to say a massive thanks to The Room, I was so happy to be asked by them to sing some guest vocals for their new album! I got to play the character of an emotionally unhinged cat lady who locked her boyfriend in a basement for 20 years. It was AMAZING, and came surprisingly naturally! The song is awesome, and judging by it the album will be fantastic too!”

Listen to Drowning In Sound featuring Kim Seviour exclusively and read the track by track breakdown of Caught By The Machine below:

Bodies on the Road:

The opening track on the album and the first time we meet the extraordinary playing of our new guitarist Eric. The song talks about personal fears. That fear of uncertainty, the fear of not having a full grasp on what is happening and the fear of being left behind when others are talking of moving on to greater things. “Now I’m praying for the day, I’ll have something to say”. We all have a voice but sometimes lack the confidence to be brilliant.

Run:

This was the first song we wrote for the album and in fact we have been playing it live for a couple of years. It is a song about leaving behind things that have had their day, moving on and not looking back. If we are brave enough to do that then there is a chance that we can start regaining the confidence to create something new out of the embers of the past. If we keep holding on to the past then the future will pass us by on the other side of the street!

Broken:

We wrote Broken as something of a challenge to ourselves. We hate this “genre” snobbishness that exists across the whole industry and so to be able to break prog traditions So we wrote a three-minute, mainstream song that would merge the great melodies and broad choruses of prog, whilst remaining radio-friendly and accessible. The premise of the song is that most problems people have are brought on by themselves; Wrong life decisions, bad investments, excessive drink and drugs abuse, mistreatment of others and so on. Often, people in these positions are the first to complain, but the last to admit fault.”

The Golden Ones:

The Golden Ones, is a song all about the generational responsibilities and accountabilities for our world. Its about the devastating environmental consequences of our actions. Think about the industrial revolution, coal fired power stations, the diesel engine the great plastic debate. What will come next? All we can say is “we are, we are the saviours of the world” but at the same time the destroyers. We, (The Golden Ones) clear up behind our forefathers whilst creating devastation for our children (The Golden Ones) to tidy up.

Vanished:

Martin our singer was reading about the “disappeared” in Argentina during the various dictatorships and how this effected families. The song Vanished focuses on how one women protester had her son kidnapped and how she sat constantly at her window waiting for her son to be returned The song opens with the line “She holds a photograph, a smiling face of days gone past, fading picture of her only Son” . We learn how the farther is equally affected and turns to drink to hide his sorrow. When we introduced John Mitchell our producer to this song he asked “whats this one called?” we said “Vanished” What, like an old oak table” he replied. Now we refer to the song as Varnished!

Just Walk Away:

As a band we never ever comment about our politics in public, that’s not our style and we leave that for others. Just Walk Away, however, It’s a song about politics, its relationship with the media and the impact that it and perhaps the all-encompassing fake news has on our lives. The final line of the chorus of Walk Away says “I’d love to close my eyes and walk away” a fine trick if you can do it but a very strong reference to the media and their impact on our beautiful world. Scheming and believing, silence and disbelief are powerful themes in this song.

Drowning in Sound:

We like to have one long song on our records and Drowning is the one for Caught By The Machine. The themes of the album are around how we fall into traps and Drowning in Sound is a song that brings those themes to the fore. Where Martin finds his lyrical inspiration we are sometimes not sure but as always there is real life embedded deeply in his words. The song is a nice little story about a slightly unhinged teenage girl who kidnaps her first love and imprisons him for years. As the story unfolds we hear from him, the captive and her, the captor. When we came to record this we knew we needed a female singer to share the vocal duties and the fabulous Kim Seviour agreed. Martin’s description of the character Kim had to play was hilarious but she delivered an amazing vocal and it became such a powerful song as you will hear.

Clover:

Oh my word, we struggled with this song. We almost gave up on it but we knew there was something in the melody that we couldn’t drop. Thank goodness we didn’t as It is without a doubt one of our favourites on the album. Technically it shows the dynamics between our two guitarists Steve and Eric as they share the solos. Although the word refugee is used in the lyrics, it’s not necessarily about refugees, it’s about someone who for whatever reason escapes from a bad, abusive situation to a new city and is excited about their new world and what it will bring and then how this re energises them to succeed. As Martin wrote: “And with a certain spark her life’s reignited and with a certain Spark this love will fan the flame.”

Not My Home:

Steve Checkley our previous keyboard player brought the idea for this song into rehearsals a couple of years ago. He had the melody and even had the background story in his head. We worked on the idea and built the story around the victim of human trafficking. The story builds as we learn about the victims emotional place, how they are scared and alone in the strange world. The song is written from the victims perspective: “Cold face of authority brings the tears to my eyes. I can’t see my mother, Hope to god She’s still alive” We wanted the music to build as the story builds which we think we have achieved. Oh and it’s a great song to play live.

Bloodstream:

We have traditionally closed our albums with something a little different and Bloodstream fills that role perfectly. It started its life in the rehearsal studio with a jam between Andy (bass) and Chris (drums). We started hearing really dark keyboard themes which Mark duly delivered complemented with manic dirty guitars. We sent the demo over to Eric to have a play with and back came this choppy Nile Rogers-esque funky guitar riff. Something totally unexpected but something so exciting. Bloodstream is a reflection about life today and picks up on many of the themes that we have explored across the album; drugs, technology, fake news, scams, social media, the media and more.

Caught By The Machine is out February 22 via White Star Records.

For more information on THE ROOM like their official page on Facebook.