Florence + the Machine, a British indie rock band, is known for their emotional releases and their equally impactful live performances. Headed by lead singer Florence Welch, Florence + the Machine is known for hits such as “Dog Days Are Over”, “Cosmic Love” and “What the Water Gave Me”.With some of my personal favorites including: “Mermaids”, “Blinding” and “Which Witch”. Given that, their fifth studio album was highly anticipated preceding its release on October 31, 2025.
I first discovered Florence + the Machine when I stumbled upon a YouTube video that was set to “Which Witch”, a bonus track for the deluxe edition of their 2015 album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. The song pulled me in immediately with its thundering beats and riveting storyline. I am, admittedly, drawn to darkly-themed music (which “Which Witch” delivers on). I especially enjoy sad, heavy, dark tracks, and this led me to fall head over heels for Florence + the Machine. I discovered the stormy “Seven Devils”; the mournful “Cosmic Love”; and the boisterous, chaotic “Ship to Wreck”. I recently ended a three- or four-month stint of listening to Florence and only Florence. So, given the band’s track record of this sort of music, I was fairly excited for the release of their fifth album, Everybody Scream.
Fitting for its Halloween release date, the album gives a bit of a horror theme. The grand majority of its tracks involve tone and diction choices that provoke images of despair, anger, and death/resurrection. “Drink Deep” particularly evokes a Halloween-ish theme with lines such as “What I thought was a sip was a thousand tears” and “But the thread that they spun / was a woman’s hair / And the gowns stitched from her tenderest flesh”. But, while there are interesting concepts and lyrics in each song, I was initially disappointed with the majority of the album. As I’ve listened to the album multiple times some songs have distinguished themselves to me more, but I would say that I’m still not a huge fan of about half of them. The outliers for me are “Everybody Scream”, “One of the Greats”, “Buckle”, “The Old Religion”, and “You Can Have it All”.
As for my least favourite – “Witch Dance” is, in my opinion, very . . . creepy. I find its lyrics weird and uncomfortably risqué. It’s not really a divergence from Florence’s typical music, but I’m not a fan of the lyrics this time. I don’t have a ton of complaints about other songs on the album, but I also don’t really have strong opinions on them either.
Overall, my initial impressions weren’t great but they’ve been changing. The album is definitely worth listening to, as the vocals are impressive and the concepts and lyrics are interesting. It isn’t as disappointing as I thought it was at first; some of the songs just needed to be given a few listens for me to really get into them. It’s a look into Welch’s head and her darker side, as she has described this album as her most personal to date. I would give the album 3.75 stars out of five overall.
