Ah, the very first song I ever heard by Billy Talent. I can sort of remember it like it happened a few weeks ago. I want to say it was late 2003, but Wikipedia says the track was released as a single in the summer of 2004, so it couldn’t have been. I know I was in Year 4 at the time, so those two years check out. I was watching MTV2 as per usual, its video showed up, and I genuinely thought it was the greatest song I had ever heard. If this did happen in 2004 – which thinking about it now, it probably did – I was just about getting into rock music as a whole, spurred on by a huge liking for The Darkness. ‘River Below’ showed up on whatever day it was, the guitar riff was killer, I thought the chorus was amazing, it was unlike any other type of song I’d come across. Take into account I was either eight or nine, so cut me some slack.

The song was awesome. But because I was so young, I didn’t have the attention span to properly absorb the artist/song name when they appeared on the little banner that popped up near the end of the video. And for more than a year, I was left wondering what the name of that cool song I saw on MTV2 that one time was. “Into the river below/Running from the inferno….” – I could have sworn I typed those words into Google and nothing would ever come up. It was an itch that desperately needed to be scratched. Eventually I did find it. Someone decided to use it as the music for their Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy music video, which had been uploaded on a fansite dedicated to the cartoon. That show is one of the most underappreciated of its kind, by the way. The search was over. The song was just as I remembered. And that started my obsession with Billy Talent, as I went to their website, listened to the songs they allowed to be played in full on there + the music videos and found that I had a new favourite band on my hands. A strong following of the band that would last for many a year started via this very song.

And with all the personal stuff out the way, let’s put a little more focus on the subject at hand. The track’s lyrics describe a man who’s a little messed up in the head, has never been able to fit in and generally feels the world’s against him. He makes a bomb, planning to take himself out and other innocent people in the process, taking them into ‘the river below’ upon their quick and sudden deaths. It’s a nasty subject matter and a bit of a commentary/take on the same types of people who commit devastating acts of terror for news recognition, using situations like Columbine, the ’95 Oklahoma Bombing and the then-recent 2002 sniper attacks in Washington D.C. as inspiration. Like a lot of Billy Talent songs, Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing is very much the highlight throughout, playing licks and guitar phrases that sound like the work of two people. There’s a call/response dynamic going on through the verses. D’Sa and bassist John Gallant are the callers with lead vocalist Ben Kowalewicz retorting. There’s the cool pre-chorus, again with D’Sa’s unique chord progressions, and it falls into the almighty chorus, which I think is one of the best in the band’s catalogue. There are a lot of songs in this style that I used to like but wouldn’t think of listening to in these times. But 20 years on, ‘River Below’ is still one-of-a-damn kind. Just as good as I first remembered, then forgot, then found again.