How much do you consume? When have we had our fill? Every day we are getting constant streams of content shoved in our face. From the early days of the news, to the modern times of instant social media "connection." We share pictures and videos of things we find funny that our friends will also appreciate. Meanwhile an algorithm is doing work behind the scenes trying to cater to what you have liked and what your friends have liked. 'Perfect Fit' content is here and ready to control our lives through the same pathways that addiction starts. What will you do?

CONCEPTUAL BEGINNING

This song started as just instrumentation that I had created for another project that may eventually get unveiled. I felt like it had fit the early 2000's nu-metal feel we are going for, but I had this recurring whisper in my head that said "You know that I can't stop" and so I tracked that as well and added it in. Once I showed my partner from the other project, they weren't too keen on it fitting the sound we were going for. So as usual I just decided to finish it and release it on my own.

INSTRUMENTATION

The idea we were going for in my other project was early 2000's Linkin Park and nu-metal scene. I had the guitar riffs down and began tracking them, but somewhere along the lines I had accidentally played the rhythm guitar in the pre-chorus slightly from a 3/4 to a 5/8 groove and I really liked. Once I had tracked and programmed all the instruments I dove into more of the synth backing sounds.

Normally when I get into synths I try to find a preset that feels kind of close to the feeling I want in the song and then adjust so that it fits what I have in mind. I found a few that I was happy with, but I ended up messing around from scratch and created the scream-like effect that kicks the song off. I found it unique and snare-like so I layered it over the snare to make the impact extra abrasive.

For the drums I used a combination of a realistic sounding drum plugin with an e-kit from Ujam. There's so many different e-kit variations that get used across modern music at this point so the sounds feel infinite. This helped in creating the hip-hop verses beat with some synth backing help. Now that I had the instrumentation established, it was time to move onto the rest of the lyrics.

VOCALS & LYRICS

The song was made with Linkin Park in mind so I knew the verses had to be like a Mike Shinoda hip-hop verse that would lead into a harsh vocal section. From this thought, how do I now make lyrics to fit?

Prior to writing the song I was struggling with what I thought was an abnormal addiction, but is pretty prevalent in our society for boys/men. I was really into the competitive game called "League of Legends." Sure, some might say it's just a game, but somehow this game consumed me for 5 years. Anytime I would play it I never knew when I would be done. Each game that finished was never satisfying even if I won. I would continue to queue up in hopes of just performing my best and continue to climb the ranked ladder. Never feeling good enough because my in game rank wasn't where I wanted it to be so I kept grinding. At the end of the day, my rank in that game mattered a lot for some reason. You can see this in any competitive video game at this point. The game creators are trying desperately to get you to stay just like a gambling addict because keeping you engaged with the game meant they could speak about statistics and siphon more money from you. All of these things lead me to ignore normal life things and started to weigh on my relationships outside the game. I felt a lot of shame in my problem and it was hard to speak about until I was confronted by my partner. I knew I needed to change and for some reason the lyric "you know that I can't stop" really hit home for me for this song. Thus I gave it the working title of 'Insatiable'.

It seemed pretty obvious that I wouldn't write directly about my problems, but I could make it vague enough to fit general addiction. I know that tech and phone addiction is also running rampant in our society so I thought it fit the dystopian theme I set for the EP. The harsh vocals lend itself to being the personified addiction saying it's ok to keep consuming and that it has a firm grip on our life. Meanwhile the clean vocals are stating that we know what's wrong with us and that we need to change, but ultimately that demon is still there.

CONCLUSION

I don't believe we were meant to mindlessly consume any and everything. It's led us to feelings of being insatiable and inadequate. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements and social media to buy this, act this way, or do this to achieve success or some form of happiness. I don't believe that it can come from an external source and ultimately we are in charge of our internal monologue that creates this inadequate atmosphere. Sure, external sources such as money, materials, and other things can be beneficial, but only to an extent.

If you've made it this far, I will ask you: have you had enough?