FinalBossFight! Walks Us Through Every Song on Their Debut EP 'The Light In Your Room'
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Most people don’t get into music for money. Most people don’t get into music for clout. Most people start making music because they are creative and have something inside themselves that they need to get out into the world. The DIY scene is a perfect encapsulation of this ethos. Nobody in this is making money. Even bands on some of the biggest “labels” in DIY are just run by a few people who are merely helping artists with logistical concerns, supply chains, and album promotion.
Even for “successful” musicians, making a living off of music is hard. Plus, with touring being a non-factor this year, making any money off music in 2020 is almost impossible. Nobody is looking at the music scene as it stands today and thinking, ‘I could make some serious cash in this system.’ People in DIY especially know they’re not going to make a living with this, so why bother? Especially now?
Because the spirit of DIY is indomitable.
There will always be people experiencing the world, formulating thoughts on it, and wanting to translate those experiences into something bigger than themselves. Music is something that can exist outside of yourself, a permanent document of not only a time in your life, but a time in the world. Just look around; bands are still releasing music, filming videos, and selling shirts because they believe in their message. Even if people aren’t flocking to your songs by the thousands, sometimes it’s just rewarding to find a few other people out there who believe in it and identify with those same emotions. That connection is what music is all about. That’s the reward.
While FinalBossFight! may sound like a one-word, exclamation-pointed Myspace-era screamo band in the vein of Lions!Tigers!Bears! or Eatmewhileimhot!, they’re very much a product of 2020. Formed in March of this year, the same time as our nationwide shutdown, FinalBossFight! is a band that has existed only in the time of quarantine. They’ve written, recorded, and now released a collection of songs under the imposing shadow of a global pandemic, and that alone is an artistic achievement.
Seeing the fruits of the band’s labor in the form of lead singles “Spitney Beers” and “Ivory” this summer only solidified my beliefs in the group’s steadfast determination. When a project is born and bred in what feels like the end of the world, that means there’s a baseline level of ‘fuck you, we’re going for it,’ which also tracks with the band’s midwest upbringing.
The Light In Your Room represents the artistic payoff to months of scrappy recordings, DIY promotion, and intermittent band practice. Created equal parts by guitarist John Coote and drummer Sage Denam, the two share vocal and writing duties, the end result being a hearty emo EP that feels equal parts communal and personal. There are tappy guitar lines, goofy song titles, and all the usual emo elements, but the release speaks for itself as a testament to steadfast creativity and musical drive. It’s a document of the good that can happen even when nearly every aspect of the world outside seems to be conspiring against you. Pandemic be damned, FinalBossFight! is here, and they’re ready to shred.
Spitney Beers
This was the first song I actually wrote for FinalBossFight!. When John and I first started working on music at the beginning of the year, I had a few ideas from the last couple of years that weren’t completed, just a collection of choruses and riffs. I really wanted to start a new song from scratch, and I knew that after talking about our influences, I wanted to write a fast, hard-hitting song that I would like to hear from those bands. I took a little bit of inspiration from the fast-paced pop-punk/emo music I was listening to at the time and sat down in my bedroom and started writing and it. Surprisingly, it did not take long to come up with the song’s structure, and the rest just sort of fell into place.
For the most part, the lyrics focus on the troubles someone is going through in a relationship that lacks trust and honesty but is filled with copious amounts of alcohol. At the time of writing, I had just recently gone through some troubles in my life that were mainly caused by me living too recklessly and drinking way too much. I felt the need to write about that issue in a way that reflected on how substance abuse and trust issues could mess up things like the relationships in my life.
I recorded a video of me playing it acoustically in my room and singing what I had for it, then sent it to John, and he loved what he heard. From there, we just kept messing around with it any time we got the chance to hang out. He ended up adding some additional guitar parts that I absolutely loved, and that helped the song turn into what I had in my head but couldn’t quite get to out without his help.
