Behind the Music: Buried Beneath Me Breaks Down “Save Me” from The House of Ash

With their upcoming album The House of Ash set to release on October 24th, Buried Beneath Me is once again proving that raw emotion and storytelling lie at the core of their sound. The new single, “Save Me,” offers listeners an early glimpse into the intensity and vulnerability that define this record. A balance of chaos and clarity wrapped in the band’s signature dark energy. We sat down with V to talk about the making of “Save Me,” their creative process alongside producer Tra$hdog, and how The House of Ash became a reflection of resilience, connection, and rebirth.

“Save Me” feels like one of the most emotionally charged songs on The House of Ash. What inspired the story behind this track, and what was going through your mind when it was written?

I would have to agree this is one of the most emotionally charged -key words there are “one of” because there is way more than just this! “Save Me” was the first song on the record to be recorded. This was also my first time working with Tra$hdog. I knew If I wanted to level up I was going to need a producer. Someone else to help guide the music and see things that I objectively could not see as the artist. Having him on this song really helped to make it what it was. The 808 in the intro? His idea. The siren thing in the right headphone during the verses? His idea. The dude has this way with creativity and we really see eye to eye on a lot of things. He really helped me to express what I was trying to say with this song. Which is, It’s very hard I think for people in general to get others to understand their feelings and we have this disconnect as humans nowadays. Everyone else is the enemy so to speak and no one will help you unless you help yourself. “Save Me” is really about that. The chorus with “You don’t know what it’s like to be me” really sheds light on that for everyone, I think. We all live different lives and have different journeys. Each of us has a perception of the world unlike anyone else and trying to convey that through a song is a very hard thing to do unless you just…. Say it. So I said it in the song. This song, and a lot of them on the record, really speak to the depth of my own emotions. Sure we have this big narrative woven into the record, sure we have this imagery which is so needed now to convey a message anymore. But you know what? It still boils down to the same thing music should boil down to at its very core…. Emotion. Without emotion, it won’t be good in my opinion. The only thing that connects us to any art in any medium is the emotion behind it. So I really let a lot of emotion out in this song as I was writing and arranging it and trying to find the best way to convey the message. During this process, I really think that is when the house of ash was born. 

Compared to earlier releases like “Let It Burn” and “Deathbed,” this one carries a heavier sense of desperation and raw emotion. How did you approach the sound and atmosphere differently this time around?

This is an excellent question because I mixed this song myself so I’ll have some good answers. So as I said before, Tra$h had a lot to do with the ideas in the song. I really had this expression I wanted to get out and things I wanted to say, but they didn’t fit in the melody, so I put them into this AM mic and just whispered them and panned it in the headphones. If you listen closely, it sounds like a conversation between two people. What they say I will leave for you to figure out. That was one huge part because at the time when I wrote this, I had a lot to say to a few specific people that had just exited my life. If you listen closely, there is this very high pitched, “Hello” each time the AM talking comes around. The inflection that it was said in the song, is also how we talked on the phone. I really have a lot of disappointment, disgust and feelings of betrayal for this person now. Things just ended in a way that I didn’t want and I was for sure partly to blame for it. I wanted listeners to feel that in a way. Because I very much miss the way that person and I would talk on the phone and answer the phone in that inflection. My hope was that portraying that feeling, might connect with someone. We all have pain from little moments in life like that. All unique. Each our own to experience and juice the pain out of when we want a hit of nostalgia or when we are still healing. For a long time it felt like I needed someone to save me from that feeling. 

To speak a little bit more into the sounds and atmosphere of this. I had written this song and really had some good feelings about it but it needed a little something extra. After a while of listening to it, and I mean after 3 months of listening to my mix and my demo of the song, I finally hired trash to provide that extra something. We revamped the song with his ideas and it came out what it is today, but I really got used to my mix. So when it came time for him to mix the song, I didn’t know how to feel. For those of you who don’t know, “Save Me” had been finished in August of 24’ and sat waiting until December of 24’ to be mixed and chosen for The House Of Ash. So I had from about the end of May until December to listen to my mix of the song. That’s a long time to get used to something! So when time came for Tra$h to mix it, I didn’t love his mix. I tried to, I really tried to give it time and listen to his mix but it  didn’t pull my heart strings like my mix did. So I talked to him about it and we tried some other ideas with his mix and in the end I just made the call, “I’m gonna mix it and we will be done with it.” So with his guidance, I mixed the track. He had some really cool ideas about how the radio moved in the bridge of the song and how we could transition some things that I really liked. So I created those in my mix and we went back and forth until we settled on the final mix for the song. 

