Invisible Enemy

Album: Phantom Anthem (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • The first single to be released from Phantom Anthem, "Invisible Enemy" was debuted on the July 26, 2017 episode of SiriusXM's Liquid Metal, one day after August Burns Red teased the album's release date.
  • The song was written by guitarist JB Brubaker. Asked by Billboard what makes the track special to him, vocalist Jake Luhrs replied:

    "Personally, I'm the guy in the band that just loves breakdowns, and I just love aggressive songs. Initially, when JB had written that song, I was like, 'Yeah dude, for sure. I'm gonna tear this one up. This is my kind of vibe.' There's a part in the middle of the song where I scream, and I think it's like 16 seconds long or something like that. And I call it the 'Wolverine scream,' because in the lyric, we're talking about being surrounded by pain. So I really wanted to convey that, you know? That this is really hurting and it's making me frustrated and it's painful. It's a painful scream.

    So I sat there in the studio, and I must have been in there for half an hour, just working on this one scream… I would think of my own pain, like things I had been going through or things that I had just experienced, to get me to a place of feeling that. But then I thought to myself, 'How do I envision this scream coming out of me?' And the thing that came to me was Wolverine. I don't know if you've ever seen any Wolverine movies or were a fan of him when you were younger, but when he gets angry, he kind of growls a little bit, and then his scream comes out. So I was trying to mimic that and really be pissed off, you know what I mean? So the combination of thinking about the way he would scream and how crazy scary the sound is, and my thoughts of pain and suffering in my life, I just kind of went for it and finally got a really, really good take."
  • Working with director Samuel Halleen, the song's stop-motion music video features the band being turned into miniature marionette versions of themselves, closely resembling the format employed by the Team America: World Police film. The clip includes a scene of one of August Burn Red's most iconic visuals for their 2009 song "Meddler."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Janet Jackson

Janet JacksonFact or Fiction

Was Janet secretly married at 18? Did she gain 60 pounds for a movie role that went to Mariah Carey? See what you know about Ms. Jackson.

Muhammad Ali: His Musical Legacy and the Songs he Inspired

Muhammad Ali: His Musical Legacy and the Songs he InspiredSong Writing

Before he was the champ, Ali released an album called I Am The Greatest!, but his musical influence is best heard in the songs he inspired.

Rush: Album by Album - A Conversation With Martin Popoff

Rush: Album by Album - A Conversation With Martin PopoffSong Writing

A talk with Martin Popoff about his latest book on Rush and how he assessed the thousands of albums he reviewed.

Al Jourgensen of Ministry

Al Jourgensen of MinistrySongwriter Interviews

In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.

N.W.A vs. the World

N.W.A vs. the WorldSong Writing

How the American gangsta rappers made history by getting banned in the UK.

Modern A Cappella with Peder Karlsson of The Real Group

Modern A Cappella with Peder Karlsson of The Real GroupSong Writing

The leader of the Modern A Cappella movement talks about the genre.