LOVEBITES have shared the influence behind their debut EP ‘Social Hell’.
Out now via Sabbath City Records, the EP was inspired by the current state of social society and how social media influences how we act and perceive each other.
Speaking of the EP, vocalist Jack Perry said: “It’s a contradiction, but an honest portrayal of our modern world. We unlock our souls into a medium which focuses on other people’s lives as opposed to our own. We constantly compare each other’s lives, effectively sucking the spontaneity out of everything. Do “likes” actually make you feel better? Is it love or an evil touch?
“Although it’s quite a jeer towards our current state of society, it’s also an understanding that if we don’t follow, we get left behind. The lyrics on the record are sarcastically dark and asks a serious question to ourselves. Is our world of ‘better’ technology and social media actually making us better human beings? We beg to differ but welcome any opinion.”
To celebrate the release of the EP, the band has shared five singles that helped shape the release.
Catfish and the Bottlemen – Pacifier
Just for the instant hit of power and grabbing the attention of the listener straight away. We love how this drops in and out in terms of dynamics, which was a big influence for our track ‘Duppy’. We love the instrumental outro on ‘Pacifier’ so we created our own which was a cool way to end it.
The Strokes – You Only Live Once
A big influence on us for tracking/mixing our EP. The Strokes have this simple (but glorious) technique of laying only two or three guitar tracks down and panning them hard left/right. This gives the listener more focus on melody as opposed to laying multiple guitar tracks down, resulting in losing that clarity. On our track ‘Just Fall’ we adopted this approach and it worked great!
The Ordinary Boys – Seaside
An underrated lyrical genius from Preston…. it really resonates with us in a way that still means something today although it’s 14 years old. It’s radio friendly and the subject matter is so simple yet so cool. ‘Seaside’ sounds positive but it’s a jibe of just being over-worked and wanting to be outside. On ‘Social Hell’ we took a big influence from this. ‘Social Hell’ sounds like a really positive song in terms of melody, but the lyrics are a big middle finger to our current state of social society. We love that contrast. And lastly, the drum sound on this track and the whole ‘Over the Counter Culture’ record is sonically awesome, keeping a natural room sound but with a little added extra punch. This idea was carried over during mixing the drums on our EP.
The Gaslight Anthem – Too Much Blood
This was a big influence on our track ‘Tick Along’. Similar to ‘Just Fall’ we wanted to keep the guitar tracks simple, but for ‘Tick Along’ we wanted a sound that would thicken up our guitar parts. We took some influence from this track in terms of having the bass follow the guitar melody for the chunky parts, then have it moving in the chorus. We really dig dynamics in music and love how this track (especially at the end of chorus) drops into a really nice melodic section which we used for the end of the chorus in ‘Tick Along’. The vocal from Brian Fallon is delivered perfectly, keeping the words quite strong/angry but keeping that emotion within it which is a huge influence on our EP.
The Cribs – We Share The Same Skies
We love how this track simply “bounces” along and feels so natural in each crossover of different sections. It feels completely British and the main riff from Johnny Marr is simply unforgettable. We had a point whilst writing the EP where we said: “we need to be like The Cribs”. From then on, we felt that breaking the rules structurally, keeping our sound quite raw and making our songs resonate lyrically with the people, was our way forward during the songwriting process.
You can stream ‘Social Hell’ via Spotify below