Single Review: “ Your Uncertain Shadow” - The Hallelujah Ward

Milwaukee locals, The Hallelujah Ward, released “Your Uncertain Shadow” this April, leading to a captivating hold for their upcoming album Everybody Swoons [out on May 30th through Foreign Leisure Records].

Mark Waldoch, lead vocalist, and composer of this new single, has a strong, well crafted range to his voice to match the high energy of the variety of the bassist’s string notes along with the drummers quick switches of pace within the single.

As comforting as the sound is, the lyrics themselves are an uncomfortable topic for many, but one that needs to be spoken on.

This song uses symbolic interaction to the

loved ones lost due to suicide and reflecting on the loss of Scott Hutchinson, Frightened Deaths’ vocalist and guitarist. Shining a light onto the darkest times of struggling with mental health is not an easy task, yet The Hallelujah Ward managed to honor Hutchinson’s memory with moving lyrics and a new focus onto what has to change.

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“There must be something to fill the hole in you / No one knew…”

“There must be something to fill the hole in me”

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This band paints the grieving process that comes along with traumatic events so raw and authentically leaving listeners with the message’s deep importance behind this release. Repetitively throughout the single the lyrics shift between “I had a good friend” to “I’m no good friend”— recovering from a loss is never linear.

Society views grief as a natural, and expected, response to a loss of any importance to an individual, but the questions circle then to what is emphasized so intensely in the message of the song—

“What if?” “What did I miss before?” and “How will I get through this now?”

Suicide isn’t a natural loss, well renowned French Sociologist, Émile Durkheim’s famous book and study of suicide, states that suicide has two major components based on societal integration. Either the individual is too secluded from being a member of society, or they feel too much responsibility as their integration within all of society and the heavy roles that come along with those positions in life. This theory of understanding suicide can be applicable to assist in identifying and understanding the five stages of grief: 1. denial 2. anger 3. bargaining 4. depression, and lastly, 5. acceptance. This theory was originally developed by a famous Psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross via her 1968 publication On Death and Dying. Kubler-Ross’ work is taught across many psychological courses to reframe our societal norms of loss being normalized into ways to cope with the pain; by using both perspectives of these different social scientists’ teachings, that hole, or void, will start to be filled with love and appreciation instead of guilt. Understanding that others’ mental illness or personal decisions do not have to be carried as anothers’ burden is one of the most freeing things to learn. “Your Uncertain Shadow” shows the true pain and guilt survivors feel amidst a strong passion to spread awareness.

Review by Allie Loven