Each Measure Feature: Kids In Decay

FEATURE

Cue the Cronies from Dallas Prog Metal outfit, Kids in Decay, plays like a call to action. Its fusion of prog rock and metal is essential to the song’s success–marrying prog’s empathy with metal’s aggression, as any true call to action should.

The band shares songwriting credits, and from the opening lyrics, we hear them grappling with an avalanche of human emotion, thought, and opinion in response to the disconcerting cultural moment we find ourselves in. Empathy emerges as a central theme, and like any deeply empathetic person, the song’s narrator struggles to balance rage over the expropriation of his civil liberties with his responsibility to resist fueling society’s rampant cynicism.

We’ve found ourselves in a bleak moment, and Kids of Decay wouldn’t recommend denying it. Rather, after establishing the severity of today’s climate–citing a culture of imbalanced censorship as a key contributor to our inability to trust one another–Kids of Decay launch into the song’s hook with a rallying call toward hope: “Time to accept all the changes,” they declare. “Time to change your perspective, realign points of view / Time for empathy and compassion / Every one of us, called to action / Time for love and ascension.”

Kids of Decay have issued a radical call–one that rejects the notion that multiple wrongs will make a right, and instead recognizes that the moment demands drastic measures of empathy and compassion be taken.

Cue the Cronies ends with the repetition of a soaring, operatic post-chorus that sounds incredibly apocalyptic in its language. : “House of cards in a hurricane / All lost summers in the pouring rain / Wasted now at the end of days / Ghosts of tomorrow, you have seen / All of this world, blue and green.” It’s harrowing and it effectively conveys how deeply unsettling it is to live in today’s world. However, invoking the “Ghosts of tomorrow,”–to me–points to a second perspective: that of those who will come after us, equipped–hopefully–with the benefit of hindsight, able to recognize how the ship was righted and, by employing the radical empathy and compassion promoted in this song, humanity steered itself through the storm.

KEEP UP WITH KIDS IN DECAY BELOW: