Distorted Sound's Top 20 Albums of 2022

The sophmore album from Conjurer

When Lorna Shore brought in Will Ramos to replace their previous vocalist in 2020, he had his work cut out for him. The New Jersey deathcore crew already had three albums and three EPs under their collective belt—not to mention a significant fanbase. Ramos made his studio debut with the band on their 2021 EP, *…And I Return to Nothingness*. “Writing the EP, I overthought the crap out of everything,” he tells Apple Music. “I had a million different ideas but wasn’t sure what to do. In the end, the band was like, ‘Do whatever feels most comfortable.’” Their advice paid off when the EP’s “To the Hellfire” went viral. So, Ramos trusted his instincts when it came time to write lyrics for *Pain Remains*. “I wanted to write an adventure that starts with the first song and ends almost back at the beginning with the last song,” he explains. Inspired by some of his favorite anime and manga, *Pain Remains* is a concept album that takes place in a dreamworld created by someone who wants to escape their reality. “A lot of deathcore albums are about anger and ‘fuck this, fuck that’—very monotone,” Ramos notes. “I wanted to do something that creates an emotion that, maybe, you haven’t felt in a long time.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Welcome Back, O’ Sleeping Dreamer”** “There’s a narrator explaining the potential of dreams and lucidity, the opportunity for exploration of the infinite, and a deeper dive into the human psyche. The whole song is about falling into this place that feels familiar, but it’s somehow not familiar at the same time. It’s a concept album, so this is the first chapter.” **“Into the Earth”** “This is where the character starts to realize that they’re lucid dreaming—and they’re able to control almost all of this world that’s around them. In the first song, they’re falling into place. In this one, they’re becoming aware of their abilities. Lucid dreaming—becoming aware of dreaming during the dream—is one of the hardest things to do. Usually, when you do that, you wake up immediately. But this person is realizing they can manipulate their dreamworld.” **“Sun//Eater”** “In this one, the character starts to realize that they’re almost like a god. When you start to lucid-dream, you become the god of your dreams. You can control everything. The chorus talks about being omnipotent: ‘I am the one/Icarus/I’ll touch the sun,’ whereas Icarus could not touch the sun. He tried so hard. In this song, the person is saying, ‘These are the things I’m going to do.’ It’s optimism. ‘I want to create. This is where I’m at.’” **“Cursed to Die”** “In this song, the character is fully immersed in a dreamlike state. After realizing that they’re a god in the last song, now the person who controls this dream universe ends up making people in his own image, so he’s not alone in this world. He’s creating man, essentially, from his memories. He’s basically just trying to fill a void inside that can’t be filled. At this point, he starts second-guessing everything. ‘Did I do this for fulfillment? Am I feeling fulfilled?’ He’s not exactly sure. But he’s learning that reality is whatever you make it to be.” **“Soulless Existence”** “This is where the main character, who has become the god of his own world, starts to realize that there is no point. ‘I’ve done all this shit, and I’m still not happy.’ His emptiness is filling up this world. He himself is nothingness. He’s lost his purpose. He’s found no significance in himself or anything that he has created. He’s lost. He starts to feel like he’s in an endless, almost inescapable purgatory. The lyrics are basically saying he’s in a place where nobody could ever find him.” **“Apotheosis”** “The character starts to see something in the distance that gives him a glimpse of hope. It may be a person or a thing, but he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. He’s like, ‘This is going to be fine. Everything is going to work out.’” **“Wrath”** “When we were putting the album together, this one got moved around. ‘Wrath’ was supposed to be before ‘Apotheosis’ in the story, but the songs flowed better sonically this way. The song is about being pissed and wanting to destroy everything. He’s basically at the point where he wants to see the world he’s created go down in flames. But, like I said, this was supposed to be before he finds any glimpse of hope. So, the story is a little jumbled here.” **“Pain Remains I: Dancing Like Flames”** “I used to have dreams where I would have this fantastic relationship with somebody, and I can’t even tell who this person is at all because that’s how dreams are. Unfortunately, you can’t make out a lot of things—dreams are so vague. But in your mind, it makes sense. You’re falling in love, and then you’ll wake up from the dream and be like, ‘Shit, that never really happened at all. This sucks.’ In the story, the character has a moment like this. They begin to love in their dreams, which returns meaning to their dreamworld. But they can’t quite find solace.” **“Pain Remains II: After All I’ve Done, I’ll Disappear”** “He’s beginning to realize that, after everything, he’s at the end of this whole world he made. It’s all a ghost in the breeze, like fading memories. He wants to disappear, to escape from this dreamworld.” **“Pain Remains III: In a Sea of Fire”** “This is the conclusion, but it’s also the part where he is most angry. He’s at the bottom of the barrel and desperate. The world he made, he’s going to burn it all down and disappear. He’s ready to go back to wherever it was that he came from. It’s the idea that God has left us and the world he made. He’s bored, he’s sad, and nothing he’s done has brought him any purpose. So, he leaves the world and goes back to the reality he came from. The ending is a bittersweet tragedy.”

