Track By Track: Attack Attack!'s "This Means War"

ATTACK ATTACK! vocalist Caleb Shomo takes us track-by-track through the band's new album, This Means War.

“The Revolution”
The opening line of the record is “start the revolution” which is about pretty much what it says; in the story there's a war happening against a twisted dictator. I loosely based a lot of his character on Hitler, and the war happening in the story on World War II. A lot of the song is about my character starting to lose his mind after killing so many people in the war–hearing voices, lots of freaking out on the inside, etc.

“The Betrayal”
After coming home from fighting for the government for a long time, my family in the story has been told I was killed. They have already accepted my death and basically it's written as a “What the hell? What are you talking about? I'm still alive!” to the wife.

“The Hopeless”
This song is about trying to deal with “The Betrayal” in more detail, and the internal battles of all these things piling on top of each other. It's very… well, hopeless.

“The Reality”
It's about being fed up and needing to find a way to deal with the insanity. It's about starting to have another voice in my head telling me to hate everything–lots of struggle in this song as well.

“The Abduction”
It's about the dictator sending a team to kidnap my son. It starts when I wake up to him being gone. I don't really realize it at the time but it's an attempt to get me out of house and try to find my son, as a trap. Also the doctor is very bitter at the progress made by our team in the battle. Lyrically, it's the most angry and aggressive song on the record, saying I'm going to find my son no matter what and make the dictator regret his decision.

“The Motivation”
In this song I talk about how I'm very desperate for things to be normal again. I'm very cashed mentally, and trying to motivate people to fight and take back what is ours, but if they don't want to, I'm committed to just doing it myself because I need to get my life back and bring the world back to peace and normality.

“The Wretched”
This song is about being completely at the end of my rope. This is the most painful and hopeless song. It's basically just crying out asking where God could be in any of this. Also it's about how I've been denying my insanity for so long, but am coming to terms with it and realizing it's not just my perspective, it's a fact.

“The Family”
This is when everybody decides it's time to take back what's ours and go on the hunt for the dictator. It's about the community of peers fighting for the same cause. We're all a family with one common goal, to take down the dictator and never back down no matter what.

“The Confrontation”
This is my confrontation with the dictator. It's very angry (like pretty much every other song) but specifically at him. It's basically a conversation from my point of view, really laying into him about all he's done to ruin my and everybody's life.

“The Eradication”
It's us taking over. It's our time now. We aren't letting this go on any longer how it is, and we will do what it takes to overtake the government. It's our time. We've become too strong to stop. We will prevail and defeat the dictator. alt