This is just scratching the surface, though. Tobi is a deep thinker, and doesn’t believe his views and inspirations behind this album – or any of their records, for that matter – are easily marketable. They can’t be condensed into a couple of pithy quotes for a viral social media campaign. This is why, despite the studio emptying and the end of the working day approaching, he will not rush. He will stay here long after everyone has left the building, exploring every nook and cranny of perspective on this body of work.
And when Tobi tackles a topic within his music – like mental illness or the complexities of politics and identity – he doesn’t just grab an idea and run. These tracks are not brief moments of rage at something learned about through Twitter or an AI generated Instagram Reel. They’ve been pondered, looked into, and intricately picked apart.
The band’s barnstorming collab with I Prevail’s Eric Vanlerberghe, Be Someone, most richly divulges into toxic masculinity, and this ultra-macho, big personality-big winner idea. But there’s a “broader brush stroke” that underpins the track, which was made even more relevant when the two bands witnessed a drunk man trying to start a scrap with anyone he could while at a pub during their tour in Ireland.
“It’s more about our general proclivity for violence as a first option, and that obviously ties into bigotry and whatnot, but we just seem so quick to believe that we resolve issues by who is bigger and who is louder,” explains Tobi. “You have people in the social media space these days who are overwhelmingly popular. I won’t name names, but a lot of their ideology is like, 'As long as I’m massive and I know how to fight and can make loads of cash, I’m right.'”
The positive attention this sort of attitude garners online sets the wrong precedent for the kind of person that people should aspire to be, Tobi believes. We should do more good things and not shout about them. We should care less about clout.
“I don’t want to be the type of person that is just trying to be a big personality just so that I can get money and fame, and be the loudest and strongest and biggest person in the room and make that my ethos.”