 The first song on "The Black Market", "The Great-Die Off", begins with instrumentation on a violin before transitioning into a fast guitar section with heavy bass.According to McIlrath, the song is about "a generation's type of thinking dying off, as the people who think it die off [...] it's about bigotry, which persists as long as these people do".The next two songs, "I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore" and "Tragedy + Time" feature more personal messages; "I Don't Want to Be Here Anymore" is about resolving to escape from the dark moments in one's life, while pop punk-driven "Tragedy + Time" tells the listener to push through hardship and that life will eventually get better.