The most experimental performance of the record…

Very early on in the writing process the intention was set for this to be the most adventurous song in my catalog.

For context, I’m way into post rock and love sound design. Hammock, Nils Frahm , Olafur Arnalds, and many more are some of my favorite artists outside the metal world. It was always a part of my music but I wanted the “metal” aspect to be the back seat while I experimented with writing without a guitar for the first time

The intro piano part and guitar at the end of the song were written to compliment each other. There’s a clean guitar solo at the beginning of the track that was my first ever live improvised part that made it onto a recording.

Enter: Thomas Griggs. This man’s brain is on alien tier. You might have caught Thomas on tour with Intervals or seen his otherworldly outside playing floating around on instagram. I hopped over to his Davis Island apartment and recorded a handful of takes for the original version of the song. Which you can listen to below—

This song was going to make an epic video, and I had an idea. The co-working space I go to every day in Tampa had just opened an art gallery downstairs, complete with a photography studio… you know.. with one of those walls that’s curved at the bottom? Bonus points if anyone can tell me what that’s called…

I booked the studio and hired a really well respected film crew in the area, Only Wave TV. The guys were super cool and fellow musicians for the most part, so they brought extra passion to the project.

Thomas and I couldn’t coordinate the timing, so I wrote an alternate take of the solo. I’ll be honest, I was super intimidated by filling a whole minute of lead playing, but I ended up seeing it as a positive challenge and am proud of the final result

The last piece of the puzzle to make this a truly new version of the song was the ending. I was faced with two options - hire a pianist to be in the music video and learn the end part or write and acoustic guitar part over it. I went with the latter. I busted out my eye catching Yamaha Silent guitar and wrote… Here is the final result —