BADFLOWER - THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS
Bringing to light a lot of issues and showing us how our views have changed over the years, This is How The World Ends is without a doubt one of Badflower’s best releases.
This is How The World Ends is without a doubt one of Badflower’s best releases. The album isn’t afraid to touch on heavy subjects, bringing up points to help others realize where they stand in the world while bringing light to other issues, and even helping to paint a precise picture on how many people currently think and how our views have changed within recent years. This is shown especially in the final track ‘My Funeral’, with vocalist Josh Katz singing about how he feels people would react to his death, but later on in the track realizing the amount of people having to seek refuge from their homes and some even losing their lives on the way. Once realizing this, Katz changes his focus from his death to how privileged he really is and instead donates to charities to help those more in need.
The first track on the album, ‘Adolescent Love’, is an acoustic track that uses harmonies to create a perfect opening to the album. It perfectly shows the way that this band can go from the hard sound they’re known most for to soft sounds like this, later including strings and soft percussion into the mix to help build up the ending of the song and transition into the next.
‘Family’ being released earlier as a single is a good example of this. The track opens with electric guitars before drums and vocals are added with synths and still a slower/slower sound than the majority of the album, but when the chorus comes up, the tones start to build up, and create more of a sense of excitement.
The sixth track ‘Everyone's an Asshole’ paints a picture of struggles within the world within the past years. The lyrics point out people looking for others to blame in the struggles of the current world. The song seems to bring up the point that recently, it seems a person cannot be themselves without having certain opinions, or using such opinions to argue with others about the world’s current issues, blaming anyone else who has a different opinion. Songs like this one are very important in making people really take a moment and evaluate their own actions, and the instrumentals really help to accent the important facts that the group is trying to bring up within the song such as the 2020 US Capitol Insurrection.
The next track, ‘She Knows’, is a track about wanting to keep the one the narrator loves, however they’ve made a big mistake. Based on context clues, this mistake most likely involves cheating. The lyrics show how much this event has affected the woman described. She seems to have said to forgive him, but their relationship is not the same as it was before. The “does she know?” is the narrator asking himself if the woman in question has realized what he has done, and if she knows that he is lying to her when denying. During the climax of the song, the narrator admits to his mistakes, and lyrics change to “Now she knows” while the track gets slightly heavier in drums most likely signifying the woman leaving and the narrator now having to deal with losing the person they love.
‘Don’t Hate Me’ is another single the band released prior to the album’s release. This song tells the story of a person constantly checking on the person they used to be with, and seeing who they’re with now. They hate themselves and are constantly trying to change in order to possibly get the person back. This is likely a follow up to the earlier track ‘She Knows’ as the writer did try to keep the secret and even denied it calling themselves ‘faithful’. This shows an obsessive nature in which the narrator is willing to change everything about themselves in order to have the person back in their lives.
‘Tethered’ is a perfect depiction on how being a woman in today’s world sometimes is. The song also tells a story of a girl who was approached by a man who had obviously spiked her drink. The girl believes in her head that this is what love is and how things are supposed to be. The girl birthed a son to this man, and felt stuck with him. The desperation in this scenario is seen when the lyrics “the father of her son” are presented right as the instrumentals drop entirely before kicking back up into the chorus. The song also narrates how sometimes it can be very hard to leave situations like this especially with children involved. The woman wants a better life, but she has no idea where to begin and feels lost.
Overall, this album shares many themes some may say are too personal or too dark, but sometimes it’s exactly what people need. With songs such as ‘Tethered’ and ‘My Funeral’ it makes people dealing with those issues heard, and can help them to realize where they are in life and how to get to where they want to be. Badflower does an incredible job with this album and with a lot of their music. They aren’t afraid to touch on these subjects, and with subjects such as those in ‘Tethered’ it’s very important for someone else to realize that is a thing that, unfortunately, happens very often within the world, and bringing awareness to it can help others help women get out of those situations.
Niki Davidson
★★★★★