A specific kind of exhaustion arrives before you actually leave. You’re still in it, still answering, still showing up, and some part of you has already walked out the door. That’s the stretch My Broken Society built “What Are We Now?” around, and they don’t flinch from how ugly it gets. The band calls it dying inside to get out, and the song earns the phrase.
Musically, it works as a slow constriction. The production sits wide and hazy, the drums land hard enough to snap you back every time the atmosphere starts to swallow you, and Boris Melnikov‘s vocals fray as the track goes on rather than cleaning up for the payoff. That tension between the spacious guitar work and the blunt force of the rhythm section is the song’s whole argument: the push and pull between holding onto a version of your life that’s already finished and stepping into one you can’t see yet. By the last third, the question in the title stops feeling like an accusation and becomes something closer to an admission.
The single is entirely Melnikov’s work, both behind the desk and in front of it. He wrote it, produced it, and handled the mixing and mastering himself, which tracks with how singular the thing feels. Nothing here sounds sanded down by committee.
My Broken Society is an international alternative rock band based in Ho Chi Minh City. Melnikov started writing the core material back in 2014 in Saint Petersburg and only named and established the band after relocating to Saigon in 2022. He’s joined by Russian drummer Yaroslav Andrusyak, who made the same move from Moscow that year, and Italian guitarist Tommaso Meacci, in Saigon since 2021 and already deep in the local circuit through Paracetamore, NOVA, and a run of blues outfits. Three cities, one band, and a shared stake in the scene they landed in.
If you’ve ever had to lose a piece of yourself to get yourself back, this one is for you. Play it loud and let it do its work.
