Conflict of Interest

Everybody has an agenda. Some people are just better at pretending they don’t.

Conflict of Interest is about the uncomfortable space between what we want, what we deserve, and what we’re willing to do to get it.

We started this record thinking about contradictions. How you can love someone and resent them. How honesty can be an act of cruelty. How the people who know you best are often the ones most qualified to destroy you.

There’s a particular kind of hypocrisy that comes with being human. We demand loyalty while keeping our options open. We preach forgiveness while quietly collecting evidence. We insist we’re acting in everyone’s best interests, conveniently forgetting to mention our own.

Musically, we wanted to lean into those contradictions. Beautiful melodies against abrasive guitars. Cold electronics beneath very human emotions. Choruses that sound almost celebratory until you realize what we’re celebrating.

The artwork reflects that tension. Crimson and black, twisting together and pulling in opposite directions, with our familiar S caught in the middle. Everything looks polished. Nothing feels particularly stable.

This isn’t a record about good people doing bad things.

It’s about ordinary people becoming extraordinarily creative when it comes to justifying themselves.

We’d like to say we’ve learned something from the experience.

But that would probably be a conflict of interest.

Vex, Jett, Rafe & Nico Survivor