The 15 year of the career of The Used has consisted of highs and lows. The highs are created by the good music that the emo rock band has made. Albums like their self tilted debut album The Used and In Love and Death and songs like “The Bird and The Worm” and “Blue and Yellow” have kept their fans on a musical high. When it comes to their lows, the band has had to deal with roller coaster drops such as parting ways with guitarist Quinn Allman. However The Used decide to discuss some of their serious low moments on their brand new album The Canyon which they released three weeks ago on October 27th in the beginning of their fall tour.

According to ThePRP, The Used’s latest album The Canyon deals heavily with suicide. Inspired by the suicide of the group’s lead singer Bert McCracken’s friend Traegan that happened last year and the loss of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. During an interview with Forbes, McCracken talked about how Bennington’s death deeply affected him, considering that it was Bennington who helped McCracken overcome his own suicidal thoughts stating “There’s a lot of stigma surrounding depression, we know there’s no cure. And to speak of suicide with any connotations to selfishness makes me sick and so angry that I end conversations immediately. Chester was there for me at a time where I was deadly suicidal and he saved my life in 2004. The fact that nobody was able to be there for him in those moments is something we all should think about. How I’ve chosen to deal with the death of Chester and my friend Traegan is to try to deal it with the opposite way I dealt with death in the past and that’s not internalize anything and maybe speak about it all the time, put it out there to fans, strangers even. And in that way I kind of feel more connected to what depression might be, more a problem of humanity, a problem with American entitlement and boredom.”

Photo credit is Owen Ela