Today, I will be doing a review on the song “The People in the Attic” by Ice Nine Kills. I might be a bit partial to this song because when I was younger, I looked up to Anne Frank. She was my role model, and I used to aspire to have the same impact on the world that she did. You know, minus the Holocaust and dying in a concentration camp. I hope that never happens. As a small preface, the song is based off of Anne Frank’s diary and what could have been her experience when she was in the attic. For anyone who may be unfamiliar with Anne Frank, she was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who was forced to go into hiding with her family to avoid being captured by the Nazis during World War II. The Frank family had gone into hiding in 1942, and after two years of living in the annex, police officers stormed the small shop they were hiding in and arrested a total of ten people (two of them were helpers) on August 4, 1944. Anne was sent to the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz originally, then to Bergen-Belsen where she passed away of typhus at the age of fifteen. She is known for the diary she kept during her time in hiding.
The song focuses mostly on the literary aspect of Anne Frank’s experience, and the effort that the band went through to create the song is incredible to me. Some lines of the song are direct quotes of Frank’s diary, showing that there was at least some method of thought for the song. For example, they pull the quote “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality” from her diary. I don’t know if it was intentional, but that quote (or line, however you’d like to take it) was written less than a month before Anne Frank and her family were arrested from the attic – close to the end of her life, basically. Yet the band chose to use that as the opening line for the song. I just find it ironic to use that particular quote.
The lead singer and writer of the song, Spencer Charnas, tries his best to portray the fear, frustration, and hopelessness that would have been a general experience in the annex. The lines “They’re getting closer and closer to me/Stripping my dignity with every brick as it’s broken/Stealing hope from my whole family” shows how belittling it must have been to have to give up everything just because of what religion they practiced. Her father had to sell his business; her whole family had to give up their lives and pack it all into a series of cramped rooms that had to be shared with six other strangers. I just love the dedication Charnas put into the storyline of the song because Anne Frank deserved nothing less than that, and if not, more. I know that Anne Frank might seem to be a bit overrated to some people, but please give the song a listen and take a tour of the Annex!
