From the album The Lines of History
Lyrics
Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches
How we are poor, who once had wealth,
And losing ground in the battle for our health
Let the dust settle, enveloping all that will be
As we sleep
In our hand, calloused from waving the flag we guarded
Witlessly
These silent days we long to be spared the burden of wear
Notes
Andy (click to show)
Andy (click to hide)
Credit goes to Rug for the bass solo at the beginning. That whole intro section was actually a late addition to the song and the solo Rug had written a while back and was pretty attached to. I tinker with it a bit when we play it live, but the main inspiration certainly comes from Mr. Britson. Thanks Big Bro!
Axel (click to show)
Axel (click to hide)
This is another very old song, written when Sam and Brendon were still in the band. We channeled Misery Signals for the beginning, Opeth for the middle, and our various sludge influences for the end. This is one of my favorite songs to play live.
Rug (click to show)
Rug (click to hide)
No one in the band remembers what this song is called, except for Jim. That’s the risk you take when a song exists as a number (as in, 7 Billion Song 4), for 3 years. Then when lyrics get written, a song title is finally declared. Jim gets mad in practice when he says we should play this one, we don’t know what he’s talking about, and then someone will say, “I think this is 7 Billion Song 4″, and then we all know which song it is. Also, whenever Jim suggests a set list, Jimmy always writes it down on the marker board, converting all of Jim’s fancy titles into their correct titles…like 7BS4. Then Jim glares at us and pouts, and we all laugh and celebrate with a beer.
After about 50 seconds or so of the intro, the song kicks into gear with some nice arpeggiated chords from Axel and I. We had a really cool idea to have a song end with a really techy, complicated harmonized lead line, and have a companion song where we played that same lead line a lot slower…and what we played is the “slow” version of the original riff. I still want to use the fast version at some point, but Axel doesn’t seem to have much interest anymore, since we’ve abandoned our thrash phase. Someday I will find a use for it, and Axel will rue the day he said he didn’t like that riff anymore, because every time I’m right (which isn’t very often), I make a point of rubbing it in everyone else’s faces. So, he won’t be upset that the riff is still awesome, he’ll just be upset that I’m right and I’m going to make his existence a living nightmare because he was wrong. 
For the lead line, I just kinda stumbled upon it after at least 2 years of annoying everyone else in the band by playing cheesy pentatonic licks devoid of any real musical merit. Once I decided they had suffered enough, I got to work playing something that would actually sound good. During the distorted half of the solo, both phrases end with some big, extended voicings with string skipping, which I’m very fond of. Since I don’t like to make things harder than they have to be, I use hybrid picking (pick and fingers) to nail the notes on the higher strings.
