You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To: An Album Retrospective (Knocked Loose)

Hi! This is very long overdue but here we are! Knocked Loose’s most recent album! Yeah! The band once known for being funny because their vocalist went “arf arf” during one of their song breakdowns just released the most soul-crushing, Earth-shattering album in years. I just saw them live with Slipknot, they announced a headlining tour right after and now I have tickets to die in the pit. All that finally pushed me to complete this after four months of procrastination. I’m not going to waste any more time, let’s finally get this over with.

(Content Information: The two major themes present in every song on this album are religious trauma and grief/loss. Do what you will with that information and proceed how you see fit, please take care.)

(Everything that gets discussed here is from a musical context, aside from Sit & Mourn, which is extremely close to me.)

Link to the album (definitely keep the volume low upon first listen): https://open.spotify.com/album/2sLBMdUF5HYNB0voqWs4K3?si=RUuxMBU6R2qeEOWZhVI4bA

“Are you followed by the Thirst?” -Thirst 

The opener is a short one, an introduction that immediately establishes exactly what the listener is in for. It begins with the gentle clanging of a church bell, which lingers for thirty seconds before vocalist Bryan Garris inhales and screams at the top of his lungs for five seconds. From there, it instantly breaks into an huge clash of instruments and heavy vocals. Despite being about the insatiable thirst for answers concerning the authenticity of religion and the proceses of life and death, this track is actually really fun. It’s extremely fast and does a wonderful job at sounding like it’s in excruciating pain, almost as if it’s being forcefully held back by something. None of the members are held back here though, everyone uses all their momentum to showcase the full extent of the band’s sound. Having it as the introduction was such a good choice, it sets the bar extremely high and leaves you recoiling if you don’t see it coming.

“The pain I swallowed has been stuck in my throat” -Piece By Piece 

With Thirst out of the way, we’re immediately thrown into the first full length track. This song showcases denial and attempted repression. It’s very repetitive, constantly repeating verses and the chorus to showcase the struggle that comes with trying to hold things off and seem fully functional externally despite the pain always being there internally. (brief emetophobia mention) The metaphor they seem to be vaguely using for this is getting so upset you end up throwing up all over the place. That last part in particular hits hard, if you try to hold something down, it’s going to come back up. It doesn’t work, nobody is exempt from that. (over) However, there is no right or wrong way to grieve, even though some ways do more harm than others. Logic isn’t applicable, you react how you psychologically react. You never know who you’re going to become as a response.

“I will dig until I find the fucking root, I suffered because of you” -Suffocate (ft. Poppy)

This is the most popular song on this album and it definitely deserves to be, as it’s really something special. The production, the vocals, the breakdown, every aspect of it comes together and creates one of the most memorable tracks on Knocked Loose’s discography. It features Poppy, who carries her weight to the extreme and sounds amazing alongside Bryan. I think what’s being discussed here is the feeling of being suffocated by the expectation to follow religious values taught to perfection, and breaking away from the control of those who attempt to enforce them. It gets the message across well, going out of its way to give you the feeling like you’re literally being suffocated through its lyricism, clinging to strangulation, consciousness and the ability to breathe for dear life. And of course, it’s not possible to talk about this song without mentioning the breakdown. The sheer power that radiates from it is enough to grasp the attention of people who don’t even like hardcore and put them in a chokehold. It’s reached worldwide popularity, I saw a video of a J-Pop group dancing to it on Twitter and it was all I saw in my head whenever I heard it for a week. It even made them briefly surpass Taylor Swift on the billboard. Considering the influence and power she has on the music industry, that’s pretty fucking impressive. 

Edit before this is even posted: Just found out this song is actually about being stabbed in the back. Someone please take my brain out of my head and give it a good shake. Thanks.

“A fitting end for an absolute fucking clown.” -Don’t Reach For Me 

Bryan said that this song was about, “the guttural takedown of someone who fucked around and found out”, which is the funniest thing ever because that’s exactly what it is. There’s no better way I could put it. Don’t Reach For Me is a cautionary tale about a person who became too engulfed in religious virtues, mistreating and abandoning their loved ones after claiming that they were too impure and sinful for their liking. When they realized they were wrong and attempted to come crawling back, they were shunned by those that once adored them. It really showcases the consequences of giving up on the people you’re supposed to love more than anything for stories and concepts that usually don’t even condone that type of behavior to begin with and were misinterpreted horribly. The anger in this song is what makes it stand out from the others. You can hear the rage and hurt in those lyrics and it just continues to intensify to the point where it actually becomes really intimidating. If you listen to it while pretending you’re the one getting screamed at, it makes you feel like you’re trash and worth absolutely nothing. What goes around comes around, and when it’s your turn to face those you’ve hurt, God won’t be there to save you from their wrath. 

