"Murder Scene" and "Awakening" by Eva Under Fire Song Meaning: Living Authentically
Eva Under Fire is uniquely equipped to create songs about mental health: lead singer Amanda Lyberg (long known under the stage name “Eva”) says that the year she was “offered a record deal is the same year that I graduated with my Master's degree.”
Specifically, a Master’s degree that launched her into practice as a clinical psychotherapist.
Although not everyone would immediately see fronting a rock band and working with clients in therapy sessions as being aligned, for Amanda, she is increasingly seeing the two sides of her life as part of the same whole self.
“I was a bit nervous when I started in the professional music space and when I started in the professional psychotherapy space,” she admits. “Along the path of experiencing and living in both lanes, there was so much more overlap and so much more flexibility. If anything, I felt a little disingenuous about not being able to be myself fully in both spaces, because I thought I had to separate those parts of myself. On this new album, we wrote a song called ‘My Own Name.’ I'm just taking the mask off, going by Amanda now, because that's all of me.”
Listeners have had the first taste of this new, fully integrated Eva Under Fire with the tracks “Murder Scene” and “Awakening” — songs that are both central to themes of owning your own identity, releasing the expectations you might have internalized from others.
What events inspired “Murder Scene?”
“Murder Scene” was inspired by Amanda’s journey of self-acceptance, shaped by the challenges of being scrutinized as a singer in the spotlight.
“Being in a band and being a woman is very hyper-focused on my body,” Amanda says candidly. “There was a lot of necessity to feel small, but strong, but meek — but this, but that, so many different things. I felt pressured by that until I gave myself permission to just be myself in those spaces and not really care about other people's expectations. Rather, what was true for me? Then I got to offload all of that.”
Some of the pressures Amanda has experienced also come from family and some deep experiences of loss.
“I've been through a lot of traumatic loss. There is pressure for the family to all come together in those moments and really be a unit and understand and support one another. That can be great. But there's a lot of, like, ‘How dare you need space? How dare you have needs when this collective thing is so, so difficult,’” Amanda offers honestly.
She continues, “When my dad passed, there were so many expectations about what that was going to look like, what it should look like when you experience grief. There are no rules with grief. I just want to put that on record: there are no rules for how you experience that.”
What is the meaning of the song “Murder Scene?”
Everyone has pressures that they face to look a certain way, act a certain way, even think a certain way. Although those messages might initially come from an external source, we can be quite to internalize and perpetuate those cyclical shaming stories about who we “should” be.
Amanda Lyberg says, “That pressure, that's enough to kill somebody, you know? I see it when I talk with family members, I see it when I talk with clients, I see it when I'm in my own head too much. I have to balance out, because if I just let that pressure eat at me, I don't think I'm gonna come out of that.”
The only way to escape the metaphorical murder scenes in our own minds is to stop perpetuating that pressure against ourselves.
“It’s the damage that we do ourselves, right? This pressure that I'm internalizing now becomes my problem,” she explains. “Because I am setting the expectations, and so now I'm failing, and I'm not enough, and I don't do it right, I can't figure out how to fix things, I can't balance out, I can't, I can't, I can't.”
That spiral is clear in the cyclical lyrics of the first verse:
“If I'm dead on the doorstep, just step over my death
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but, I think you were right, man
It was all in my head
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but a body.”
“I think that also is a shot at society at large, when people are not kind, understanding or supportive,” Amanda adds. “Like the boss who won't let you take an extra day off when you just had to put your cat down. There's no humanity in that, man. Have some respect, why can't people just recognize that the human experience is already hard enough without forcing people? It’s the way that we've become so desensitized.”
How are the themes of “Murder Scene” and “Awakening” connected?
The meaning of “Murder Scene” is inextricably tied to the ferocious empowerment in the song “Awakening,” which was the first song released from the forthcoming album Villainous.
“‘Murder Scene’ is the description of where I'm at within that spiral. But ‘Awakening’ is noticing that I don't need that,” Amanda says simply. “Everybody else's expectations don't have to hold so much weight for me.”
It can be hard to believe that we’re allowed to opt out of expectations that we may have labored under our whole lives. But once we do, Amanda believes there’s freedom on the other side: freedom to be fully yourself, with your needs, wants, passions, and even the right to set boundaries against demands that don’t serve you.
