05. ESCAPE THE MOUNTAIN, LEST THOU BE CONSUMED

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This song was initially written and recorded for the 2007 Thick Records HAIR comp, although in a much different form. Since then, the lyrics and melody changed drastically and a bit of the song structure and most of the guitar parts were revisited from that initial version as well. The final version of the song also feature's Dustin's rad guitar solo in the middle, which I can't imagine the song without now. In the break near the middle of the song, you can hear water dripping behind the guitar and vocals. We actually ran a mic down to the studio's basement bathroom and just let it drip for a while.

The beginning of this track features a foreshadowing "call out" to the next song on the album, "First One To The Scene Of An Accident...". This was actually intended to be a separate track, but when "Roots" was added late into the mixing stages of the album, we all figured it would be a bit unnecessary to have two shorter "transition" tracks back to back. The beginning "call out" was always referred to as "Bridge of Surgeons". It would take way too long to explain why.

This song, vocally is one of my favorite performances on the album, as it was done mostly live and using three different mics at different places relative to where I was standing all mixed together to create the final vocal sound. The ending "either believe it or lie to yourself" repeating line was just one take of me yelling about 20 feet off the mic in the studio's live room.

Most of the guitars on this song are actually the scratch tracks that were recorded during the drum sessions to help keep time. They just ended up having a great sound and some awesome performance quirks, so we kept them. This happened a lot during the recording process, where things we weren't intending on keeping actually ended up sounding great. Conversely, some things that we worked really really hard on never ended up making the cut. Another reason it took us over two years to record this album.

We have to thank Matt Gorski for getting us the bells to use in this song.



DEMO - Actually not a demo at all. Recorded by Lance Reynolds for THICK Records HAIR comp in Chicago, IL.