Profiler: Shining A Light On A Digital Dystopia

The world is changing rapidly before our very eyes. Shops are using more self-service checkouts, rather than shopkeepers. More and more people use mobile phones to record concerts. And whenever we turn see the news, the world looks more bleak than ever. As always, music has been a guiding light for many in troubled times. But now musicians are turning their attentions to the uncertain future that beholds us all. Will we learn to live alongside technology or succumb to the bright lights and ease that it brings us? Whilst the answer is unknown for now, bands such as PROFILER have started to ask questions and speculate about where our dependence on technology goes from here. 

As well as exploring relationships and the pandemic, their debut album, A Digital Nowhere, is inspired by films such as the first three films in The Matrix franchise and Donnie Darko.

“The title of our album is based on [American philosopher] Terence McKenna‘s philosophy about technology reaching a singularity – a point of no return – and what that looks like,” founder, vocalist and guitarist Mike Evans explains. “It’s based around the idea of it turning into artificial intelligence, and then I construed that into the idea of a technological collapse, and what the world would look like if we didn’t have technology, as well as the nostalgic idea of what it was like when technology wasn’t so intense.”

Nostalgia is also a key theme of the album. Growing up in the late 80s, the 90s, or even the early 2000s, computers and the internet were a part of life, but not our entire lives. Nowadays, our smartphones might as well be surgically attached to our hands.

The album cover is of a digitalised collapsed star, which emphasises the title. However, it is not just a technological nostalgia that runs through A Digital Nowhere, but also a musical one. Whilst PROFILER don’t like to box themselves into a category, there are strong elements of nu-metal scattered throughout the album.

But Mike explains why he doesn’t think that the band should be shoved into one box. “I’m being careful with who I say our influences are because we’ve been boxed into a nu-metal genre, which isn’t necessarily what we’re going for. We’ve got scratching put in and I am inspired by and grew up with bands such as LINKIN PARK, LIMP BIZKIT and INCUBUS. Obviously, that’s all there. But it’s just an expression of our own creativity and the music that we like. We’re still trying to figure out our sound as a band, but by no means did we want to sound like anyone else.” He elaborates, explaining that it is a learning curve for the band, and there is no denying the genre’s impact on pop culture, especially in the early 2000s.

The album isn’t all doom and gloom; there are elements of uncertain hope scattered throughout. This is exemplified in the song To Utopia, which might sound hopeful due to the title, but the lyrical content is “about COVID. It’s the concept of going into a dystopia, because it felt like a dystopian nightmare for everybody for a period of time, but then it also is about if we could go in another direction and create a utopia on planet Earth, which I assume is where humanity wants to go.”

The song contains the lyric ‘dystopian until we die’, which is “the feeling of the COVID situation and societal reality that we’re living in – at the time of writing the album – felt very dystopian. It was like we were waving goodbye to the old life because we were going into a dystopian reality.” The dystopian theme is mostly covered in the song, but it is also scattered throughout the album.

In the writing process, Mike explains that the instrumentals were almost always written first, and then the lyrics came afterwards. “They were written over time. There’s no set lyrics. Sometimes they were written in response to the feeling of the music, and sometimes they were more thought out conceptually.” The album isn’t just about dystopian nightmares; there are also songs that have multiple meanings, which include relationships as well. It is clear that the band are masters of the lyrical content.

The record will help define the band’s future sound to a certain extent. “This album was mostly catered towards me playing guitar and singing at the same time,” Mike says. “We’re always going to try and push ourselves writing wise. Going forward, I’m going to take a different approach and write instrumentals without playing them on the guitar. We’re going to write heavier and also write softer songs. We want to keep people guessing.”

They are not a mishmash of everything band because they are a predominantly heavy one. However, they also love hip-hop and other genres. Mike says that when they started out in Bristol, with bassist Joe Johnson and former drummer Oscar Hocking, they wanted to be a nu-metal band. However, they have changed that idea now. After Oscar left and new drummer Brad Ratcliffe joined, they have been discovering the joys and freedom of finding out who they are as a band.

These new sounds can be heard throughout A Digital Nowhere, which also dips its toes into alt-grunge and rock. Even the genre of nu-metal itself allows the band to broaden their horizons. As a debut album, PROFILER have created a coherent and astute narrative about an ever-evolving subject. Their lyrical and music are extremely well written. Whilst they are still finding their feet in the music world, they have a very strong future ahead of them.

A Digital Nowhere is out now via SharpTone Records.

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