The gang vocal at the end is just my wife and I. We did that in our apartment. Like the rest of this record except for the other gang vocals on other tracks, with my microphone we just walked around the room and recorded different voices singing the parts.

The super “glassy” sound of the acoustic guitar you hear at the end of the song is in fact a microphone pointing at the poster I have hung above my desk during recording. The sound is a reflection from the glass on the frame and this is about 80% of that guitar's sound that you hear. The radio has meaning, I’ve said that before in other articles. I took a lot of inspiration from Chris Lorde Alge for this mix. He’s a very well known mixing engineer who mixed The Black Parade and tons of other records that this one was modeled after. I actually used his mixing format to mix this song. The big reverbs you hear during the “Reach for the stars live with the scars” lyric. That’s his idea, you use sends to give all your instruments short and long reverb and delay, and you can change the volume of the tracks you are sending to those tracks. I automated it which I know he is not a huge fan of but it sent the volume up in those reverb and delay tracks and made this sound like you are looking up to the stars. I thought it was fitting for the lyric so I kept it! 

Lyrically, “Save Me” seems to walk a fine line between surrender and survival. Was there a particular message or feeling you wanted listeners to take away from it?

I wanted listeners to walk away knowing they could do it for themselves. Because that's really what it is isn’t it? When you surrender to something, then you’re really wishing for someone or something to save you from that situation that you are surrendering to. Most of us don’t surrender, we force and when we surrender to it finally, it feels like you need saving. Maybe from someone else, maybe yourself, maybe the situation. But when you are trying to survive, same instance. You hope someone will save you from the situation. But in the end it’s the last line in the song, [and] that will tell you your answer. 

When you look at the bigger picture of The House of Ash, where does “Save Me” fit in? Would you say it represents a turning point or emotional centerpiece within the album’s story?

It’s a centerpiece. Once the record is out and has had time to be digested people will understand it. We have been saying this record is an anthem for the phonexing. A psalm to the useless and afraid. This song sums it all up and once it comes into focus on the 24th and the rest of the record drops, it’s going to be amazing to see the reactions and what people take from this record for themselves. 

The production on this track stands out because the dynamics hit hard, and there’s a real sense of tension throughout. Was there anything unique about how you recorded or mixed “Save Me”? Did you experiment with any new sounds or techniques during the process?

I talked a bunch about the mix before. But we really wanted the big choruses to be BIG and the verses to make you feel. There were some things I had added that I hadn’t used before. There is an arpeggio on the guitar part in verse 2 that is behind everything in the left speaker, to me it feels like a spiderweb is being spun around the sound, but that’s just me. I kind of added this cool thing called Trash rx8, it’s a plugin and I modified that to have a somewhat scratchy sound on it. I jacked up the saturation and duplicated the track and then blended the 2 sounds together. Somehow, that makes spiders on the track in my opinion haha. I also really wanted BIG TOMS on this and a huge cracky snare. The other thing was that solo. That guitar solo had to be Titanboa big. Just Titanic big. So I really spent some time on figuring out how to get the emotion out with my instrument on that one. I can sing with emotion, but I can play it even better. I think the solo of save me really shows my soul's ability to sing, that’s how my soul talks. Via a loud guitar and a dream. 

As far as writing goes, did “Save Me” come early in the process of creating The House of Ash, or was it one of the final pieces that tied everything together? Did it influence the tone of the rest of the record?

It was the first track like I stated in your prior question. It didn’t really shape the record though. Save Me was recorded a few months prior to the rest of the record and was supposed to be released as a single. That never happened and it got chosen to be on the record later on. We put save me on the record because it fit the vibe so well. We are telling this story of betrayal, failure, feelings, death and destruction. We had to have something that capped it all off and brought you back to the center of it all. Save me really served that purpose well so we went with it for the album closer. 

With the live shows coming up, how do you plan to bring that emotion and intensity from “Save Me” to the stage?

We have so much planned. I was working with Dustin, our lighting director recently, and he and I came up with some really cool ideas for that song. I think a lot of them will really show the fans what this song is about once they see it live. 

Fans have followed your evolution from “Deathbed” into this new chapter. What kind of reactions have you been getting to “Save Me” so far, and how do you hope people connect with it?