- Sage
Texas Sized Ten Four
This track was an idea that I had back in December before FinalBossFight! was ever formed. I was messing around with some chords and riffs in Drop D tuning and eventually turned it into a full song before adding the drums. Once Sage and I started practicing together, I remembered this song, and I showed him. We worked on it for a bit together while I figured out the lyrics and everything soon came together.
When I wrote this song, I was in an off-and-on relationship that lacked communication and that’s what I based the lyrics around. A lot of it is about wondering what the other person is up to and the misconceptions you have about someone when you are unsure what they are doing. When you are so open with someone about what you are doing and how everything is going with you, and they don’t do the same in return, it can lead to a lot of issues.
This song has more of a “pop” feel than the rest of the EP, which we believed made it stand out. We really wanted this song to be on the EP, and especially where it is on the tracklist, because it sounds so different than the rest of the project; it really shows that we can have a diverse range of sounds and still make it work.
- John
Ivory
This is probably the quickest song I wrote for the project. It all came to me late one summer night. The whole thing, from the idea for the melody to the final of the lyrics, probably only took 2 or 3 hours, but it all worked out how I wanted it to. Once I showed Sage, he was immediately on board with putting the song on the EP.
The lyrics have a lot to do with the anger you feel while going through the stages of grief. After repeatedly trying to save a relationship that was ultimately doomed from the start, you reach a breaking point where you realize there’s nothing left to save, and it’s better that everything just ends. Of course, that will make you bitter, which explains a lot of the song's lyrical content. This person has put you through a lot, and you’re finally accepting that you’re done trying to forgive them. You’re done being their emotional punching bag: “That’s it. Sayonara! Take it out on someone else because I’m gone.”
The song was pretty much finished by the time I brought it to the table to be put on the EP. Sage added a few touches here and there, and we both loved the song enough for us to put it out as our second single before we ever even had the EP fully together.
- John
Eviction Notice
This was a song I actually started working on years before Finalbossfight! was ever even an idea. Every time I went back to work on it, I couldn’t get anything done besides the chorus melody and the first line of the verse. A big part of me not ever finishing this song was never seeing an opportunity to have a band that I could fully record it with. Once we started getting tracks together for the EP, I found the old notes on my phone, and I knew I finally had to finish it.
For the most part, the song deals with throwing out everything, both physically and mentally, after someone leaves your life as a way of getting rid of them; “evicting” them from your head. I think most people have memories they wish they could just throw away, so as John and I were writing this song, it was so easy for us to relate to what we were vocalizing. It’s a pretty simple song, but it has this pounding energy that just makes you want to throw shit in the trash and yell at your brain for keeping all the memories that you know don’t mean anything to you anymore.
Also, there’s a little reference to two American Football songs in the first verse, and I personally think that made for one of the most clever lines on the whole EP.
- Sage
Winter Coat // Shorts
This song is my personal favorite on the EP, and that seems to be a common sentiment for most people who have listened to The Light In Your Room in full. Just like “Eviction Notice,” this was a song I started writing years ago but could never make it past the first verse until John and I formed the band and actually started working on songs together. There’s a part in the middle of this song where we use a blast of chaotic noise to kind of separate “Winter Coat” from “Shorts.” There was a time where we considered having these as two separate tracks, but after we messed around with that transition between the two parts, we knew it had to all be one.
The first part of the track, “Winter Coat,” focuses on the distance someone has with somebody else, both physically and emotionally. This person is full of excuses as to why they can’t change; their car not starting, phone being dead, or the fact that they’re just a burnout. The transition in the middle of the song is meant as a stand-in for the passage of time. After this flash-forward, the two are now living in the same area, but things are different. The “burnout” from the beginning of the song now faces this internal conflict where they’re not sure if they want to leave and get lost or if they want to simply go for a drive and come back and have everything be normal. Kind of a “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” situation.
We decided to have this as the last song on the tracklist because it perfectly wraps up the EP. There’s so much energy at the end of this song, and that’s the exact kind of final push I love to hear at the end of a project. I can’t wait until one day (when we aren’t facing such an awful pandemic) where I see a crowd of people lose their minds to the end of this song with us.
- Sage