“This house just swallows me, it doesn’t feel like it did before” -Moss Covers All

The shortest track on Knocked Loose’s discography, a 46 second intro to Take Me Home. The transition is flawless, you can’t even tell the difference between the two. This is a song where the drums really stand out. Through the mass chaos, you can hear them loud and clear. I do think it was an interesting choice to put it by itself instead of just attaching it to Take Me Home, but I’m glad they did, as it singles out Pac’s talent in the best way imaginable. 

“I thought I could run…I’m not as strong as I thought I was. Take me home, now.” -Take Me Home

Probably the second scariest song on this band’s discography. Everything about this track is completely and utterly terrifying. The ambiance is so haunting and it exists to give you the feeling as if there’s something steadily following you, only to start viciously chasing you down once you realize it’s there. The entire point of this song is to make you feel minuscule and weak, unable to shake the feeling that there’s something bigger and stronger than you close by that can wipe you out at any time if it desires. Dare I explain it even further, it’s a clear metaphor for a higher power. While I do prefer the aforementioned way of looking at it, I also think it can be interpreted as begging for death from a surface level, heavily implied by the title and the lyric, “I’m not as strong as I thought it was”. Whatever it may be, the protagonist inevitably falls victim to the thing that’s tormenting them, getting cut off with a “Take me ho-“ before a horrifying instrumental comes crashing in. It ends with a sample done by Rex Allen; “Over three hills, I soon will go.”, a heavy reminder that we all have to die someday, no matter how it may happen. 

“I tried but I can’t let it go now, let the roles reverse” -Slaughterhouse 2 (ft. Chris Motionless)

We’re breaking down the wall again. Another band I like, Motionless In White, becomes really important here. Last summer, I was obsessed with all their albums, especially Scoring The End Of The World, which contains a track called Slaugherhouse. The feature on that song was none other than Bryan Garris, our Knocked Loose vocalist. Fast forward to this summer and now we have Slaughterhouse…2. Only this time, Knocked Loose called in Chris Motionless as the feature. The original song provides an interesting visual, comparing civilians to pigs getting brutally slaughtered by “butchers”, the corrupted rich with an unlimited amount of authority. However, this one is a lot tamer concerning that graphic imagery and speaks more directly towards the listener, whereas the first part focuses on the justifiable anger towards the problem and bringing awareness to it. The subject matter is about the same, with additional mentions of stuff like nepotism and explicit laundering. What ties this song to the themes of grief and religion is the lyric used in both Slaughterhouses; “one mutilation under God”, which critiques how a higher being can allow and seemingly condone the injustice and callousness continuously taking place on Earth. It’s just one lyric, yet it holds such a large amount of significance in the grand scheme of things. 

“You’re drowning in the waves, ‘cause nothing still can stay.” -The Calm That Keeps You Awake

This song is probably the most interesting to me. During my first few listens of it, I focused only on the part that stands out the most: the instrumental. It has this really distinct percussive aspect where they use a lot of pipes and what seems to be a woodblock. It immediately isolates it from the other tracks, giving it a different feel in a really good way. I couldn’t hear the lyrics well on this one until I actually bothered to look into them, which definitely got me wondering about the subject matter. This one feels the most complex, showcasing a person who falls into addiction as a result of being unable to cope with the death of a loved one. The religious double meaning is also very prominent here; it would be someone reminiscing on who they were before they lost control after becoming too immersed in a belief system. In that context, I’d assume they started following it to attempt to find closure in a death of a loved one, leaving them more vulnerable to getting stuck in that situation. I wish the band showed this song more of the love it deserves, it seems to be the track they talk about the least and that makes me sad. 

“Bend your knee, Son of God.” -Blinding Faith

An extremely intense track covering one of the central themes apparent in this album, religious trauma. It takes all of that anger, terror, distress and frustration with religion and encapsulates it into this immensely powerful statement of resistance against the strongly enforced virtues of the church. Everything about it is thought out and it definitely pays off, the execution is done perfectly. It’s approached so harshly and straightforwardly, yet instead of targeting the people who practice the religion, it targets the intolerant and hypocritical people that run the church. The protagonist seems to be someone who’s been heavily affected by the warped values enforced by people who misunderstood the original text, not necessarily the religion itself. It’s something that we don’t usually see in these types of songs, it feels like a really interesting subversion of the typical cliché. With its release, Bryan stated that the album isn’t meant to be something anti-religion, yet the imagery is something many people tend to resonate with. These tracks just speak out against the people who make it into something it was never intended to be. That statement is more prominent here than it is with any other track. It’s a breath of fresh air, and based on the delivery, you can tell Bryan felt extremely powerful shouting some of those lyrics and reclaiming his individualism. 

