Music Review // Kasador "Butterflies"

 

Back in the late (late) 1990's heading into the early 2000's there was an over abundance of pop punk.  It felt like there were bands out there on MTV and the radio (you know the ones) and so everybody was playing in similar styles, as record labels were still prominent and trying to sign that next big thing.  Kasador finds a way to create a sound that few others were willing to take pop punk at that time.  It's later stages of Unwritten Law (their self-titled album for example), 22 Jacks, Shades Apart, The Break and River City High.  But having heard all of those bands back then and hearing Kasador now I'm just amazed by how big their sound is.

As this song begins, it has the lines "So I disguise / Anxiety as butterflies".  Sometimes it's easier for our mental health to think of things in ways like that- trying to turn the bad into good.  As the song goes on it says "But I'll be fine / 'Cause I'm floating with the fluttering / Of butterflies / Living breathing feeling but".   This is an interesting line because it goes into the next verse which says "All this time / It's slow motion going into overdrive / Soaring up into the highest heights / But I tell my friends I'm fine".

No one can really understand what that mental anguish and anxiety can feel like for someone else.  Personally, I'm terrified of heights- I don't like being up in high places because I feel like if I fall it's out of my control to stop from hitting the ground.  So when I feel a lot of anxiety, it can feel like I'm on top of a giant building looking down and this song really captures that.  It also captures the idea- through the butterflies- that sometimes we don't really get over our anxiety and our mental health issue- it's not a problem to be solved.  But rather we end up just kind of learning to live with them.

I have a lot of ideas and opinions about mental health, being a product of the system and medicines myself, but this doesn't need to be so much of a talk about that as it does to shine light on the fact that you are not alone in whatever you are going through.  That is something which I take comfort in knowing and so if you ever feel that faith slipping or that feeling of the butterflies becoming too much, just listen to this song and know that you do not have to be cured you just have to stay alive.