It never occurred to me how many songs from the first Billy Talent album begin with the letter ‘L’. It feels like I wrote the last one to do so only a few days ago. It’s been three weeks! There are only three songs on that record that begin with that letter, but that still makes up a quarter of the tracklist. This is the last one from those that I’ll cover. It’s ‘Living in the Shadows’, and it’s the second song on the album.

This track just carries on the anger and ferocity that is established on album opener ‘This Is How It Goes’ and threaded throughout the 41 minutes the album lasts for. There’s a theme of seeing through artifice and lies that also runs through the album – and a lot of the band’s discography, thinking about it – and it’s definitely the predominant subject in this song too. Ben Kowalewicz’s sings/screams about those who hop on trends and put on a front to try and look cool but are ultimately lying to themselves because it isn’t truly how they are. All of this is summed up in a chorus which blasts these people for trying to change other people when they don’t even know themselves and are ‘living in the shadows’.

I think this song’s just great. Everything about it is so furious. How Kowalewicz’s can switch from singing to screaming in a split-second during the choruses is beyond me. And the song’s ending where he repeats the chorus among the barrage of guitars, snare hits and cymbals makes it a classic to me. I see it like a sister song to ‘This Is How It Goes’; they’re both sort of similar musically and even use the stop-starting guitar break in their respective instrumental bridges. Both those tracks are just so negatively charged in their outlook of the world… but they both work as a great one-two punch to begin the album.