With the second installment of their *Vaxis* story arc, emo-prog wizards Coheed and Cambria continue the highly ambitious *Amory Wars* sci-fi epic that has defined their musical career. *Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind* is an intricate cinematic narrative following a couple on the run from tyrannical forces while trying to find a cure for their young son’s mysterious condition. For Coheed vocalist, guitarist, and conceptual mastermind Claudio Sanchez, the story is a highly personal one cloaked in futuristic fantasy. “That’s kind of why I created the concept 20 years ago,” he tells Apple Music. “As the singer, it’s really hard for me to be the center of attention, the one where the messages are coming from. So, it was easier for me to construct this thing to hide behind. That’s why Coheed has been primarily shrouded in a story called *The Amory Wars*.” Below, he discusses each song on the album. **“The Embers of Fire”** “This is the intro to the record, and it hearkens back to a theme that came on the record before it, which was a track called ‘Old Flames.’ The thing that I really enjoy about this piece is that my son got to sing on it—he was five at the time. The idea of the character of Vaxis is that he’s this omnipresent sort of being that lives in all states of his life. So, I thought it would be interesting to have the child voice as well as the adult singing on the same track, singing the same lines, kind of stretching across time in a way. I really love that piece.” **“Beautiful Losers”** “A lot of these songs are directly inspired by my life, but I utilize them to inform the fiction. ‘Beautiful Losers’ came from the idea that Coheed was coming into its 20th year, and for a long time, there’s been this sense of and feeling within the band of being the underdog, and I find that there’s kind of a beauty in that. Being able to put 20 years of history behind us, I made ‘Beautiful Losers’ as sort of an anthem and tribute to that. Of course, it has its place within the fiction, but truly I think the roots of the song are that.” **“Comatose”** “Some of these songs were written pre-pandemic and were then sort of given their identity during the pandemic. ‘Comatose’ is one of them. The music has been around for a moment, but when I started to pen the lyrics to it, we had been trapped in isolation. My wife and I may have gotten into an argument, and I think that fueled the identity of that song. The line about being comatose comes from something my mother would jokingly say about my father when he was relaxing on the couch after work—she’d say he was comatose.” **“Shoulders”** “‘Shoulders’ is kind of in the same department as ‘Beautiful Losers,’ where it’s feeling the pride of history behind us, but also the sense of feeling the weight of things that I might not have accomplished during that time. But it’s also about coming out of that tunnel and feeling empowered by it. It’s also a little bit of a play on my son’s name being Atlas. So, again, there are these very personal themes that I’m utilizing to inform the story of Vaxis.” **“A Disappearing Act”** “When I started to actually solidify what this song was about, I started thinking about losing all that time during the pandemic. I was living inside my own head during the lockdown period, and then came out at the other end realizing that all this time had disappeared. People have disappeared. I lost my grandfather at the top of the pandemic without the chance to say goodbye. My wife had the same thing with her grandmother. It felt strange to come out of this period where it felt like nothing changed, but a shit ton really has.” **“Love Murder One”** “This one falls into the department of ‘Comatose.’ My wife and I have been together now almost 20 years but not married the entire time. I think we’re pretty rock-solid, but when you get imprisoned in your own confines, like during lockdown, things happen and you can struggle. ‘Love Murder One’ was an opportunity for me to exercise an emotion that I was having and just leave it in the song and not take it into reality. I got to experiment on this one, too. I explored synths on this song and also played an eight-string guitar.” **“Blood”** “For me, this has a lot to do with feeling misunderstood most of my life—and seeing that maybe that might be the same for my son. So, it’s a message to my son, Atlas, really. I’ve written a lot of songs for him. Going back a couple of years, I wrote the song ‘Atlas’ in anticipation of his birth. But with ‘Blood,’ I just want him to understand that if you experience the things I have, you’re not alone in those experiences.” **“The Liars Club”** “Right after we finished the first *Vaxis* album, *The Unheavenly Creatures*, I wrote ‘The Liars Club.’ But like a lot of songs on this record, the lyrics took form during the pandemic. Life just felt a little uncertain and a little scary. It came from the idea that maybe a false reality would be better. Who doesn’t want to live the better side of everything we experienced, even if ignoring the rest is like living a lie? That was the loose theme when I wrote this one.” **“Bad Man”** “This is a funny one because I was high as shit when I wrote it. I’m a very paranoid, introverted person, so aside from having a few drinks, I don’t really participate in that kind of thing a whole lot. But when we were in lockdown, I figured, ‘Why not? It’s been a long time.’ I think the last time I wrote music and got high like that was probably for \[2003’s\] *In Keeping Secrets*. My wife had some stuff, so I got into a certain headspace and attacked the vocals in a way that I haven’t in a long time. That whole verse section, I’m under the influence and doing my best to imitate Michael Jackson.” **“Our Love”** “At the top of lockdown, I got a Korg ARP 2600 \[synth\] and started fooling around with it. ‘Our Love’ came out of one of those ideas, but I didn’t really do much with it at first. When I came back to it a few months later, I thought it would be a good segue piece because it’s this moment where our characters have decided to sort of enter the lion’s den to acquire the thing that they feel could help their son. In that moment, they have this sentimental moment of, ‘Our love will persevere. We will get through this.’ I felt the same way with my wife during lockdown.” **“Ladders of Supremacy”** “This song was originally going to open *The Unheavenly Creatures* album, so it’s been around for a while. I held onto it because, lyrically, it wasn’t there yet. But at this point on the album, our characters are entering the lion’s den. It’s maximum security. It’s fear. It’s chaos. That was the visual I had in my head when I started writing the lyrics. Then all the stuff happened around George Floyd, and it started giving me this perspective that I’ve never had before, so I started to explore that in the song as well.” **“Rise, Naianasha (Cut the Cord)”** “That’s another one in the ‘Blood’ sort of world, geared towards my son. It’s saying that I’ll always be there for him, regardless of if I’m here or not. I’m saying, ‘You’re going to have me forever, and I’ll do whatever I can to protect you.’” **“Window of the Waking Mind”** “Before I started working on the concept of the *Vaxis* records, I read a little bit of this book called *NeuroTribes*, which is about neurodiversity. When you have a child and they’re developing, there are all these milestones in place for what is the typical mind. I just found it fascinating because I saw so many connections to myself and my son. This idea of strict normality really helped create the character of Vaxis. In the album’s story, these two people are trying to find something that they think could help cure their child, but in actuality, their child is a higher consciousness—a being far beyond their comprehension. In later stories, that will be important for *The Amory Wars*.”

Swedish supergroup The Halo Effect is releasing their debut album in 2022, but you could say that the band has been in the works since the early ’90s. That’s when vocalist Mikael Stanne (also of Dark Tranquillity) first met ex-In Flames members Niclas Engelin (guitar), Daniel Svensson (drums), Peter Iwers (bass), and Jesper Strömblad (guitar). “We’ve been friends since we were teenagers,” Stanne tells Apple Music. “But the pandemic finally gave us the opening to do this.” Drawing on their collective past as pioneers of Gothenburg’s melodic death-metal style, the members of The Halo Effect pooled their collective talents on *Days of the Lost*. “We decided to play to our strengths,” Stanne says. “We didn’t want to overthink it or try to be anything other than what we are. And that was very liberating. It was kind of like having this band starting in ’91 or ’92, because that’s how it felt.” Below, he discusses each song. **“Shadowminds”** “This was one of the first three songs that we wrote. Instead of writing about my experiences, as I do with Dark Tranquillity all the time, I wanted to talk to the other guys and see what they were feeling and what they’ve been through. Lyrically, it’s a little bit about substance abuse because Jesper has been going through a rough time and I was trying to understand where he’s been. It’s saying, ‘Don’t let that overtake you. Focus on the positives and don’t let this kind of negativity bring you down.’” **“Days of the Lost”** “This was one of the first songs that Jesper was a part of. It has some of the more intense and heavy riffs that I’ve written vocals to, so I remember that being a challenge. Lyrically, it’s about who we were when we started out making music in the late ’80s. I remember feeling so strongly that this is what I wanted to do, and the only people I could talk to about it were my friends, the other super metal geeks—and no one else. We all met because we had this shared passion. Extreme metal became this thing that united us.” **“The Needless End”** “Niclas brings so much