All In This Together is another bold move for Rumour Den as they continue to grow towards their upcoming Relapse line. After the success of Sea of Trees and Part of the Problem, the song demonstrates the pair’s versatility in tackling various topics and maintaining their alternative rock style.
The track’s distinguishing characteristic is the extent to which it is fueled by thought as much as feeling. The lyrics are inspired by the fear of authoritarianism, freedom and lessons from history, urging listeners to consider what they are willing to sacrifice for a feeling of security. Rumour Den is a place of reflection – not easy answers – through story and word selection.
Musically, it’s a song in which each riff and melody serves the goal of AJ’s message, and not just to try and outdo it. The outcome is a well-rounded sound where the song’s lyrics can be heard and heard well, and the listener stays with you.
The acting is also excellent. Together with Frankie McClay, the band have improved their sound with clean, crisp vocals that are on par with the songwriting, and this has been a more focused and confident process based on past experience.
All In This Together is thoughtful, well-crafted and honest – it sets an exciting tone for the remainder of Relapse and Rumour Den are maturing as songwriters.
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“All In This Together” is your third release of 2026, following “Sea of Trees” and “Part of the Problem.” How does this song fit into the bigger picture of what you’re building toward with the “Relapse” collection?
AJ: The bigger picture is for the two of us to showcase what we can do as songwriters – the ability to think of interesting subject matter, to create a lyric that tells a story and then put that story to the correct music – while keeping it within the broad Alt-Rock style that we have. The 3 songs have totally different subject matter and a slightly different sound because of that – but it is still all us – my words and voice – Steve’s composition and playing.
AJ, the lyrics tackle big themes like authoritarianism, ideology, and the loss of freedom in the name of safety. What pulled you toward writing about these ideas right now?
I genuinely think we could be standing on a edge of something very scary. The pulls of at least 2 distinct trains of thought – from Far Left and Far Right – are strong, not unlike 1920’s Europe. Certain ideas are back in fashion – possibly because there are fewer people alive now to remind everyone how terrible it was to give in to those who would push those ideas as the utopian solutions to difficult problems.
We are not long after the Covid pandemic and I think that showed the Western world a taste of what an authoritarian world could look like – and weirdly some people seemed to almost enjoy it, some even took advantage of it – whereas others felt their civil liberties had been violated, often for reasons that made no sense and that ‘the science says’ was a phrase governments hid behind to absolve them of blame for mistakes they made.
You’ve drawn a comparison between today’s world and the tensions of a century ago. What made you look to history, like East Germany’s culture of surveillance and snitching, as a lens for this song?
Around the same time as Covid, I was reading a novel based in East Germany just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A consistent theme in the book was how, with a lot of meritocracy being removed from society and replaced by loyalty to the State, that the most common ‘currency’ became snitching on your neighbours. I think Covid saw a fair few people revelled in being a snitch on their neighbours – maybe rightly so – but the point is, people were doing it for social credit or virtue signalling with no financial benefit. But in authoritarian societies, such actions could be the difference between owning a stereo as opposed a transistor radio or gaining a promotion at work..
The title asks a pointed question: are we really all in this together? What answer, if any, were you hoping listeners would arrive at?
I think we have to be very careful despite the allure of authoritarian regimes, to resist them, because as people have found in the USA, it isn’t always the guy a lot of people want to have the ultimate power, who ends up getting his hands on it. So maybe, let’s not allow such a situation to occur where power can be abused.
I understand the temptation, but I think we should resist it. Many of the greatest slaughters in our world came from people claiming to have the secret to utopia – and because utopia is the aim, how we get there can be written off as the cost of doing business. Well, as a father, I don’t want the cost of doing business to ruin my childrens’ or future grandchildren’s prospects and even put them on the brink of having to fight a war.
Steve, your restraint as a musician has been widely praised on previous singles, letting AJ’s words take center stage. How did you approach the music for this particular song?
Pretty much how I do with every song, I’ve always got riffs floating around either in my head or recorded but i deliberately keep them like that, very rough ideas.
When Al finishes a set of lyrics and sends them to me, that’s when I start to ramp things up.
I read the words many times and start to form patterns and phrasings around them.
