From the album The Lines of History
Lyrics
Each in his season
Slights the reason prudence brings
Set on my tempered skin,
Cut by the cold wind,
Offers little site
Of comfort through the night
Each in his reason
Slights the season freedom springs
Left baring my marred heart
Come a drum in part
A piece to beat upon
But lacking perception
Fate, for every passion’s sake,
Provides another bond
To stress until it breaks
And strive to move beyond
A place to rest your burden, trust you belong
And yet, Fate
Provides another bond
To stress until it breaks
And strive to move beyond
Treading each other’s healing
We pave a path unyielding
Responsible for ceding, we
Bear the loss of love
Notes
Andy (click to show)
Andy (click to hide)
I absolutely love the bass lines in this song. They were written over two years before the release of this album, and I still look back on them as probably the best and most creative work I’ve done while in the band. The intro/verse is subtle and really roots the beat of the song. It really isn’t until the bridges where the bass steps away from that and commands a bit more melody and presence. I’m really attached to those parts as they really separate from the guitars yet still compliment the feel of the song. The heavy section then just digs in and drives. It’s a wonderful mix of styles. The song ends with a bass part which was inspired by the band’s previous bassist, Brendon Fuhs. His part had more flow, mine has a lot more drone, but the essence of both was very similar.
Axel (click to show)
Axel (click to hide)
This song was written when Sam and Brendon were still in the band, and it’s actually changed very little since then. It’s hard to remember how the song was “supposed” to go back then, as it seemed to be a perpetual work in progress. I do remember that some point I was planning on writing some floaty guitar line over the top of the intro. I’m glad I didn’t bother trying to do that because I really like how sparse it sounds.
Also, many thanks to our friend Erica Burton for laying down the viola for the outro. I love the haunted quality it gives to the part. We play that part live using EBows, and I also like how that sounds. I enjoy when bands play their songs differently live than they do on their albums, so I’m happy with being able to do that for this song.
Rug (click to show)
Rug (click to hide)
I’m pretty sure no one else in the band knows this, so it’s time to spill my guts – up until the the distortion kicks in, I’d written the first couple minutes of this song for a side project that I was going to do with Luke from The Envy Corps. We both started out as bands from Ames, and we wanted to do a side project together. Unfortunately, because both of our bands take up a lot of time, we only got together and jammed once…he had a couple things in mind, and I had this little dandy. That was back in 2004-ish, and since this was a pretty big departure from what LKS was doing at the time, I shelved it and wrote other stuff. And his band went on and got super famous and got signed and all that. Maybe I should have hounded him about this project a little more hahahaha. When it came time to write 7 Billion, I brought up this song to see if it would work and everyone seemed to like it ok. I added a couple other riffs I’d had laying around, Jim added a riff and did some structure work, and we were all pretty happy with it. I believe Axel says in another one of these notes that the songwriting process with this band is a very long process…is 6 years long enough? No? I’ve got riffs from 2001 and 2002 that still haven’t seen the light of day yet.
