All About (Not in My Name)
Story of (NOT In my name)
We’re excited to show you our second release of 2026, (Not in My Name), part of our next EP ‘Thorns’ out April 10th on Bandcamp and April 17th everywhere else. Keep reading for a little of the backstory.
A little about (Not in My Name) from Iain:
“‘(Not in My Name) is rather cynically written from the perspective of a politician stood in the House of Commons as they denounce some [insert invasion/war/controversial action or decision here] in front of the public, without then really doing anything about it, and it feels like posturing, their statements simply read aloud so that they can be seen to have said them.”
The Video
“With the video for ’38 being very cinematic, with (Not in My Name) we wanted to stick to a more performance based video. Our good friend, videographer and ‘I, The Lion’ singer, Chris Evans, suggested using mirrors as the main aesthetic, and we quite liked that we could metaphorically hold these mirrors up to the main character in the song, who is using their platform to publicly denounce the actions of others whilst doing nothing to actually counter such actions; ‘mirroring’ the kind of posturing we often see from politicians in the House of Commons. Having little to no eye contact from us as we’re performing highlights how this character refuses to take a good look…”
Filmed by Will, Chris and Iain and directed and edited by Chris. With thanks to Chris Evans for inspiration.
Sketches to Demos to the real thing!
The earliest sketch we could find is markedly different to the final version; noticeably slower, and with completely different verse melody, and slightly different chorus melody also. Lyrically, the broad themes are in place, but the verses are completely rewritten by the final draft to (hopefully) more clearly represent a single character perspective.
The final demo is more different to the actual recording than we remember! Ewan’s lead guitar parts are pretty different throughout (particularly absent are the ‘Pyramid Song’-esque verse 2 chords), the chorus guitars are less rhythmic, the middle-8 hasn’t had those 2 beats trimmed off randomly yet, it’s still not the final lyric draft, and we do believe it’s a couple BPM slower than we ended up recording! I think much of these things would have been ironed out before going into the studio, except perhaps the tempo which might have been an on-the-day decision, we’re not sure. But oftentimes these demos end up sitting around for a while before we get studio time, and a lot can change in that time!
Artwork
We couldn’t leave this without another BIG thank you to our good friend Laura! She used vinyl cutting to make the perfect imagery for (Not in My Name) – Honestly we were blown away by this one! – all done by hand and scanned over and we couldn’t be more greatful!
As well as creating the incredible (Not in My Name) Artwork, she’s also created the artwork for all the singles AND EP! As well as being a super talented artist, she’s also an incredible musician so go check her out @elbysings .