“I have been through things, and I know myself. And I have seen what I can do when I am empowered,” the singer states clearly. “It looks like taking all of the ‘shoulds’ and attributing them to self, utilizing yourself as the filter to say, ‘Well, this is what I'm told. But what do I think? Do I think that is real? Do I have to acknowledge that?’ Like, maybe at a family dinner one time, my grandma says something out of pocket. Do I have to be offended by that, or can I just say, ‘That's her thing. Let it go: this doesn't have to mean anything to me.’ It can tell me something about her. It can give me data, right?”
She continues the example, “Do I think that is reflective of her being a negative person or a bad influence in my life? Does that data mean I can't have a relationship with this person, or was it just an errant comment that I got triggered by because of my own thing, and it doesn't have to matter to me? I can disengage. I can say, ‘You know, grandma, just because you don't like my hair color, that doesn't have to mean that you hate me, or hate my lifestyle, or you don't accept the fact that I'm a part of this alternative culture.’”
How do both songs fit within the meaning of the Eva Under Fire album Villainous?
The empowerment found on the other side of internalizing what others say about us is what Villainous, which Amanda wryly calls her villain origin story, is all about.
“People will call you a villain when you start to say, ‘I don't have to care about what you say,’” the therapist and songwriter freely admits. “People will tell you that you're the problem. But this whole album was my self-discovery, realizing that I don't think I'm a problem. I don't think it's me. Now that I've come into my own, and I've processed a lot of my things, and I know where I'm at, and what I don't need? You don't have to like it. If you want to call me a villain, I guess that's okay.”
That theme is also reflected on the album’s title track and third single, “Villainous.” The full album is due out July 10, and can be pre-ordered and presaved here: https://evaunderfire.lnk.to/villainousalbum
Eva Under Fire’s message about mental health
Everything Eva Under Fire offer through music and their live shows is a simple statement: “Here is my story. What is yours? Because we're in the middle of writing it. You're still here, there's still choice. What do you do with that?”
As someone who has heard so many human highs and lows both at the merch booth after shows and in the office where she practices as a clinician, Amanda knows that sometimes making a choice connected to your authentic self can be challenging — and it’s a process we walk out for a lifetime.
She encourages listeners to ask themselves: “Do you know what would make you happy? What do you need? Most people who've been through a lot of things, they say, ‘I want peace. I just want peace.’ Peacefulness can be a guide. And I want to distinguish peacefulness from boredom. When I'm on stage, there is so much that grounds me in that moment. I feel very mindful when I'm on stage. It becomes a part of me. There's nothing outside of that moment.”
That same kind of peace through mindfulness, rooting yourself in the present moment, might look different for you based on your own interests and where you experience aliveness. But whatever that thing is for you — whether it’s extreme sports or gardening — it’s worth pursuing.
But Amanda has a feeling that for her listeners, music is a common grounding force.
“If you don't have a tribe, and you're not sure how to find who you are and what you need? Try some new music,” she suggests. “Go to a concert. Try a rock show.”
That community, that opportunity to find out more about who you are while in community with others who share similar passions, is why HeartSupport exists: both on-the-ground at shows and online through peer-matched Support Calls afterward. If you need help in your own journey of claiming your authentic self, learn more about Support Calls and get matched with a peer mentor.
And like Amanda says: try a rock show. HeartSupport will be there to meet you.
Learn more about all things Eva Under Fire, including extensive tour dates with Five Finger Death Punch, at https://evaunderfire.os.fan/.
“Murder Scene” lyrics
If I'm dead on the doorstep, just step over my death
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but, I think you were right, man
It was all in my head
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but a body
Cut it off if you just can't take it
Take it out, I'll just rearrange it
It's not real, shut it down, take a pill
But I feel it in my body
I know what comes next
All my dreams have become my nightmares
Falling through the midnight air
Should've known better when the smiles turned to stares
I scream, but no one's there
When I break, so dig deep to my grave
It's an emergency
This is a murder scene
We're so close to the end now
We're covered in thread count
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but a heart barely ripped out
Blurring to blackout
I ain't nothing but a body
I ain't nothing but a body
Write it off like I'm weak and wasted
What's it feel like to be so hated?
It's not real, shut it down, take a pill
But I feel it in my body
And I think I know what's coming next
All my dreams have become my nightmares
Falling through the midnight air
Should've known better when the smiles turned to stares
I scream, but no one's there
When I break, so dig deep to my grave
It's an emergency
This is a murder scene
I'm not ready yet
Is this as good as it gets?
I'm not ready yet
I'm not, I'm not
All my dreams have become my nightmares
Falling through the midnight air
Should've known better when the smiles turned to stares
I scream, but no one's there
When I break, so dig deep to my grave (My grave)
It's an emergency
This is a murder scene
It's an emergency
This is a murder scene
