Like most of our songs "Rising Up" spent a long time being written, changed and then changed again. We decided to move ourselves to a different location as we had hit a creative wall, and so packed some bags and studio gear and stayed in John and Fraser's parents house while they were away for a few weeks.

We'd been working on what would become "Rising Up" but were having trouble making all of our ideas and things that we wanted out of the song to sit together and make sense. There were a few key things that we liked, which were; the big stomping heavy riff that kicks the song off, the fact that the chord progression was the same throughout the whole song (an idea we'd tried many times before but had never been able to get onto a recorded album track so far), and the general attitude of the song itself. It felt lairy and raucous and heavy but in a really interesting way.

We had decided, as we had with everything on the album, that whatever we did we wanted it to be new and interesting creatively speaking, and not a repeat of ideas we had already done in the past.

To that end, if something was to be heavy, like the riff was, the challenge was how to make it heavy without doing what we would usually do, so the 'chorus' riff was played on single strings in drop-B tuning with an octave pedal to add even more low end and heaviness without having to track loads of guitars and doubled it up with a super distorted low synth that slid between the notes and really added a modern feel.

We had Ben play hi-hats consistently throughout the whole song, instead of the standard crash and ride style that we would have traditionally gone to. We used synths for extra atmosphere in the verses to open them up and contrast the tightly coiled nature of the chorus and sequencing for more rhythm and melody moments which was really exciting for us.

We liked the attitude and swagger that the song had and so for the vocals we channeled Michael Jackson and that's where the opening line of 'yeah, they say that your best ain't good enough' comes from. We could really imagine him singing that and so that was the vocal that stuck (out of the countless ones I'd written for the song previously).

We also liked the contrast of the big riff and groove contrasting with the air-y nature of the back half of the vocal melody with the falsetto arrangement, and didn't try to 'over-hook' the chorus so that the main melody in the bridge between chorus and verse two would stand out which again has more of a pop sensibility to it.

When it came to the middle 8, we talked for a long time about the hip hop sequencing pattern, as there are elements to it (and the whole song in general) that we hadn't attempted before. There is always the discussion of balancing who you are as band, or rather what people's perceptions of your band is, and what you want to do to be creatively satisfied, but for us this album had to be about taking risks and pushing ourselves into new places sonically and so we decided to keep it in.

There's a defiance and a swagger to the song and we felt that, as we have done since day one, the best course of action was and always is to be true to yourself creatively and do what feels right and is therefore the most honest.

We took it into the studio in Bath to do the album and as soon as the riff dropped in our producer Steve stood up and put his fists in the air and we knew we'd achieved what we wanted to.

I'm glad the track made the cut because it's super fun to play live and feels like a fresh exciting rock song and I love hearing it super loud when we play it, even in soundcheck.