If you listen beneath the heavy guitar riffs, gut-wrenching screams and lyrics scattered with motifs of bleeding, bruising and pain, you’ll find that the overall message of Inersha’s debut album, This Is Life, is actually about love, relationships and standing up for oneself, says lead singer Fred Honig.
“If you listen to [the album], it sounds negative but there’s a positive message at the end of the songs. It’s about standing up and saying, ‘Never again.'”
But the lyrical misconception has a purpose. Honig says he tries to keep his lyrics vague enough for people to interpret it any way they want. The best example of this is Powder, a song that seems to be about cocaine — but Honig clears that up, saying it’s actually about a headache powder.
Released on South African rock label Alter Ego, This Is Life is described as post-hardcore-melodic emo. It exists somewhere between “sad nirvana” and “happy-happy” emo, according to Honig.
Emo is a subgenre of hardcore punk music and is short for “emotional hardcore”.
Hailing from Johannesburg, the band members left El Camino two years ago to form Inersha and “to start afresh”. Honig says there are big differences in the music they now play compared with that of El Camino — mostly they are now more emotional about their music.
“The comments we get from people are that [the music] is a lot more emotional and not as contrived. El Camino was more technically oriented; this band is more focused on emotional aspects connecting with people through real issues,” he says.
Guitar strumming flows easily into bruising and thumping guitar riffs throughout the album. The ingenuity of guitarist Sean Williams and bassist Cavan Sheahan is evident in every song, particularly in the title track and Animate, a song about alcoholism.
“Bands in South Africa are more power driven, their songs are energetic; we’re more emotionally driven. We want people in the back to listen and jam or, even though it sounds lame, for someone to cry,” says Honig.