Making a respectable rock song involves a lot more than just throwing some potent riffs and bombastic beats into a single melting pot of melodies – you have to have feeling, and investment in the story you’re trying to tell for it to work properly. In Samsara’s second single, “In Too Deep,” the up-and-coming Northeastern rock syndicate put as much emotion into their lyrics as they do the throttling grooves that push every harmony through the speakers and into the air around us. They’re committed to rock’s integrity, and that’s more than obvious inside the first minute of the video for “In Too Deep.”
The guitars in this track are definitely as metallic as we would want them to be, but in all honesty, I don’t think they’re quite as prominent in the mix as the vocal is – and this was likely intentional on the part of Samsara. If they were trying to produce a stadium-shaking anthemic feel here, which is what I would assume judging from the overall construction of the song (and, for that matter, the video as well), it was essential to make anything and everything in the hook center on the virtuosity of this vocalist’s singing.
There are a couple of ways you can exude swagger in this kind of a track – the first being virtuosic guitar solos, the second being indulgent melodic frills that focus more on the vocal harmony, but this band manages to do a little of both here. Their confidence in the attack, especially as it relates to humanizing the lyrics with a passionate wale, is as raw and real as it gets without sounding gritty and punkish. For as many instrumental components as there are here – guitar, bass, drums, piano, vocals – everything is cohesive and, clearly, the product of fine-tuned discipline in and outside of the studio.
Samsara’s chemistry is a rock-solid element in the big picture here, and I think you can tell from virtually every angle that they aren’t forcing it at all; these guys do have a connection to the music they’re playing in “In Too Deep.” There’s so much feeling in the instrumentation and the lyrics, and whether it be the actual definition within these components or the tone in which they’re presented to us, there isn’t a single point in the several memorable minutes this song lasts where it feels anything but authentic. As sad as it is to say, that isn’t standard in the summer of 2024 – and it hasn’t been for a long time in rock.
“In Too Deep” is both an identity song and a rebellion against the mundane grooves of a jaded mainstream rock sound and if it’s a good representation of who its performers are, it should be only the first of many hits still to come. Samsara is fiery and focused here, and provided they keep their nose to the grindstone through their next couple of releases, they’re going to have a cult following all their own in no time at all.
Garth Thomas