melody to this song that I didn’t really need to sing it—I could just scream. But it’s basically about how things come to an unnecessary end because communication comes to a standstill. Of course, that is something we’ve all been through in our different bands over the years. Why does communication eventually just break down? For us, it has to do with being Scandinavians. We’re not very comfortable with talking about our emotions, but it’s so frustrating because most things can be solved if we just open up to each other.” **“Conditional”** “This is another super intense and heavy song. Jesper wrote most of it, and I remember thinking that it was kind of cathartic for him. At least that’s my opinion. The lyrics are about how you come to a point where you need other people in your life in order to complete every task. I think a band is like that. Very few bands have just one guy that takes care of everything. So, it’s a matter of working together and being a part of something in order to achieve stuff, which is a super positive and amazing thing but can also be limiting, where you become used to having someone else take care of things for you.” **“In Broken Trust”** “This band is such a great thing to be part of because these are some of my best friends, and also musicians that I love but never worked with—except for Jesper back in the forever ago. We often talked in the studio about what brought us to this point and how important it feels to be back to this level of friendship. It’s easy to go with a band for a long time and lose track of that. You think everybody wants the same thing, but that’s not necessarily the case. All of a sudden, you realize somebody has an ulterior motive you don’t agree with or understand, and that can be devastating.” **“Gateways”** “This is the first song we wrote. Niclas and I were sitting on a train coming back from the Grammy Awards in Stockholm. Dark Tranquillity and In Flames were nominated, but Ghost won. We were drinking and talking about music in general, and then Niclas suggested that we should write something together. A couple of weeks later, he sent me this song. I really love it because it has a more progressive vibe to it, but it also sets the tone for some of the other songs as well. It’s probably my favorite of the album.” **“A Truth Worth Lying For”** “It’s one of the more emotional songs on the album, I think. I remember feeling like the prechorus is very much a tribute to Children of Bodom, and that’s how I wrote it. I think maybe that’s what Jesper thought about it as well. And, of course, Niclas writes these hugely emotional melodies without even thinking about it sometimes. It’s a song about the commitment that we make to this kind of lifestyle. As much as we love it and as cool as it is to be able to basically live off your hobby, it’s still hard work. But nobody would ever believe you if you tell them how much work it actually is, so it’s much easier to just say, ‘It’s all good.’” **“Feel What I Believe”** “This is basically about being a kid. I remember hanging out with Tomas Lindberg, from At the Gates, at his parents’ house. We were 14 or 16 or something like that and were sitting in his room, listening to metal. His parents were like, ‘What are you guys doing?’ They just didn’t get it and thought it was just a phase. But for us, it was a special thing. It didn’t matter if no one understood or cared. You had friends that supported you—screw everything else. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, here in the south of Sweden, being a metalhead or a punk was not cool. It was not respected or understood. But we didn’t care.” **“Last of Our Kind”** “Jesper wrote this track and suggested that we do strings at the beginning, like old At the Gates. We even contacted the guy who plays violin on the first two At the Gates albums, but he wasn’t available. So, this feels like a tribute to the old days of Gothenburg death metal. Not just a throwback or retro thing, but more like, ‘Hey, this is what happened back then, and it was important.’ How we learned about music back then, through tape trading and fanzines, that stuff is gone. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, but I think you become more passionate and dedicated when something is so hard to get.” **“The Most Alone”** “Usually, when I come up with a song title, I google it to make sure that not many bands have the same title. What comes up if you google ‘The Most Alone’ is a whale off the coast of Canada that has a speech impediment. He cannot communicate with other whales because he sings whatever they do at a different frequency. He’s the most alone animal in the world. That was heartbreaking, so as I was writing the lyrics, I imagined if you were just on a different frequency than everyone else. Of course, that’s maybe what we have felt like all our lives because we have chosen a different path. It can be very lonely, but we were lucky to find a community early on.”

