From the album The Lines of History
Lyrics
We will weather a storm
Fueled by the neglect of centuries
A shift in perception
Strips back layers of history
This path beaten before
Passed as aged senility, Lost
A trek with no turn
To learn lessons earned
This role as The First
A part to rehearse
Immolation gains a heart
Through increasing disregard,
A force unseen
Winds carving lines into the face
Of one who lived through past mistakes
An image we still choose to trace
Despite the wealth we have at stake
Never to know the breath of hope,
The common goal we would sow
Notes
Andy (click to show)
Andy (click to hide)
This is definitely my favorite song on the album as I feel that the various themes that exist elsewhere on the disk end up being brought together into one package. You also get to hear the band’s first real experimentation with fuzz bass which from this point forward should become a staple of our sound. I spent a lot of effort prior to this trying to maintain myself as a “true bass player.” Fingers, 5 strings, clean tone, etc. It became obvious pretty quickly that abandoning a decade plus of guitar playing was a mistake. This song marks the point where that changed and I took a conscious step forward to develop my own style. Hopefully you hear that in future material.
Axel (click to show)
Axel (click to hide)
I love the gang vocals Jim came up with for this song. I think it’s some of the most brutal vocals he’s come up with yet, and I always tear the shit out of my voice when I belt them out live. So much fun.
I’m pretty sure the lyrics are about the earthquake in Haiti. Jim always writes about topical stuff like that…I think he’s got a few songs about the banking crisis and the tea party’s influence on the political system in the works. So we’ll all be looking forward to that.
Rug (click to show)
Rug (click to hide)
This is my favorite song on the album, no contest. There is a ton of fun musical interplay throughout the entire song, and Smallz even gets into the mix, by taking my dotted 8th intro riff, and playing that on bass, while Axel and I build a completely different riff over that pattern than what was played at the beginning of the song. Furthermore, if you divide the song into two parts, Jimmy builds his drums on the end of the song basing them off of the patterns he plays during the first half. Subtle, but really effective in having some continuity throughout the song, other than having the whole song in the key of G#. 
Guitarists have been gone back and forth over the years on the role of effects pedals. Some are purists (so, NO pedals), and some use pedals as creation tools, or to enhance existing parts. I definitely fall in the latter camp – I love adding effects (especially delay) to parts, and many times playing with the pedals leads me to sounds and parts that I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise. I catch a lot of grief from the rest of the band about my love of delay, but the end of this song was inspired by the Eventide Time Factor delay pedal. I’d just got it, plugged it in, and started messing around, and came up with the basis for the melodic movement that is present in the second half of the song…having the static loop line of root/5th/root/5th pedal tones, and finding cool harmonies that work with that base part. The Time Factor has a nice little “hold” switch, which will basically put anything that you’re playing on an infinite loop. It just takes a snapshot of what’s being playing and holds it there, sort of like a moving photograph.
