Born for Nothing/Born by Mistake came out of a period where we were all feeling worn down, disconnected, and increasingly aware of how easy it is to feel disposable. A lot of these songs deal with isolation, exhaustion, anxiety, and trying to find something solid to hold onto when everything around you feels unstable. The title came from a bizarre exchange with what we thought was a bot account that suddenly broke character and called us “good for nothing, born for nothing, born by mistake.” It was funny at first, but the phrase stuck with us because it felt like a pretty accurate metaphor for the way people can be treated by the systems they’re born into, valued until they’re no longer useful and then pushed aside.

Musically, we wanted to keep building on what we started with Violent Picture/Violent Sound, but push the songs further in both directions. Heavier when they needed to be, quieter when they needed space, and more focused on melody without losing the weight and atmosphere that drew us to bands like Failure, HUM, Shiner, Heatmiser, and Jawbox in the first place. We recorded the album with Jon Markson, who helped us capture the balance between density and immediacy that we were after, and Mike Kalajian mastered it. This is our second full-length, our first with Iodine Recordings, and probably the clearest version of what we’ve been trying to make since the band started.