Writhing in dissonance is New York’s Worn Thin on their new EP, Name Yourself. The title indicates a bit of the in-your-face grit that the quartet feed off of from everyday life in order to create a destructive aura of music.
The release slews with controlled explosions and fractures of energy. Riffs spin into breakdowns with ease. The vocals are virulent with anguish and fury, at times retreating into an ethereal grace of angelic lines (“Grouding Stone [Home] and “Adam”).
Entrenched into the lyrics are expansive thoughts that explore different, internal battles and cast them into an array of hellbound hardcore music. Name Yourself is infused with a current, whether it’s blood, electricity, or water. It’s up to where the listener finds themselves while diving into this short and disturbingly sweet, five-track behemoth.
Here are the lyrics and the band’s analysis of the songs. The tracks “Gjmork” and “Szukalski” are interludes, so this is all that applies.
“A fun fact we wanted to mention is that on ‘Code Adam,’ all four of us have vocal parts, which is something we’ve wanted to do since our first release,” the band explain before diving into the record. “It’s a nice little easter egg, we think.”
Grounding Stone (Home)
Take your hand s off from around your neck
Let our tears mix with your sweat
As our bodies move closer to decay
memories fade
They might find inconvenience
In your experience
To tell your story claims
it’s not your fault
Know it’s not your fault
“Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting.”
(b. hooks)
We are not alone
We are all lonely
This song is about creating space to listen to others, in part, through recognizing that your experience in this world is the only experience that you can know. This song is my attempt to put into words the courage it took (and still takes) to speak and share my experience of being a victim/survivor of sexual violence and violation. Not only that, but also the sense of longing for real communities that are open to listening to others’ stories.
Although it’s hard to hold onto these memories that I wish I could forget, I’ve learned that it’s important for me to keep these details intact rather than attempting to push them into the recesses of my memory (where they retain the power to haunt me). I try my best to be strong for myself so that I may be strong for others. When I first started having the courage to tell my story, it was difficult for me to remember the details; sometimes the details weren’t even available until I spent the time looking for them, into the darkness.
Once I began confronting these uncomfortable memories, I found myself unlocking more and more details and contextualizing them in new ways, allowing me the ability to start releasing the control that they had over my thoughts and my life. There’s still so much work for me to do, but this song was the beginning of that process, and sometimes it scares me to think that the process may be never-ending.
However, knowing that I’ve made even the slightest amount of progress keeps me from submission and gives me the confidence that I’ve been desperately trying to reclaim. My hope for this song is to provide people with an energy that might inspire someone with the strength needed to confront those uncomfortable feelings, whether you are a survivor or a listener/support system. You belong here. Your feelings belong here. Let’s do our best to erase the loneliness of our trauma.
Flesh Factory
Our
Veins
Pump
Oil
Machines
Machines
Machines
Must be supervised
These Machines cannot build themselves
Follow the handbook so they’re made all the same
Our
Veins pump oil
Medicate
So I fit evenly with society
Maintenance
So I follow suit
Manipulation
So I think like everybody else
Machine
So a creative mind creates in a straight fucking line
We are expected to be living machines amongst other living machines. Our minds are mostly composed of exactly what is intended for them by design. There are so many parts of our brains and different ways of thinking that so many of us will never have access to in our lifetimes. And often, when we do, we are cast as diseased or mentally unwell individuals rather than products of a sick society which produces such inhuman disorder.
This song is about how children are discouraged from creative and critical thinking in service of hegemonic ways of being. In some ways, this song is inspired by my personal regret of going to college and getting a degree in accounting. I hate being an accountant. I am not an accountant. Everyone in this band has their own reasons for why we decided to title this EP Name Yourself. if you don’t follow the normative rules of American life, you are cast out as some type of freak. Well, you know what? I really like being a freak. Name yourself.
Code Adam
Investing bodies in bodies in bodies
Investing bodies in bodies in bodies
The children are becoming
Hard to find
Were they ever really
Children at all?
Lost all
At all
Lost all
Hope
The children are becoming
Hard to find
Were they ever really
Children at all?
Cradles ransacked
Stripped away by the ones who “care”
Their minds their hearts
Power slip into those hands
This song is about how children are routinely disrespected and dismissed by authority figures, and how this inhibits them from growing into adults who possess power over their own thoughts and beliefs. As we move through life, this stunts our ability to oppose the dominating forces we encounter such as controlling relationships, employers, governmental figures, police and society writ large.
Many children have their childhoods stripped away from them, whether it is by bourgeois hyper-productivity, obsessed parents, a criminally perverse lack of resources for the rest of us, or worse, growing up in a war-torn society under the occupation of empire. The world is a business; children are the fodder.”