Contemplation and self-awareness run throughout Celebrity Therapist. “The whole album is about history repeating itself and how we kind of move in circles. It’s two steps forward and three steps back with a bunch of people in my life. The album is me reflecting on these people but realizing I’m guilty of the same at the end of the record. There are a lot of ‘fuck you’ songs because every heavy band likes writing those. But overall, the lyrics are more introspective and quite loving.” The Callous Daoboys come from the school of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, and The Chariot, with a heightened degree of theatricality as one of the methods to their madness. Think Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy getting slapped around good-naturedly by Glassjaw. Celebrity Therapist even indulges in a bit of drone and avant-garde post-rock a la Sigor Rós and Radiohead.

On their third full-length, the Sydney quartet Stand Atlantic keep redefining the boundaries of pop-punk, using their guitar-bass-drums-vocals setup as a launching point for maximalist misfit anthems. Tracks like the speedy poison-pen letter to anxiety “van gogh” and the self-loathing “don’t talk \[to me\]” operate in classic pop-punk mode, using the “three chords and the truth” ideal to tackle heavy problems with bravado and wit. Elsewhere, *f.e.a.r.* gets lyrically meta and musically grandiose: “dumb,” a collaboration with Atlanta genre bender Tom The Mail Man, takes on the frustrations of being musically pigeonholed with funk bass and f-bombs, while the larger-than-life “cabin fever” throws in trap drums, strings, and even a cameo from vocalist Bonnie Fraser’s mum as it rages against the major-label machine.

Since completing their farewell tour in 2012, Southern Ontario post-hardcore heroes Alexisonfire have done a pretty terrible job of staying apart. Even as its members committed themselves to other bands—singer/guitarist Dallas Green with City and Colour, resident screamer George Pettit with Dead Tired, guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeil with Gallows, drummer Jordan Hastings with Billy Talent—the everlasting power of what they created as Alexisonfire kept pulling them back together. Festival reunion dates in 2015 had, by decade’s end, given way to a string of stand-alone singles. Still, the prospect of a new full-length Alexisonfire album—following 2009’s *Old Crows / Young Cardinals*—was never a sure thing. That is, until COVID shutdowns presented them with a rare opportunity to make music without deadline pressures or looming tour dates. “This was just a bunch of guys getting back together and just creating for the sake of it,” Pettit tells Apple Music. “We\'re all very different people than when we wrote *Old Crows / Young Cardinals*, but I think that benefited us in a lot of ways, because there\'s been 10 years of us consuming different music and being inspired by different things.” Arriving 20 years after their self-titled debut album, *Otherness* reintroduces a band that’s lost none of its intensity, and shortens the aesthetic distance between Alexisonfire’s circle-pit strikes and the graceful balladry of City and Colour. And that’s not just Green’s doing—for the first time, Pettit eases up on the throat-shredding to actually sing a handful of verses and harmonize with his bandmates. “This album came to us without a lot of struggles,” Pettit says proudly. “On *Otherness*, we\'re all pulling in the same direction.” Here, Pettit gives us the track-by-track rundown of Alexisonfire’s new beginning. **“Commited to the Con”** “The con is conservatism. It\'s this notion that if we dismantle government for the sake of giving tax breaks or funneling money into billionaires’ pockets without regulation, that\'s somehow going to deliver us to some new utopia of freedom. That\'s just horseshit, and a lot of people are buying it. There are people out there that are committed to this con, this thing with no working models in the world. But when we band together, our tax dollars can prop up the cornerstone of civilized society—they pay for hospitals and schools and emergency services and infrastructure. So when we ask, ‘Which side are you on?’ it\'s like: Are you on the side of working together as people to make things better for everyone, or are you on the side of every-man-for-himself libertarian hypothetical nonsense?” **“Sweet Dreams of Otherness”** “The idea of \'otherness\' can be interpreted in any sort of way. The way that it applies to Alexisonfire is that we were all kids who grew up trying to find the secret corners of culture. I grew up in Southern Ontario, a third-generation Canadian with no ties to any sort of real culture from my ancestry. So you have to make it yourself and figure out the things that you want to represent your generation. And the things that were being presented to us through major media didn\'t appeal to us—we had to go and find those weird spaces. It could have been a CAW \[Canadian Auto Workers\] union hall where there was a punk show happening, or an independent record store, or the indie cinema that was coming out at the time. So the song is kind of about that, but it also has all sorts of