Have you ever reached out for help and felt like you weren’t fully heard or understood? Tonight Alive are sharing what seems to be an experience of this in their new song “Temple”.
The Sydney band of Jenna McDougall, Jake Hardy, Cam Adler and Matt Best have just lost guitarist Whakaio Taahi, however they’re continuing to move forward, with “Temple” and its music video being released in the lead-up to Underworld. The album releasing via UNFD on 12th January will be Tonight Alive’s fourth album.
“Temple” could be seen as a person confiding in doctor/professional about the struggle going on within their body. They feel desperate, stuck, and overwhelmed by their experience and need someone to help them with it. “Temple” seems to lyrically echo Bring Me The Horizon‘s “Avalanche”, where Oliver Sykes is under the weight of the symptoms of ADHD and ‘can’t keep wondering why’, demanding that the professional ‘start over, check again, now tell me what you find’.
“My body is a temple, tell me why it hurts like hell”
“Temple” is a very real look at mental health despite its very catchy and connective sound. Whether or not we treat our bodies as a ‘temple’ by giving them the best of nutrition and care doesn’t make us immune to depression, anxiety, or self-doubt, nor living in an experience of emotional pain.
“Temple”‘s bridge is a heavy reminder of the fact that mental disorders aren’t a matter of controlling thoughts or feelings, and the seeming contradiction of the loss of control in a state where control is irrelevant. The ending of the video courtesy of a crowd dancing with the band in the dark feels like collective freedom, despite our individual darknesses.
Check out “Temple” via it’s music video below or stream “Temple” via Spotify.
