Florence + The Machine’s new release Everybody Scream is their sixth studio album. Released this past Halloween, the album draws on themes of folk horror and witchcraft, impressively spinning a narrative on each of the tracks. Through discussions of femininity, depictions of folk-horror, and inspiration from real near-death experiences, Florence Welch’s lyrics are extremely powerful and haunting. 

Everybody Scream Album Cover (@Florence on Instagram)

Everybody Scream was created in the aftermath of a life-changing emergency surgery that lead singer Florence Welch underwent during the band’s Dance Fever tour. Leading up to the release of this album, Florence revealed that she had suffered severe internal bleeding due to an ectopic pregnancy on tour. The trauma from this miscarriage is evident throughout the album, with her anger and anguish shining through in her lyrics. In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Florence references their new song “Witch Dance” as a metaphor for her near-death experience, as well as for the grief that came with it.  Florence also told The Guardian in an interview earlier this year that “there’s a feeling of dying a little bit, every time [she makes] a record”, pointing again towards the continuing theme of grief throughout her music. 

The album also pushes a feminist message, with songs like “One Of The Greats” exploring what it means to be a famous artist as a woman in such a patriarchal industry. When discussing the track, Florence Welch notes: “early in my career, I was consistently ridiculed and derided for the bigness of my expression. I was thrust into the spotlight but also told again and again I didn’t deserve it.” Through Genius Verified, she quotes her lyrics “too feminine to function” and “I did my best, tried to impress, my childhood dream made flesh” and claims that she thinks many get the concept of femininity brutally wrong – according to Florence, femininity “contains so much fury and rage”. She goes on to voice her disgust with the trials women are put through in the music industry, before asking “if something is outwardly feminine, will it not be taken seriously […]?”.

While all of Florence + The Machine’s music is likely to send shivers down your spine the moment you hear Florence’s powerful vocals, this album is much more literal when it comes to its haunting nature. Everybody Scream is, in whole, a work of folk horror. From the chilling screams backing the opening track, to embodying the Kraken from Scandinavian folklore, Florence tells haunting tale after haunting tale. In the band’s song “Drink Deep”, Florence sings about her relationship with fame and the music industry through a metaphor of the fae folk. In an interview with Radio X, Florence explains that when writing “Drink Deep”, she was pulling from the “English and Irish old folk tales where fairies were actually far more vampiric in nature and […] very frightening creatures”. The song follows the tradition that fae folk would trap victims in their realm by convincing them to accept and eat their food, making the victim unable to return home.  

The promotions put out for the album follow this horror theme. Mid-October, just over two weeks before the albums release, Florence posted a carousel of haunting photos as a hint of the concept of the album. The photos contained powerful imagery of women and witchcraft, wholly capturing the themes of the album. 

Album Promotion (@Florence on Instagram)

Overall, Florence + The Machine’s new release Everybody Scream is a powerful album capturing all ranges of emotion. With both upbeat and mellow tracks, this album touches on it all. Through discussions of femininity, folk horror, and near-death experiences, Florence Welch pulls from her own experience to create the haunting, yet powerful, tracks you hear today.