The track opens on a rumble — a low, patient thing, embers doing what embers do before anyone notices the room is warm. It's a smart choice. Too many bands in this emo-adjacent, alt-rock revival space treat the quiet verse as a chore to be endured before the "real" song arrives. Here, the slow burn feels earned rather than obligatory, a genuine tightening of tension rather than a placeholder riff waiting for the chorus to bail it out.

And then the chorus does arrive, and it arrives like a door kicked off its hinges. Guitar tones turn grizzly without tipping into cartoonish sludge, the drums go restless in a way that suggests the drummer has personal business to settle, and the bass does that thing where it stops supporting the song and starts strong-arming it. The whole arrangement snaps into a different register, and suddenly you're not listening to a build anymore — you're standing in the fire it was building toward.

What separates "Both Ends" from its early-2000s reference points — and the Paramore, Evanescence, Crawlers comparisons are earned rather than aspirational — is the vocal. This isn't melodrama borrowed wholesale from that era's playbook. It reads as something closer to genuine femme rage, unpolished at the edges in exactly the places where polish would have flattened it. The performance sounds lived-in, less like a vocalist hitting marks and more like someone finally allowed to say the thing out loud.

Structurally, the song refuses to sit still, and that restlessness is the point. FATECRIMES have built something that mutates without ever losing its center of gravity — verses and choruses shifting shape while the underlying dread stays fixed, like a pursuer who changes route but never loses the scent. It's a clever bit of songwriting sleight of hand: the song keeps promising escape and keeps closing the exits.

Maneskin gets invoked in the press notes, and the influence shows in the theatrical snarl of the whole thing, but FATECRIMES aren't chasing spectacle for its own sake. This is grittier, more Brighton basement than arena, and better for it. The Chase Petra comparison, too, feels apt — there's a similar willingness to let a song run hot and a little unruly rather than sanding it down for radio.

If "Both Ends" is any indication of where "As Above / So Below" is headed, FATECRIMES have a genuinely compelling record on their hands: one that trusts atmosphere, respects a good long fuse, and isn't afraid to let the whole thing catch. Angsty, yes — but angst with craft behind it, which is a much rarer thing to find.