I count the words in a line and lines in a verse etc and from that I can gauge an appropriate BPM to pitch the music at and then it’s a matter of revisiting my riffs and try to find something that speaks to that specific set of words.
I don’t see it as me showing restraint , I have a simple ethos and that is Song First the music has to benefit the song and if it doesn’t it won’t be there.
Rumour Den has always explored universal themes like loss, loneliness, and helplessness in the face of power. How does “All In This Together” continue or shift that tradition?
Authoritarian regimes remove a lot of what makes us human e.g. freedom of choice, freedom of association. If the State controls what you can listen to, what you can read, what opinions you can hear or give, even how you live your day-to-day life, then how can anyone really be themselves? They are alienated at the most basic level. I think we have to be very careful what freedoms we hand over to others simply because of this fairly modern idea that we need to be protected from things we don’t like.
You both walked away from music at different points over the years, yet you always found your way back. What was it about revisiting old material last year that sparked this new chapter?
AJ: It reminded us that we were good songwriters. In the second phase of Rumour Den, about 13 years ago, we wrote a lot of songs we knew had a lot of potential and had got some rough demos of them. But then life got in the way, that version of the band split up and the songs just lay there. We have to thank our friend and former bandmate Alan (Boyd) for reminding us of that. He sent us a version of an old song of ours that he recorded based on some old rehearsal recordings he had.
It just sparked something in us, the realisation that we actually are pretty good songwriters. It also coincided with Steve & I both being in the right place in our lives to do something about it. But, while we have rearranged and rerecorded a couple of those older songs, that was just the springboard to get us writing again. And once we opened that bottle again, whoosh.
Recording at Einstein Studios with Frankie McClay seems to be shaping the sound of this era for Rumour Den. What has that collaboration brought to songs like this one?
AJ – One of the lessons I learned from ‘Melancholics Anonymous’, but sadly only afterwards, was I needed to work with a producer who pushed me hard and made me extend myself, but who was also my biggest fan (or made me feel that he was). This is Frankie’s forte, plus he has a great ear for producing vocals. The reviews of our 3 releases all remark upon how great the vocals sound and I think Frankie can take a lot of credit for that for helping me reach the standards I have reached.
Steve: For me, I’m really enjoying working alongside Frankie, a Producer who has fantastic ears, he works great with Al and they have put together some really fantastic vocal work on this album.
Being around creative talent when you’re trying to put together something special can only be a good thing.
Your earlier album, Melancholics Anonymous, never felt fully realized to either of you. How has that experience shaped the way you’re approaching this new body of work?
AJ: The album was the victim of a lot of decisions that ended up being the wrong ones. Originally, we started to do the album with just the two of us, studio technology and the possibility of a session drummer if needed. But instead, we ended up forming a band and that didn’t make the process better and sometimes it was a downright distraction.
The whole recording process also took too long, and we used a producer who we were too friendly with and that clouded our ability to stand back and assess what we were doing. It is a very disjointed sounding album. So, this time round we were determined to stick to the plan of this album being Me, Steve, session musicians & some technology (same technology that all bands have been using for over a decade). I think there has been a lot less second-guessing of direction and what songs to choose. We have basically decided to record more songs than we will need and choose the best ones once we hear the songs fully developed.
STEVE This one is a simple answer for me. It taught me to never accept anything that I don’t believe is perfect. The song will be complete when it’s complete and the same goes for the album.
Whatever it takes.
With more songs from “Relapse” still to come, what can listeners expect from the rest of this collection, and how does “All In This Together” set the tone for what’s ahead?
AJ :- In terms of subject matter only to a certain extent. There are some songs that would fall under the same category of political commentary lyric-wise, notably a song called “Shoot The Messenger”. But we have also have some songs that are more a social commentary than political and then there are a few ones that tread that personal/relationship path that characterised ‘Part of the Problem’. I had a lengthy period in between day jobs recently and it gave me lots of time to reassess old lyrics, write new ones and basically ruminate on life, then write more lyrics about those ruminations.
STEVE: Well the first 3 songs we’ve released so far are fairly different in their overall musical styles but I still think when listened together they still all sound very much Rumour Den songs and that theme will continue, songs will live in their own space but will still be tied together by the overarching concept of them being melancholic in nature and find their home in the Alt Rock setting.
