Mallory Knox share new track 'Better Off Without You' - premiere

The song details wider issues of mental health along with bassist Sam Douglas' personal struggle with anxiety

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Mallory Knox are releasing their new single 'Better Off Without You' and you can listen to it first right here.

The song details issues around mental health and bassist Sam Douglas' personal struggle with anxiety - he says he found it difficult to talk to doctors ("basically strangers") about what he was going through, and felt "palmed off" when their solution was to prescribe him medication.

Check out the track and read the great piece Sam wrote on anxiety for The Independent below:

I’ve always found it quite difficult to talk to people outside of my friends and family about my problems and my insecurities.

In a way when I was writing this song I had that same gut-wrenching feeling I had when I went to the doctor the first time, to try to explain what was going on in my head. I’ve always said that the music tells you what the song should be about and you should always trust it.

So when I realised I’d written the first verse, almost subliminally, about my anxiety there was a moment when I paused and questioned if this was something I really wanted to write about. The answer, in a nutshell, was yes.

I can’t speak for other people that suffer from anxiety, and I know there are many. I just wrote the song from my own personal experience.

This song is by no means “wallowing in my own self-pity,” it’s more of a release of anger and frustration of feeling this way. I’m a happy person (well, the majority of the time) or so I’d like to think. I just have these moments where I feel trapped, small problems become incredibly large and I can’t calm myself down enough to think in a calm and reasonable way. It doesn’t sound like that much to deal with and for a time I dealt with it fine.

It’s only in the last year or so that it has become a daily thing and it started to turn me into someone I wasn’t quite happy with. So as we are all told to do, I went to speak to someone. Partly to make sure it wasn’t me just being stressed all the time and if that wasn’t the case, if there was something more to it, then they could set me off in the right direction.

I think I saw a doctor for 2 minutes. I was in and out quicker than a trip to a drive-thru Burger King and for some reason that didn’t sit quite right with me. As I said I’m not good at talking to people that I don’t really know when it comes to being personal. So me being me instead of asking questions I just accepted what he was saying and accepted his prescription of Citalopram and how much it cost etc. For something so personal it all felt very impersonal.

I’m not naïve enough to think that we don’t live in a world where everything moves at a million miles an hour these days. I just couldn’t help but think that if I was given more of an explanation in a more human way then I might not have felt like I hadn’t taken a step forward when I got back into my car to drive home. So this song was born out of that frustration. The frustration at myself for feeling the way that I do, and then the frustration that I felt no better off for trying to do something about it.

As I said, when the world moves at a million miles an hour, it’s hard for everyone to keep up and sometimes not everyone can. Sometimes I can’t. This was my way of getting it off my chest. It’s not a cry for help, it’s not wanting people to feel sorry for you, it’s just venting and being honest and open. It was something I needed to help me at the time and if it helps others then that’s cool. I just can’t wait to play it live cause it’s a banger.

'Better Off Without You', the new song from Mallory Knox, is out today. Their new album Wired is out on 10 March