When Bastille released their latest album, Doom Days, in June 2019, frontman Dan Smith described it as an “apocalyptic party record.” A year later, those themes certainly feel relevant during an often apocalyptic-feeling 2020.

“I saw people joking online that we predicted the apocalypse,” Smith tells ABC Audio. “But I’ll put that down to our fans being funny.”

Overall, Smith isn’t exactly sure how he feels about Doom Days in relation to what’s happened this year.

“I don’t know if having made an album called Doom Days about an apocalypse and then going into a global pandemic is cathartic or f***ed up or irrelevant, I can’t quite decide,” he shares. “I don’t want to impose any weightiness or meaning to it.”

Beyond Doom Days, Bastille’s music in general seems tailor-made for tough times. Take the band’s breakout hit “Pompeii,” which established the U.K. act’s penchant for combining happy music with devastating lyrics.

“Basically when something awful happens in the world, occasionally, someone will turn around and be like, ‘That line particularly feels relevant right now,'” Smith says of “Pompeii.”

“When things that you did with a certain situation in mind come back around at you and seem more relevant or more thoughtful than maybe they were, that’s always an interesting thing,” he adds.

Bastille has since followed Doom Days with two new songs in 2020: “WHAT YOU GONNA DO???” featuring Blur‘s Graham Coxon, and “survivin’.”

By Josh Johnson
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