Supernormal

I'm really loving this psychedelic drug trip gmod animation era of this band's career. Also wtf is this song?!

This song's verses, and especially it's chorus are such head bang worthy shit. This song somehow takes the off the wall and aggressive energy of "Arch Enemy", and takes it a step further with it's rebellious lyricism, and empowering instrumental. This song is essentially about addiction, and how everything on this planet indulges in it, even us. This theme is shown multiple times throughout the song.

One example of this can be found in the lyric "Slapping the lever like a rat, (You made that problem for yourself)", which is a reference to B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning chambers, the chambers were used to find certain behaviors in animals that we could learn from and apply to ourselves. However, this lyric focuses on a study that involved rats, specifically one's who were being conditioned with intermittent reinforcement. The rats each had a lever that could be pulled, when pulled this lever would activate the rest of contraption the rats were in, and then would may, or may not dispense some food. But despite the fact that the rats didn't get food every time they pulled the lever, they would continuously keep on doing it even when the food was completely out. This is similar to how people can get deep into gambling addictions, the risk and reward factor draws people in, and just like how a moth is attracted to a flame, they eventually get burned.

To add onto these lyrics involving addiction, and inner workings of the human mind, the instrumental adds this sense of rush that I assume is supposed to simulate the feeling people get when they indulge in things such as gambling, drugs, and etc. This is definitely evident in this song's pre choruses. They have this tranquil feeling to them that gives off the sense that the person in this song feels like they can be on top of everything in their life, that they can have some form of control over their problems. This leads perfectly into the chorus of this track, where the person from before is now yelling, demanding, and shrilling out on the roof tops of wherever the fuck that they want more of this supernormal feeling. This is shown sonically through the fantastic vocal performance from Jonathan Higgs that pierces through the rest of the instrumental of the song, and the enormously full chords that are slashed by Alex Robertshaw. Both of these elements come together to create a chorus full of power, and the never ending desire for more power.

Overall, this single is fantastic, and is just another piece of evidence that shows that Everything Everything is far from over with their overflow of creative, and well crafted ideas.