On Saturday 24th December, Sunderland outfit To Nowhere are set to release their third and final single this year, Connected. The song is about not letting things hold you back in life and is a brooding rock track with crunchy riffs, soaring vocals and plenty of punk and grunge-inspired punch.
Here the band discusses what inspired their upcoming single, in connection with the video and the previous two single releases this year, Low and Medusa.
The lyrical content of Connected is about no matter what you do or how hard you try, there are always situations that hold you back or put you down in life, you can get stuck in limbo (or slumber referring to the song lyric). Don’t get stuck there, it’s the realisation that the only option is to keep going and push forward to where you want to be in life no matter what skills/experience you currently have or how far back you feel you are.
There are times in life where you feel like everyone knows more than you and you can’t seem to get to where you want to be. Don’t lock yourself away; try your best and never doubt yourself to the point of quitting your goals.
We were inspired by the style of 80’s movie posters and how they were designed; posters such as Skeletons in the Closet, Nightmare on Elm Street and Suspria do this really well with subtle colour that pops out. Movies about cults really inspired the vibe of the video too, such as The Wickerman which really inspired the cultists in both this and our previous video for Medusa. Cults in general are really interesting too – I love (and hate) the thought that there’s always someone pulling the strings no matter what the situation is, which can be quite a scary thought.
Throughout our two previous videos, we’ve tried to keep a theme of sorts, as when we started the band early 2022 we wanted to make our first three songs feel like a trilogy, and then possibly build on that in our releases for the near future.
For our first three songs, (Low, Medusa & Connected) we wanted these to be part of what we call the Siren trilogy.
Low
The intro feedback symbolises a prison siren and it is not a pleasant sound. For the prison scenario, when you hear that siren you know you’re not getting out. You’re trapped in four walls, with the feeling that you could probably start a riot in your own head.
Medusa
We tried to emulate the siren sound at the start of the guitar solo for this song. The cultists in Medusa portray what sirens do. In mythology, sirens lured sailors into their deaths. Alongside the band playing in the video, the cultists lure the band in and sacrifice them for their sinister needs.
Connected
Police sirens are emulated using a pitch shift pedal in the breakdown section of the song. The police are meant to represent panic, when you hear the sirens a first instinct is that something bad is happening wherever that siren sound is heading. The cultists are also seen in this video, they have taken over the band completely and are using the band to lure in more people. There is a new character in the video who hands out CD’s to try and break the band/audience out of the cultist trance.
With the sirens being such an unpleasant sound, no matter how hard you try not to hear it, if one is blaring, you are going to hear it. As a band, we want people to hear us, which we’re trying to portray with this trilogy.
We’re trying to leave little easter eggs in each video we make to create our own universe that hopefully, in the future, listeners of our band can look back on and spot little callbacks or hints to the next step of To Nowhere, we appreciate stuff like that in artists we enjoy so love the idea of including it ourselves.
Our plans after the release of Connected are to get underway with our next releases and continue with our next theme, which promises to build on from the heavier section heard at the end of Connected. The next three songs are unintentionally inspired by the Greek god Eros (The god of love), after writing the next three songs we discovered that the mythology behind Eros so happened to portray all the feelings and emotions that were put into the lyrics of the songs.
