“A Colossal Wreck,” released on December 8, 2020 alongside single “Desperate Pleasures,” was the first piece of new music put out by Every Time I Die since their 2016 studio album Low Teens. The singles were released in anticipation of a livestream event that the band would do in lieu of their annual Tid the Season show.

The title “A Colossal Wreck” comes from the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The band is comparing the modern world to the “wreck” left behind by that ancient tyrant, and is pointing out the ways in which modern day tyrants are making life miserable for their subjects, while also ruminating on such questions as “Why do the wicked go unpunished while the good are left to suffer and die?”