Bastille explain the meaning and inspiration behind new song ‘Doom Days’

The song is the title track from their upcoming third album

Bastille have explained the meaning and inspiration behind their new song ‘Doom Days’.

The song, which was released last month, is the title track from the London band’s upcoming third album.

Speaking to NME, the group’s Dan Smith and Kyle Simmons discussed how the song was written, its video, and the many verses that went into its creation.

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“We wanted to really cement what is that you might be trying to escape,” said Smith. “So if the album is about a night out and it’s about escapism, I think we got to the end of the process and felt like it was really important to identify quite specifically what these modern anxieties that we all face are. Some of which feel really serious and oppressive and some of which are kind of ridiculous and mundane.”

“We had so much to say,” added Simmons, revealing that his bandmate had written around 50 verses for the song.

Doom Days
Bastille

Continuing to speak about the writing of the track, Smith said: “It just felt really important coming off the back of the last album that we’d done – addressing escapism and addressing hedonism as a tool to avoid the things in the world and in the news and in your life, like your own personal daily worries. It just felt like we needed to be quite real with it.

“So I wanted to write this rolling script of these worries and take the piss out of it and poke fun at ourselves. I’m one of the worst people for being glued to my phone. Anyone that spends time with me will know that and everyone is constantly ripping me for it, which is completely fair enough cos it’s a bit awful. So I wanted to address that.”

The frontman described ‘Doom Days’ as “one of the more quickly turned around and difficult to achieve tracks” that the band have produced. “I couldn’t decide on what to say,” he explained, adding that he later wrote even more lyrics while on a plane to Australia. “I just couldn’t stop thinking and I probably wrote 30 more verses. We ended up having to get a studio in Melbourne to record [them].”

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Watch the full video interview with Bastille about ‘Doom Days’ above now.

The four-piece’s third album will be released on June 14, via Virgin EMI. Earlier this month, they released another new track from it called ‘Joy’, which Smith told NME was “the moment at the end [of the night], almost that moment of redemption when you wake up on the kitchen floor and all of the anxieties come flooding in.”

Bastille will take the album on the road this summer as they play a series of festival slots, including appearances at Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds. They will then embark on a club night tour in winter, visiting towns across the UK that are usually missed off of tour schedules.

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