Built This Way is a dark fantasy introspective, dealing with feelings of uncontrollable malice that force actions without remorse and conceptually was written from the point of view of a serial killer. I know, right? We started this one as a joke and from there it blossomed into a rhythmically bouncy, swinging walk through the mind of a dangerous, narcissistic and callous psychopath. It's fun! Phil came up with the structure, playing minor chords in a 6/8 swing, switching to major chords to lift us up, and then dropping us back down to the verse. It was a cool sort of walking feel with a fun scariness to it that, before it even had words, we knew was dark. So we made it dark. Lyrically I tried to keep this one pretty much on the nose and leaned in to a murderer's perspective as much as possible with the bridge having him accomplish his goal and move on to strike another day, all peppered with influences from my own life. That's how we wrote, most of the time, with me writing the first lyrics because it was my phone that I was writing everything on, so it was with me, and I always had the newest version that I just edited. I'm pointing this out because this caused me to be the one to really know the lyrics, and be able to sing, for the longest time in our writing. For most of our writing he'd build the house and I'd decorate. We put a light, mellow bridge near the end to give a sense of peace, tonally, while lyrically being completely nonchalant about its intense evil. Production went quickly on this track in studio with everything coming together perfectly and this was the first song I considered finished, with it's disturbing yet strangely inviting tone, roiling around a sinister edge. Vocally I originally wanted to have layers of other voices singing at the same time, alluding to the voices in the head of the singer, but I completely forgot about it until just this moment. Huh. Too late now! This is the only song on the album in 6/8 time, which gives it a unique flavour transition to the more rock leaning part of the album. It's dark, it's kinda scary and it's fun.more

I chose this as the first track not only because it's a really cool title that conveys my feelings perfectly about making this record, but because it has a hectic, thumping groove that makes me want to get up and dance! This song is about trying to capture that feeling you get right in the moment when you realize something exhilarating is about to happen to you and, even though you know it's pretty dangerous, you're going to let it happen anyway. The rhythm came from Phil, who was noodling away on his guitar one evening when he started sliding octaves and putting a little trill sounding thing on the ends, hitting the off-beats just for fun and we both thought it sounded really cool. We gave it some half time vocals over an uptempo chorus that drops to half time in the verses, where the vocal does the opposite by catching the uptempo again. Every time we wrote with it, we made sure to keep that forward groove that lays back in the verse.. I wrangled with the vocals for a while, until coming up with the pseudo rap/singing style that fit right in with the tone we were looking for. We finessed the lyrics together with me, as usual, changing lyrics and forgetting to tell him, causing some friendly, sometimes heated, debate. In the studio, I made sure to retain as much of that original groove as I could while expanding the sound and letting the song, and the musicians working with me, figure out where we needed to go next. The session part of this one went pretty smoothly, everyone involved seeming to know what we were aiming for and elevating each part to a level I hadn't even considered possible yet. The thumping drums, the screeching guitar, the driving bass, and a little Tibetan bell sound peppered in for some flavour all support my strangely fun to sing vocal and harmony. I feel that it's grown up into a driving, chaotic tune with kind of an odd bridge that slips in and breaks the insanity for a moment, while still managing to keep that original groove at the core. This is it. Song one, on my first album. Oh my god, I can't believe! This is Happeningmore

Running Out of Time was directly influenced by a Metallica music video. It tells the story of a man, injured and unable to move, sense or communicate with the outside world. We took that idea and swapped out the man, ours being a slightly more romantic type of person, trapped in his own mind. Phil created a pattern hitting on odd beats, using upstrokes and created a feeling of hesitancy in the faster parts and a melodic walk around in the verses, while I played around with finding the vocal tone and melody, ending up with one of the most sombre tracks we ever made. We added a bridge to provide a feeling of peace and tranquility for a moment before heading back out into the wind and rain of storming thoughts, and finished the song with our man finding acceptance, but not relief. When Phil got his cancer diagnosis this song took on a whole new meaning for us both. Even though we talked about it openly, there was still an ickiness that pushed it down the priority list. It slowly became a sort of taboo song that went pretty much ignored. When I decided to make this album I immediately knew two things, I would be including this song, and Phil's voice would be on it in whatever way it could be. I think of this song as the one on this record that's not only meant for him, but is also from him and, I'll be honest, it was hard to revisit this song that had become so apropos, but that's also the reason why I feel it had to be included. Production wise, the only hiccup was finding the right recordings to use for Phil's voice. My early ideas were to have his voice be an ethereal, muffled sounding thing, but I soon realized that I sometimes wanted to hear what he was saying. I went through hours of footage and phone recordings and found him saying some things that I thought helped tell the story well. The original song stayed pretty much the same, with Phil joining in by wandering around the room, chiming in here and there, adding his voice to the story. The last thing he says is "OK, I'm done." and was a filmed moment where we had just finished playing our last song of the night and he was heading home, and I thought it was a perfect way to end the song.more