It’s a cliché to grab to loud, brash music when things go wrong, but at the worst of times, it’s loud music what helps take away that seething feeling. I always get pinned down as someone who listens only to metal genres and their ilk, but I seldom do.

Thrice’s Fire EP from the Alchemy Index has two tracks that marked two low points in my life. When I started going to therapy in Sheffield, in early 2010, I was assigned several counselors, of which Dale was the one who cared the most. We only had 4 sessions per counselor, and it was liberating. Since I wasn’t adept at describing my feelings, Dale suggested using songs as descriptions of emotions. So if I felt optimistic on any day, I would describe it as Alter Bridge’s Ties that bind. Desperate now, by Stabbing Westward, was the song for my lowest points.

Firebreather, with its eerie electronic intro and fierce guitar work, was a strange feeling. It was when I woke up full of dread in the dead of night, without knowing why I was so anxious. Call it a panic attack, call it stress overtaking my body. Firebreather simply encapsulated that emotion.

A few years later, I would through a very bad breakup and after severing a lot of ties with people who got a little too involved in what was a relationship of two, Burn the fleet resonated in my head. I went back to do an emotion diary with songs in lieu of descriptions. It worked for my brain and when Dale was my counselor again, I told her this.

Dale always cared but in the end, depression and anxiety got the best out of me. When I went back to Sheffield in 2018, I went to the counseling services of the University of Sheffield, but they were closed for the summer break. I wanted to tell Dale I was doing a little better (kinda of a lie) and that her work wasn’t for naught.

I’m waking up at random hours at night currently. Time to write those songs as feelings, and crank up the volume for Thrice’s Fire EP.

-Sam J. Valdés López