Bitterness (originally "The Blade of Bitterness")

This song is about the damage it does to you to be eaten away inside by bitterness. I get accused of that all the time. I think there is a difference though, between correctly attributing harm that was done you, and "dwelling" on it. You have to deal with stuff, and if you don't, and try to "just move on" or "get past that," you'll see the damage soon enough. It was based on the idea that you can arm yourself, with the attitudinal equivalent of a steel blade, to feel safe, but if it has no handle, you can clutch it tight and only end up bleeding everywhere.  The idea that this was rather like a razor blade and teen acts of self-harm, and that it felt, in my troubled adolescence like I was walking around bleeding mysteriously from no one place in particular are all in the song.  It's as emo as I got, I suppose.

This song was supposed to be bullfighting music from the beginning, with the idea of loud guitars eventually added to give more nastiness.  Chris Lochner was amazing at casually ripping out those melodramatic, over-the-top flamenc-ish guitar bits.  I am tempted to learn this style of guitar myself.  It's so dramatic.

I did trumpets for this song, taking advantage of the fact that I'd been playing trumpet with the teacher's brass band at school in order to perform Bohemian Rhapsody at graduation and was in better shape for playing trumpet than usual (because I'd been, you know, playing it).  I played shakers, conga drums (huge ones), chimes and organ.  I messed around with various people singing the chorus as guest vocalists, and wasn't happy with anything that got put down to tape, so I just did it myself today and AM banded it to make the choruses more different from the verses without a different voice.  My sister was doing "aaaaaaaahs" in the song, and I had her actually scream, and mixed that in quietly, then slowed it down and made a "wolf pack howling" effect out of the slowed-down screams, and generally tried to make the song sound very upset.  It's slightly briefer than my other songs, despite the prolonged intro and outro soundscapes.