Words By: Bre Offenberger

Metalcore quartet Of Mice & Men have released the video for “Bloom,” the title track of their forthcoming EP, due out May 28 via SharpTone Records. The track is a stark look at feeling trapped within the boundaries of a troubled mind, emphasized by frontman Aaron Pauley screaming for a savior as he finds himself falling deeper and deeper into it.

A drawn-back set of strings gently guide Pauley through the opening breakdown, as he almost sweetly sings of how he feels himself slipping away after starting off well on his road to mental recovery. Along the way, he finds his healing process has resembled that of a flower: while he starts off blossoming beautifully, he eventually withers away and has to figure out how to start over again. The dreamy opening dissipates with a roll of the drums from Valentino Arteaga, and guitars seep in from every which way. Pauley raises his voice to a scream, asking rhetorical question after question about why people think they know everything when no one is actually able to exactly understand someone else’s pain. The opening becomes the chorus, this time accented by screams and a heap of angst. As Pauley realizes the closest he’s ever gotten to love is watching his relationships fall apart, he screams until he has basically no voice left, and drums hammer the emotional toll of the revelation home.

The video, in all its gravelly gray beauty, opens with an animated flower sprouting. An entire garden’s worth joins in the process before torrential rains falls down, causing the flowers to shrivel up. The video starts following the storyline to a T, as an apple falls from a tree followed by a body dusting itself off before looking to the sky for answers to what’s happening. After a pile of flowers is eaten by a skull, the body continues to aimlessly wander around the area. The body stops for a minute, letting the rain wash his pain away, before walking off to start anew.

Of the track, Pauley shares: “‘Bloom’ is a song about grieving the death of a family member. It’s about understanding, through that loss, that grief is not only love in its most visceral and wildest form, but that it’s also the ultimate price we pay to experience such love. To know profound grief is to have known profound love. Nothing and no one lasts forever. Love isn’t a bouquet of plastic flowers; it’s watching the petals fall.”

This release and newly announced EP is the follow-up to February’s Timeless EP. These EPs, plus more forthcoming, are set to make up the band’s next full-length album. As we wait for more beauty created from the pain, stream “Bloom” endlessly, and keep Timeless on standby.