The song mixes various genres together. These include
classical music,
progressive rock, and
dubstep. This mixture gained a mixed reaction from fans. However, despite the strong dubstep influences, the supposed electronic sound is produced through "real instruments". According to the band: "We went to see
Skrillex in Camden around October. We went 'Fuck, it's so heavy', loved it. It was like a full metal gig, they had the circles of death, people were moshing, I hadn't seen a reaction like that to electronic music before. We took inspiration and came up with 'Unsustainable'. Some of that hard dubstep or brostep coming from America is capturing the imagination. The moshpit has moved from guitars and gone towards the laptop, so with that song we're trying to see if we can challenge the laptop. We created something that was dubsteppy but we wanted to see if we could do it with real instruments. We wanted to ask, 'Can rock bands compete with what these guys are doing?'" The song has four distinct parts: a classical music section (with a glitching female speaking voice in the background), a dubstep breakdown, a progressive rock bridge (also containing the female voice), and another dubstep breakdown to finish the song. ==Live performances==