Order Of Owls give back, with a holistic journey through their recent singles ‘What Becomes,’ ‘Freedom(ination)’ & ‘Speak Up’
If you aren’t taking care of yourself, everything will suck. That’s pretty much what Order Of Owls is about, sharing the stories and experiences that led us to this simple fact.
The thing is, while you’re neck deep in the shit, the world sucks. Everything sucks. There’s precious little time to focus on ourselves. To discover our needs, desires and dreams. The constant attention deficit and lack of support is damaging. Little by little, we can forget who we are, who we want to be and how we want to be towards others.
It’s common for humans to feel isolated and alone, but it doesn’t need to be that way. We as a band would never claim to have universal answers to these issues, but we love music and appreciate it as a vessel to convey how we feel and how we as individuals find and define our place in the world.
This band is our way of saying: Everything will be okay, even when it’s not. This is what we have done and what has been helpful.
Here’s a breakdown of our recent singles, they follow a non linear story where you can insert yourself or someone you care about.
Freedom(ination):
“On a surface level, it’s a cautionary tale of compromising your values in the face of adversity. The 5 of us have spent most of our lives learning to not mask who we are so others are comfortable. We’re in a constant cycle of learning, refining, forgetting, and repeating. These cycles put us in positions where we fly and falter, but the ultimate lesson learned is that shame gate keeps the ability to embrace who you truly are.”
Behind the music video:
“This was my first time directing a music video and I had a very clear idea of how I wanted the song to be presented. At a glance, it’s a performance video and not much more, but the story is in the visuals themselves.
The primary inspiration was drawn from an artist called “The Caretaker” who creates music that explores dementia and cognitive decline. It’s ballroom music that at first sounds normal but as his albums play out, they become noisy, distorted, discombobulated, unrecognizable (save for some brief periods of clarity). They are beautiful and horrific pieces of music that absolutely tore me apart.
I wanted to reflect some of that in the visuals. The overall picture distortion, rapid camera movement, presence of bodies but limited view of faces, video glitching. It was to appear claustrophobic and stressed with touches of hangover and distress. There are, however, moments of humor in it if you pay close enough attention.“ – Nathan, Guitars
Speak Up
“My goal is to put into words what others struggle to articulate. Help them realize that they are not alone in the way they feel and encourage them that it’s okay to seek help so they can become their best selves. The amount of time and work that might be required will seem like a small trade for the reward of happiness and finding mechanisms towards those ends is the strongest thing a person can do. Doing so myself provided a mechanism that has vastly improved handling my day to day.” – Tim, Vocals
“Depression isn’t just a feeling of bad, it’s an exhausting cycle of dis-regulation. Feeling fine or even euphoric at one point and utterly hollow at another. Vacillating between these extremes in a debilitating parade of moments towards an erosion to the sense of self. Preferring the allure of a permanent ends to a seemingly endless drudgery. An inability to find any breadcrumbs leading back to connection with others.” – Nathan, Guitars
What Becomes
“What Becomes is an observation of the rigid mentality that may potentially take place in today’s social structure if we continue on the current path. The song is not designed to make the listener think one way or the other, but to inspire holistic thinking and to ask the question, is this the right way forward?
The hope is to shift their mindset from black and white line of thoughts into the gray.
Where Freedom(ination) presents the hopelessness and fragile state of mind one can find themselves in and Speak Up is the first action one must take to overcome this adversity, What Becomes is the next step on the mental health journey. It asks the question: We have overcome many issues and are on the path to our better selves. But what is next? What becomes of the healed? What choices do we make now, and how do we not fall again? But more importantly, now we have seen both sides. How can we stop that cycle from happening on a large scale?”
-Tim, Vocals
Behind the music video:
“The first thing I was told when I turned up to the shoot was that the site didn’t have power, I couldn’t help but laugh. Luckily, we were somewhat prepared for this situation and managed to squeeze enough out of a little petrol generator and Ramon’s van with an inverter. I really do mean squeeze. The generator kept cutting out and struggled to run the haze machine at half power with the lights. That made for a lot of fun when we lost the daylight and struggled through the dining hall shoots, plunging us into complete darkness every 20 minutes. When you’re in rural Australia and the light pollution is non-existent, that particular darkness was unsettling.” -Nathan, Guitar.
Words By Order Of Owls
