Singled Out: Tetrarch's I'm Not Right

Keavin Wiggins | 06-29-2020

Tetrarch just released a new single called "I'm Not Right" from their forthcoming album "Unstable" (out Oct 2nd) and to celebrate we asked lead guitarist Diamond Rowe to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"I'm Not Right" was the very first song that we started writing for our upcoming album, 'Unstable'. The concept of this song kind of came first before any music or lyrics which is pretty interesting because it's rare that we actually write that way. It ended up really setting a tone for how we ended up tackling the writing for the rest of this album.

Josh and I were sitting around talking one day, and we started a conversation about how great it was that there was so much awareness surrounding mental health in our genre today. Fortunately, none of us struggle with mental health first-hand at this time but we ALL struggle with bad days or self-image issues occasionally. We really wanted to speak for not only those people struggling with mental health issues, but for those that may not have any underlying issues other than having a trying time in life at the moment. We wanted to speak on the idea that it is completely normal to feel absolutely deflated or defeated sometimes in this life but it's what you get from that feeling that really makes all of the difference. Those are the moments that really can make or break who we are. From that came the line "Looking in the mirror and I hate myself...". That line is just lyrically starting the song by letting the listener know that ok... this is rock bottom.

I remember Josh initially came up with that super slamming intro and verse riff. It was super heavy and rhythmic but not too over saturated which is what I truly loved about it from the moment I heard it. It really gave me a canvas to eventually incorporate some lead melodies and ominous sounds which I love doing. Prior to that we also never had a song where the verse was predominantly bass driven so it was something very different for us. We are generally a very guitar forward band so it was definitely a bit of a change up. We started jamming it in practice and I remember coming up with that little intro mangy single string part - which also ended up being the rhythm part of the bridge. It made everything come in even more slamming with all the instruments hit. I knew live we could do some fun stuff with extending that middle section and hyping the crowd up so they just go insane when it all drops in again with the "HATE!" part.

Once we got the bare bones of the song it was actually one of the very last songs to fully come together during the recording process. We all knew from just hearing the bare bones riffs and structure that it was a song that had huge potential so we didn't want to just throw anything on it. One day in the car Josh was like "Hey, I finally have a chorus melody - will you tell me what you think?" He sang it to me and I instantly knew that was it. It usually takes me a bit to sit with vocal parts before I know if I love them or not but that was one that I knew instantly had to be on the song. Once we started layering harmonies and leads etc - it ended up just being a huge song. Everything we wanted to convey with that song instrumentally and vocally came through just like we wanted to.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the making of the video here