Save Me is currently the most streamed on Spotify. Which, I guess, tells us that people like it. The other thing to keep in mind is we had also done a version of “Deathbed” with Ja-Wrk. That dropped the following month after the first version of “Deathbed”. Fans love “Deathbed” for sure, but I think they were getting tired of it and rightfully so. When we dropped “Save Me”, I think it was a breath of fresh air for fans because this is so different in a way from “Deathbed”. But the thing is, it’s also just similar enough to keep them interested in it. I also think that “Save Me” as you said is very emotionally charged and I think that’s really what separates this song from the rest. We wrote some songs like “The Villain” that are really catchy and poppy and fun to sing to, but they are not super meaningful. “Save Me” is almost five minutes of, “Let me tell you my side of the story”. “Deathbed” means a lot to people so not to discount that song at all. But “Save Me“ really is special for so many reasons and I think the emotion conveyed in that song really lets listeners and fans understand that this isn’t just a poppy alt rock band with some good sing-alongs. We have some things to say too. The rest of the record has so much more of this type of emotion and I’m so excited for fans to hear that finally! 

Buried Beneath Me has always delivered strong visuals alongside your music. Are there any plans for a music video or visual companion for “Save Me”?

Glad you asked! So we were talking about this. Do we do a music video, or do we just make some short form content and send it? So after talking we decided to let the fans choose. So we can make short form stuff pretty easily. The problem is, it doesn't live up to the expectations that Buried Beneath Me fans and the algorithms expect. Instead of wasting a bunch of money on a video we don’t know people want, why not ask people what song they want a video for? So two cool things are happening soon. One, we will be asking fans what song they want to see a music video of a few days into the release. Then we will follow up for a little while until we know what song they want a video for. At that point we are going to put one out. Those videos are not cheap, worth it but not cheap. So we have to use our finances on that responsibly and make them when we can afford that. But because I want to give fans what they want, we are going to let them decide the next music video for which song they want to see. Two, we are doing a “mental breakdown” on one of the songs. Fans are also going to get to choose this via a poll in our IG [Instagram] story for about a week. After that we will be reviewing the song with the most votes on a podcast called, “The Mental Breakdown” which reviews songs with artists but breaks them down mentally and talks about the emotion behind the songs. Fans should keep their eyes peeled for both of those coming up soon. So to answer the question bluntly, yes there will be another music video. Of which song? You tell us! 

You’ve been part of our journey here at Loud & Heavy Booking, and we’ve been lucky to grow alongside your music. Looking back, what does that continued connection and support from the community mean to you?

There are so many people who have reached out to us because of this record. The House Of Ash, isn’t a house of ash at all. It’s a house of community for those who were born from the ashes. The team at Loud and Heavy Booking, helped to build that house. Without your support and interviews we would not have gotten in upwards of 4,000 extra people who saw our work because of this blog alone. That is just based on our Instagram views, not including Facebook, Youtube, your website, our website etc. The impact that we have seen from Loud & Heavy has been massive. We have connected with so many other bands because of these interviews and honestly, I’m very grateful that you all reached out to help us with this process. The other bands we have met because of L&HB are amazing and we have had talks with some about swapping shows in other states as well. The House of Ash isn’t a house of ash at all. It’s a house for those who were born from the ashes. 

And finally, with The House of Ash now out and “Save Me” leading the charge, what’s next for Buried Beneath Me heading into 2026? Can fans expect more singles, videos, or tour announcements soon?

2026 is going to be a lot of more work for us. Videos to make, shows to play, people to talk to and scream at. 2026 I think is going to be the year people start to hear about the work we have done this year. And because of that I’m really grateful for the team around Buried Beneath Me. Without all of you this record would not have been accomplished. A little over a year and a half ago, I didn’t know if this project would even survive. But along came Tra$h and Tim. Along came Megan and L&HB. Then came the band members Sam and Violet and then came the fans. To all of you I am really grateful for believing in what I’ve tried to put together. Thank you for that. I also really want to thank my past self for not letting me stop all those times I wanted to! 2026 is going to be a lot of fun for the band and for fans. I’m excited to get this record into people's ears. I’m really excited to go play it live. I’m even more excited for you to hear it! Listen for our transmissions friends. The static won’t be silent for long. 

Full band photo by Buried Beneath Me.

As The House of Ash prepares to rise on October 24th, Buried Beneath Me stands as a testament to growth, perseverance, and the power of vulnerability in art. Through “Save Me,” V captures what it means to feel, to rebuild, and to speak truth through music, not just for themselves, but for everyone who’s ever felt unseen. It’s clear that this record isn’t just another chapter for the band; it’s a rebirth. And as V says, the static won’t be silent for long.

Keep up with Buried Beneath Me’s journey with us at Loud and Heavy Booking.