(I don’t care what Bryan says, that one lyric is “Bend your knee, Son of God.” You can’t convince me that he said “child of God.” Schild of God, whatever, you do you) 

“Brought back by a voice unknown…you won’t go before you’re supposed to.” -Sit & Mourn

(CONTENT WARNING: discusses grief and suicide in depth, inside and outside of a musical context)

“'Sit & Mourn’ looks at what it is to lose and not know what to believe about where that loss leaves you” -Bryan Garris

It’s finally time for me to talk about this one. It hasn’t been long since the release of You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, but this song means the absolute world to me. Upon first listen, I was left in so much shock and pain it took me hours to process what I was just completely destroyed by. Sit & Mourn is the raw album closer that cradles loss, grief, where we go after death and the consequences that come with taking your own life. It’s a brutal yet beautiful depiction of something so unbelievably tragic, to the point where it presents itself as a tribute to the biggest trials that come with being human. There’s beauty and torment in both life and death and this song showcases that very clearly. 

While the lyricism here is absolutely beautiful and so well written, there’s a large instrumental focus as well that’s very reminiscent of death metal, with the guitar and bass shining through like never before. This song’s main feature is deceiving you into thinking it’s over, only to come back that much harder and in an increased amount of anguish. Right when you think it’s about to calm down, something else hits you and ramps the intensity back to the extreme. The instrumental takes up the entirety of the last half of the song, aside from a brief exchange. Right when the song is about to come to a close, someone asks, “Why did you leave?” before the riff slams right back in. 30 seconds later, it’s followed by, “I felt like I failed” and that’s how it ends. It’s haunting in every context of the word.

For background context, the album title comes from a lyric in this song; “Brought back by a voice unknown, you won’t go before you’re supposed to.” While on a plane with extreme turbulence, Bryan, who already had a horrible fear of flying in general, became panicked. The person next to him took note of it and said, “You won’t go before you’re supposed to. God's plan and all, but maybe you're supposed to go today.”, and that was something that stuck with him. He was able to make peace with the statement once things calmed down and it was carried over to the studio to be worked into something cathartic. Guitarist Isaac Hale further emphasized this, stating that the album name serves as a cool, hopeful juxtaposition to the dark and foreboding lyricism. The album gets its sense of optimism across by invoking terror. In an attempt to make sense of it, you come to conclusions you never expected to that vary in nature. If you care more about the lyricism than the sound, this song is the one that’s most applicable to said statements the most by far. 

I don’t like saying, “Oh, this song saved my life”, because it really didn’t, but it contributed to helping me save myself. That one lyric, “Will you inherit my grief if I finally choose to sleep?”, is the hard hitter that somehow managed to alter the way I think. It sent me reeling in a way I can’t even begin to describe in depth and it killed something within me for the better. There will always be that one person who will end up impacted horribly by your actions, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. There’s going to be a vacancy and that sickening absence will be felt by those who you surrounded yourself with, even if your relationship was something as simple as an acquaintance. I’ve never talked about this publicly, I think now is the only time where I can really do it. I’ve never been a stranger to death, but in one specific instance, I lost my best friend to a very brutal suicide a few years back. I ended up with prolonged grief and if I wasn’t mentally there before, what I’ve become is awful. I try to hide it with mostly silence and a sense of dignity but it’s unfortunately become a major part of the person I am. This song encapsulates the aftermath of that loss perfectly. There’s just a lot of guilt, confusion and regret associated with it and that can really make you turn on yourself. The contemplation of becoming the deadringer of someone who went before you is excruciating and that’s what’s primarily addressed here. The dialogue at the end is meant to showcase that cycle; “Why did you leave” and “I felt like I failed”. A painful confrontation between the person who died and the person who attempted to follow, grief plaguing them both even in death. It’s a potential conversation that occurs over and over again if someone is unable to plant their roots into a stable ground and find meaning where they currently are. That messed with my head in a way I think I needed it to.

With the final back and forth dialogue uttered in a hazy effect, the song is left feeling open-ended because you’re the only one who can make those choices for yourself and decide how you feel. It goes out of its way to reassure you that you’re not a lost cause for being terrified of impending mortality or contemplating leaving. It addresses that and attempts to help those who are terrified for their time find comfort, while gently scaring those who want to go as a result of their own hand out of it simultaneously. It acknowledges that pain and terror and it lets you know that what you think isn’t wrong, we’re all just blurred by confusion and doubt. No one knows anything for certain. Even if someone you cared for more than anyone is gone, nobody is ever alone in this. We’re all stuck in the same place, with a lot of us in similar unfortunate situations. People come and go. We don’t know why, but using speculation to find solace isn’t always a bad thing if no internal or external harm to yourself and others is done in the process. As previously mentioned when discussing Piece By Piece, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Focus on strength, carry yourself through the fire. Do whatever it takes to try to keep moving forward. You won’t go before you’re supposed to.