Back in 2005, Nine Black Alps released their debut album Everything Is. Now, I can remember being alive at that time, seeing songs like ‘Unsatisfied’ and ‘Just Friends’ being played on MTV2. I thought both tracks were all right, didn’t grab me too much. But I distinctly remember an advert promoting Everything Is showing up on TV, and a little clip of a music video by the band that I hadn’t seen before was used in it. That small clip turned out to be from the video for ‘Not Everyone’, and I liked it so much that I went to search for the full video. Luckily, the band had it on their official website. This is back when YouTube wasn’t existing. And when I found it, I repeatedly watched it on Windows Media Player, even if my old computer’s poor Internet connection meant that I had to suffer through long moments of buffering.

All these years of listening to it, I don’t think I fully know what it’s about. I don’t think there are any widely available interviews out there that could help me in telling you either. What I’m sure of though is that it doesn’t hold the most positive of sentiments. What drew me in initially was the riff during the intro. Once I got into that, there wasn’t much going back as it repeats itself through the song’s verses. Beyond the riff, I really appreciated how the instruments sort of played with one another. Like during the pre-choruses when the guitars drop out to let an emphatic strike of the tom-tom ring out. Or how during the verses, one guitar’s feedback will be blaring in one ear while the other guitar plays a riff in the other. Everything section has a smooth transition into the next, from intro to verse to pre-chorus to chorus and the same again, but it turns out that the track is heavy and quite intense, which makes it all the more awesome.

If it wasn’t for this track, I don’t think I would have became as big a fan of Nine Black Alps as I ended up becoming. ‘Not Everyone’ was great, that was clear. The two songs I mentioned in the first paragraph were up in the air. But then it turned out that Nine Black Alps would be in the soundtrack of almost every game by EA that was released later in the year. I’m exaggerating of course. But ‘Cosmopolitan’ appeared in FIFA 06, and ‘Shot Down’ in Burnout Revenge. It only made sense that I got the album, based on how many good times those games and songs brought into my life. Good decision too, ’cause Everything Is is a personal 10/10 of mine. Doesn’t feel like it’s aged at all.