Under City Skylines takes us through the band’s new record, Destinations. Buy the album (if you haven’t already) and read the descriptions below.
Inception - Intro
A Becoming Of Me - This was honestly one of the first songs written for the album, it was originally called something much less serious then the actual song name. We decided when recording that the album was essentially going to be a concept album based on where the band and all our experiences consisted of. This song was all about identity for us, it was when we first pretty much went from a Drop D sound to a much heavier sound in Drop A#. To us it was such a great first song to really capture where we were going as a band. This song is often played live because of the energy of the song in its entirety.
What This Means - This song is completely and well evident that its about strained relationships. Everybody’s relationships in their lives are not perfect so this song was written for everyone to relate too. This song in our opinion is
more poppy then the rest. We didn’t want every song to become so repetitive for the album. This song was also structured a little differently then what we were usually accustomed to with a bridge and 3rd chorus. Overall we enjoyed the up tempo sound of the song but we generally don’t play this song live because its not that crowd interactive.
Expectations - Lyrically this song was written in the studio, because in production some things got changed and structured a little different. The electro part was exactly what we were going for as a break for this song so we were
really excited about this song. Coming right out in the beginning this song it says “You Mean Nothing To Me”, haha it was definitely an angry song and was directly related to everyone who has lied on us for personal pleasure or gain. In this crazy four years we have been told many things including every lie in the book, so basically this was a “Fuck You” to everyone who never held up to their end of their word. Expectations is a song we love playing live as well.
Hopeless - Probably the most popular song of the album because it was our first single off the debut album, we loved how this song came out and it is a personal favorite as well as a fan favorite. This song was about our vocalist’s struggle with his family and this was a coming clean song for him. For the longest time I always tried to live up to my fathers expectations and I finally wrote a song about pretty much just saying that I was done trying to please him. I was going to start living for myself, says Ricky(vocalist). This is a song that we felt most people could relate to one way or another with whatever personal problems they have going on in their life. This song also had our good friends in Us From Outside guest appearing towards the end. Be sure to check this one out!
Footprints - (Interlude) This was just pretty much a space eater as well as a great transition to “A Paved Path”.
A Paved Path - This song is very up tempo in your face kind of song. Since this band has been in existence we have always been formed on Christian morals but have never claimed to be a “Christian Labeled” band. We didn’t want the added pressure of trying to be a certain kind of way or be upheld to a certain standard. Therefore, we decided to make a song based off the struggle of being a Christian but not really living the standard that is associated with living that way! In todays world it is so hard to live with a Christian mindset, so we wanted to demonstrate the harsh reality of believing but at the same time having so many questions and roadblocks of living that kind of lifestyle. Check out the sick breakdown towards the end and follow the lyrics; very strong stuff.
Together or Alone - This song is an all out assault on how we feel our friends are our family and about keeping your loved ones close. Since some of our members have grown up in very strained relationships in the families or their friendships we strived to make a song that hit home on so many levels with how we felt about that. This song in our opinion is well structured and we love the 2 step transition we incorporated to keep to our rooted Virginia Beach area on how we first started. This song is played a lot live and for some of our fans who have gotten ahold of this song they really seem to enjoy it, which to us is the most important part of why we make songs such as this.
Make the Effort - This song is the shortest song but not the weakest of any sorts. For the most part this song was written in the studio. We had a plan and knew what we wanted to do with it but we just had a lot of missing pieces. With the help of Taylor Larson (who recorded/produced the record in Bethesda MD) he really helped push this song into a personal favorite of the band. This song really has such an awesome message about being the best person you can be as you walk through your life. This song ended up being short because we didn’t want to overdue and make such a typical oversaturated metalcore song.
We felt like we did just enough to it to stay tied to the roots of UCS but at the same time represent growth of the band on where we were willing to stretch our musical minds to find new things people had never heard from us before. We hope you enjoy this song as much as we do!
Destinations - The title track is a very emotional driven song as we stated earlier this record was such a driven record on where the band wanted to go and where we at in all our lives as well as musically. This was our first studio record where we put everything into the material we had. The image of Under City Skylines is right here in this song throughout. The song to us had such a catchy chorus, and just stayed really strong throughout. The ending is definitely something new that we had never done, where we implemented a spoken part over the music.
It’s such an inspirational part of the song much like something of the likes like “For Today”. The words have endless meaning for anyone who applies it to something in their life which is really cool to us. This song has been talked about being played live but it has never formulated, right now it seems as it definitely is a track to buy the album for!