Arkham's EP , The Great American Goodbye, was self released by the band last year. For the occasion, we asked vocalist Adam Bevel to tell us about each track. His commentary on the full album can be seen below

Mourning in America

During the writing of this album I became very enamored in the concept of trying to create a “circular” record, in the sense that instead of creating simply a collection of songs, at least in the lyrical sense, the concepts would blend together to form a singular overarching concept. With this intro track, I wanted to introduce the concepts that would be seen later on the record, so every lyric in the song references and foreshadows an idea that will be examined in a later song. When we first started working on the song, it was meant to just be a simple intro for YoungBlood, but it kind of grew into it’s own thing with lyrics, and I’m really happy it did. I love the way it slowly builds until the end. Keeping with the circular theme, the song ends with references to lyrics from our early demos.    

Youngblood

This song is probably the most difficult to explain, but in the most basic sense it’s about selling your soul. It was written as a sort of reaction to this industry that surrounds music. I see so many bands that seem like they only exist to sign to a label, tour, start a clothing line, whatever bullshit bands are doing these days to make money and gain a little bit of fame. And the pursuit of this causes these bands to basically monetize their personhood, to put a price on there lives, their experiences, to put it in a nice little package that’s easily consumed, in hopes that in the grand scheme of things they matter. I don’t have anything against bands that are successful, I just feel like the goal should always be “make art that speaks to something” and hope that it speaks to someone instead of “make a product somebody can sell”. The more I looked around though, I saw this outside the music scene. There seems to be this almost suicidal rush to sell yourself, your life, your youth, your story, your art, your experience to secure some sort of piece of mind, and ultimately I feel, in that rush, you lose yourself.    

Old Money

Old Money exists as kind of a retaliation to the suburban sterilization I encountered growing up. We’re from a suburb of Chicago, to put bluntly, is very white, very rich, and very conservative, super WASPy. Growing up your only choice before college is really play sports, go to the mall, or get drunk (most combine). For how big the community was, there was really no artistic outlet, there’s no music venues, so unless you can sneak away to Chicago or have a car (I couldn’t/didn’t) you’re kind of in this cultural wasteland, and that wasteland did not react well to outsiders. Any sort of dissent, political or artistic, was shut down pretty quick. Every time kids tried to set up a venue it was shut down quickly, if an anti-war speaker was coming to the area, the local parents shut it down quickly, the gay straight alliance at my school had to go underground for a couple years.

There was very much this feeling of being the “other” growing up, and furthermore a feeling that your existence, your ideas, your feelings were not welcome.  And then I graduated and moved to this big city that’s just overrun with different ideas and people and cultures and art and I sort of felt like all of this had been kept from me by this overzealous suburban moral panic. So Old Money serves as a sort of middle finger to this fake ethnocentric safety net I grew up around.

(side note: both mine and Charlie’s parents were very supportive and loving growing up, these feelings were fostered more from interactions outside our familial units. Love you all)   

Skeletal Machinery

On the other hand, Skeletal Machinery is sort of a retort to Old Money, reminding my self that in the midst of my suburban white boy angst, there is a people and world that face much bigger problems. Yeah, I didn’t have many outlets growing up, and got picked on a ton, but I never had to worry about stray bullets, or voter suppression, or institutional racism. Furthermore that I have had so many opportunities to effectively deal with
my issues, and instead of wallowing in them, I should be working on making the world around me a better place.

That’s kind of the problem that I have with a lot of this music scene, we have tunnel vision, we see the world only as our problems, and I think that tunnel vision keeps us inactive. This music, to me, has always been about improving the world around you, and I feel as of late it’s gotten weighed down in a lot of narcissistic, self pitying bullshit. Talk about relationships, talk about being unhappy with your life, talk about mental illness, but don’t make that the only thing you talk about, and try to remember that there is a big world out there with a lot of problems you can help.    

Kelly Thomas

This song almost didn’t make the album, which is funny to me, seeing as it became probably the most immediately relevant. We weren’t sure at first if we were ready to put it out, but we tweaked it a bit, and at the end of the day, I’m glad we did.   On the surface it’s about police brutality obviously, this is by far the least ambiguous song on the record, but to me it’s also about a deeper struggle. To me it’s also about being torn between your morals and your instinct. I grew up believing in pacifism, it guided me through a lot of difficult times, but more and more I find myself questioning it’s effectiveness in the face of a growing police state. It was revealed a few days ago that Chicago had been running a Guantanamo style torture site, and my immediate reaction is “man I hope the dudes in charge of that get killed”, when I see footage from the Ferguson riots or when I was at one of the protests here, I would get this primal urge to fight and that’s the way I’ve always been in situations of injustice, and that’s when the questions start. Can I really be a pacifist if I wish death on people? In the face of such unchecked evil, is pacifism even relevant? I haven’t really arrived at an answer, and I like that the song doesn’t really either.    

Flag Burner

The closer on the record is about me grappling with suicide, and kind of moving past it. For so long I felt worthless and unneeded, and then thanks to Punk, I sort of realized that I had a lot of power to change the world for the better. I’m in college now because bands like Rage Against The Machine, Anti-Flag, Propagandhi, and Strike Anywhere strived to teach me that not only was I not worthless, but every person is essential in creating a better world. So I guess if the whole record is about me feeling powerless, this song is about realizing that you can make the world better.   The end of the song continues the circular theme, each line is a reference to another one of the songs on the record, and then the record closes with the same lyrics it started out with. “Diamonds will Turn to Dust”