implications for people who are nonbinary, or people who are LGBTQ. It\'s about finding strength in the fact that you\'re very different.” **“Sans Soleil”** “I\'m kind of a key component to Alexisonfire with all my screaming, but there have been times where we\'ve shoehorned that into songs just to kind of keep me in the band. But this is a beautiful song, and there\'d be no point in trying to have me scream for the purposes of keeping that in. So I took a back seat—I was just doing backup vocals with Dallas on this one. It\'s the type of song that we might not have put on one of our earlier records, but we felt like it was an Alexis song, for sure.” **“Conditional Love”** “This is about love as a choice, as opposed to it being some uncontrollable thing. And in some ways, that, to me, is better: the idea of being an active participant in my love and not have it be something that I\'m being dragged around by. That\'s the sentiment of the lyrics—but they just kind of fell into this ripper kind of rock song.” **“Blue Spade”** “\[Bassist\] Chris Steele started contributing lyrics on this record. Chris is a very remarkable individual who has been through a considerable amount, so having his perspective on a song felt right. Dallas took a section of his lyrics and found a way to turn it into a chorus. We have demos of the song where I’m screaming the verses, but when we got into the studio, I thought, \'I\'m gonna attempt to sing this.\' I\'m not quite confident in my ability as a singer, so I was like, \'Is this good?\' And then Wade walked in the room and was like, \'That\'s it! That\'s what this song needs.\' We had a really intense moment where we were just like, \'Okay, well, now there\'s nothing that we can\'t do!\' It just felt like we had unlocked a new gear within the band and found a new way to inject me into a song.” **“Dark Night of the Soul”** “The lyrical content is about Wade having a psychedelic experience on DMT, and the song matches the lyrics. We were really expanding this song, and there\'s that moment in the bridge—where it goes to that shuffle beat—and I thought, \'Let\'s do something jazzy here.\' We found a way to really make that song unique—it goes full Goblin. There were grand designs at one point to approach the remaining members of Rush to do like a 15-minute bridge for the song.” **“Mistaken Information”** “Dallas is the best singer that I\'ve ever known, so it was nice to actually sing \[harmonies\] on a track with him. After I was done recording my vocals for this, I was almost sad, because I was enjoying it so much. I think this song was actually in play for City and Colour’s new record, but Dallas was discussing it with his wife, and she was like, \'I feel like this is an Alexisonfire song.\' It\'s about the war on the truth, and how it\'s hard to understand what the truth is now because there\'s so much misinformation out there. But when we were recording it, I remember Dallas saying, \'Are people just going to think this is a breakup song?\' And I said, \'If they interpret it that way, it\'s valid.’ I feel like it works that way as well.” **“Survivor’s Guilt”** “I work in emergency services, and this song is naming a phenomenon that I see, where you see something horrible and then you go about the rest of your day like nothing happened. You have the ability to kind of detach, and it\'s not a particularly heroic quality, but it is, in some ways, a very necessary quality. I\'m not sure that necessarily comes through in the lyrics—I purposely tried to make it a bit more open for interpretation, but that\'s where the ‘survivor’s guilt’ sentiment came from.” **“Reverse the Curse”** \"We had a version of this \[for *Old Crows / Young Cardinals*\] that was extremely Kyuss-heavy, and at the time, we were uncomfortable with that—we felt like we were doing something that wasn\'t us. As a group of people who have great respect for the stoner-rock world, we didn’t want to disrespect it. It\'s the same reason why I would never make a reggae album, even though I love Jamaican music. But now, in the \'Dark Night of the Soul\' era of Alexisonfire, things are a little more open and we can kind of do whatever we feel like now. \[City and Colour touring member\] Matt Kelly got to play Hammond on it, and that really leveled the song up in a way that we hadn\'t been anticipating.” **“World Stops Turning”** “This is a love song Dallas wrote about his band, Alexisonfire. We had the most beautiful moment where he brought us up to his cottage and we sat at his dining room table and for three hours, we just talked, and discussed the history of the band. He let us in on things that had been going on in his life, and it was just a very introspective moment for all of us. And at the end of it, he presented us with a demo he\'d been working on of this song, and we just knew that this is going to be the new set-closer. We’ve always ended our set with \[2004\'s\] \'Happiness by the Kilowatt,\' and we turn it into this 12-minute version. And this song felt like the new version of that—we\'re gonna have this big sprawling epic, and I could envision it just blowing everyone’s hair back. It\'s a perfect album-ender—we went full Floyd on this one.”