Century Surfers are their own worst enemies in their latest single and lyric video Personal Assassin — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
“I was thinking about the pandemic and how people were dealing with depression, uncertainty and negative thoughts more than ever before,” says Roddy Colmer, who fronts the Canadian alternative pop-rock duo with Jamie Gutfreund. “Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy by allowing these thoughts to grow, evolve and affect you everyday. Being your own personal assassin in the sense that you are killing hope or positivity within yourself. This song is about realizing that there are ways to combat those feelings and the first step to it is taking control of them and starting to move towards finding ways of containing or eliminating them.”
Adds Gutfreund: “This was the first song I started to write when we were well into the pandemic, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of anger and uncertainty about this terrible situation we all found ourselves in. I think those emotions are reflected in my performance and in the darkness of the verses which is perfectly echoed by Roddy’s lyrics. But as the song evolves, I feel the music and lyrics transitions to convey a positive message of how to deal with these new feelings and not let them consume you.”
More explicitly, he’s referring to lyrics like: “I think I found my new solution to this depression / I put it in a cannon shoot it right into the sun / Hope through a telescope I sit and watch it as it burns/ It’s hard to be alive sometimes that’s something that I’ve learned / Learned the hard way / I’m my own personal assassin / Killin’ satisfaction / One day at a time.”
So far, Century Surfers — veteran Toronto musician and Howard Stern parody-song contributor Colmer, and popular news anchor Gutfreund — have been taking it one song at a time. Since launching the band in September 2019, the duo have released four singles: The Storm, Stars, The Wave and Broken Puppets. Along the way, they’ve amassed rave reviews and earned radio play across Canada. The Storm reached #41 on the iTunes Canada Alternative charts, only to be surpassed by the release of The Wave which reached #31 in May. Joined by Personal Assassin, they lay the foundation for Century Surfers’ forthcoming debut EP, set for release in late 2021.
Check out Personal Assasin above, hear more from Century Surfers below, and follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
