Track By Tracks: Blacktoothed - Headway (2025)
1. Get me Down:
As the album opener, Get Me Down sets the mood in the sense of “making personal headway” by lyrically delving into the challenges of making tough but essential choices to preserve one's sanity before it’s too late, offering an invigorating musical journey through the process of self-preservation. When looking at the recording process, Get Me Down was one of these songs that leave the studio the same way they entered it. Boom, done.
2. Antidote:
As getting further might also sometimes mean diving deep into your thoughts, Antidote presents a personal and very emotional story. The spheric vibe is what makes this song special and connects with the lyrical theme: Exploring one's self-rejection and the feeling of being a burden to others, even when they genuinely care about you. The song's raw honesty and evocative melodies make it a truly compelling experience. There are days when you’re just feeling completely at rock bottom, you know they will keep coming (and going) and sometimes it feels like you’ll never get out of this cycle. Antidote really is pure and raw emotion, the urge to want to break free.
3. True Colours:
True Colours was the very first song written for Headway. We have explored a heavier sound, telling of the frustration you feel when others have this fixed idea of you - that sometimes doesn’t match your own perception. So, if you say you are struggling, how does it help if someone just tells you, you look pretty damn alright?
4. Fight:
To be honest, you don’t really have to say much about Fight. It’s just 100% what the title already tells, namely being belligerent to the core. Growing up with constant fighting around you, will shape you, whether you like it or not. The way you deal with that knowledge is what’s important. I (Matti) can say that I take it with a good portion of humor and self-reflection!
5. Nocovaine:
It was our very first release after JULI. We were curious to expand our creativity (and our tuning). It was also the premiere for Matti to sing more than one or two lines. Do you know the feeling of being over- or under-challenged, never being at a comfortable level? We do, it’s no fun, but hey, we made a song about it to listen to, if you’re feeling that way right now haha! Prepare for a pleasant and heavy surprise at the end!
6. Hell’s Paradise:
Hell’s Paradise is a mystic arrangement of vocals, guitars, and cinematic elements, weaving a haunting tapestry. The song vividly conveys the sensation of being paralyzed, unable to escape one's own mind, and the feeling of racing against the clock, trapped in a paradox of having plenty of time (paradise) but struggling to use it wisely (hell) - which is just a very poetic way of talking about how you doomscroll way too much… Also, Hell’s Paradise holds the heavy feature of Felix Fröhlich (BITE) - Germany’s very own version of Kublai Khan, haha!
7.Walls:
Walls is one of the few songs on the album that have a rather positive message. It really was an important and very personal song to write, since it can take us years to learn that setting boundaries or - building up walls - can really save you from drowning in commitments in your life. Walls also serves as the perfect example of the diversity on Headway because of its many little EDM/80’s Hard Rock elements, which is what we as blacktoothed love and kinda view as our trademark.
8. Time Bomb:
If we talk about Time Bomb, we will have to talk about the Music Video. We have, in the whole blacktoothed history, never had a video shoot that was more fun. If you process all these heavy emotions with your music, it almost feels like we are rather serious people, and it makes sense because you couldn’t do a Time Bomb Video with a song like Antidote or Novocaine. But, we are always, and sometimes even in the most inappropriate situations, 100% joke-around-personalities. Time Bomb as such is a rather easy, flowing, and empowering track that serves as a musical declaration of unstoppable change in the world for the better. So we were absolutely thrilled that in this video, we could let our silly side shine.
9. Carried Away:
The final Headway song Carried Away finishes the musical experience in the style of a modern rock song without a doubt. With this one, one has to talk about the prototype 80s-style guitar solo, which is the highlight of the overall very steady and driving song about the agonizing choice between being a musician and this other life that adults live. :-)
It is supposed to leave you with a positive message - do what you enjoy in the moment, and with that, we want to say, thank you for reading & hopefully listening!
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