Paul Hundeby founded Orlando-based Arms as a project to explore his love of bands like Botch, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Converge.
Though the first releases were solo projects, momentum kept building, and Arms is now a full band. But as the band has grown, the world has continued its descent into chaos.
Their latest single, “In a Glass Cage,” captures the group at the apex of their power and features a guest contribution from Sean Richmond of Arsonists Get All the Girls. The song combines the frenetic violence of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Under the Running Board EP with the grinding, berserker shriek of Converge’s Jane Doe. Yet the song also has a quick, few-measure dynamic break in the middle that almost hints at Deftones or Team Sleep. The respite is short-lived before the chaos regains its foothold:
Vocalist Paul Hundeby says “In a Glass Cage” comes from the point where survival instinct begins to feel more honest than playing by society’s rules, particularly when those rules are being exploited by the people expecting you to follow them.
“They expect decency to function as a leash, believing that you’ll remain bound by the conventions they’ve already abandoned,” he explains. “If someone has decided that your goodwill is something they can exploit, then survival of the fittest begins to feel less like a moral failure and more like the only remaining language they understand.”
That idea also explains the deliberately exaggerated violence running through the song. “The traps, the noose, the violence, the blood, all of it becomes an inversion of the restraint that was expected of you,” Hundeby says. “By the end, the narrator isn’t asking permission anymore.”
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I Wish You Were Down Here With Me will be out on December 4 (vinyl & CD preorder).
Arms on social media: Instagram
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