Volatile, venomous, chaotic. That’s just three of the words that can be used to describe the explosive force that is the South Carolinian post-harcore/rock outfit The Apprehended. But force alone cannot and does not even begin to adequately describe the hauntingly beautiful tonal qualities that this thunderous 5-piece reins in on their latest EP At Arms Length.
I once wrote of this band, quoting Vince Lombardi’s, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” I explained that The Apprehended had managed to internalize this musically: in your endless chasing of perfection, you continue to grow, to transform, and improve, and only then- by repeating this process without cessation- will you achieve excellence. I meant it then, and I mean it now.
At Arms Length is much more than its precise instrumental arrangements and its flawlessly orchestrated breakdowns. It’s more like a near-linear progression of emotional disputes and flares, dealing in the heaviest hands of grief, guilt, and blame- a 5-track emotional roller coaster of heartbreaking melancholy that will both drag you into the drowning depths of your own psychosis and rebirth you as something wholly alive and new. It’s a masterpiece of human grief, insecurity, and sadness that will surely set this band on a skybound journey.
We have the utmost pleasure of presenting to your eyes and ears the official track-by-track of this harrowingly beautiful EP, as told in a part narrative, part interview style by 2/5 of the band: vocalist Michael Pitt, and vocalist/guitarist Jade Williamson. As always, each track is embedded for your better listening and reading experience. So, close your mind off to everything else, open your ears, and press play for the ride of your life. Enjoy!
“Still Flyin'”
Michael: Hey, guys! We decided to open the album with a track called “Still Flyin.’” The name itself and the lyrical content is just rife with references to a show called Firefly that I’m in love with. Browncoats will never die.
Jade: I’ve never seen it.
Michael: Ahaha… Well, none of the other guys in the band have seen it, nor do they really appreciate it. Oh… Matt’s seen it. (Aside) I didn’t know that! OR did I know that… I kinda knew that… I dunno. Doesn’t really matter. We decided to open the whole album with “Still Flyin’” because it sort of offers a concentrated dose of what the album has to offer you in one quick – smack!– punchy, really strong introduction of the album.
Jade: Yeah. The song starts with this nice cymbal swell-
Michael: -From Joshua.
Jade: -Yeah, yeah, he’s a good drummer. Very clean and bright. It ends into a really jumpy intro and it just shows a lot of good production quality. And then, when Michael comes in and sings his first line- in my opinion, Michael’s a great singer, that’s why I’m in a band with him…
Michael: That’s sweet!
Jade: …
Michael: You sing, too! You’re a great singer!
Jade: Shut up.
Michael: Ahahaha
Jade: Michael’s first line really shows off his range and his ability and his control that he has right off the bat and for the rest of the song! You just… Work really hard.
Michael: That’s sort of our approach to music anyways. Just take our balls and put ‘em on the wall. Every song, we just sort of go and go and go. And we only let ourselves breathe for just a moment. And that’s part of our style. And, I uh… I figured you’d want to say something about the solo in the song.
Jade: So there’s a solo in the song. There’s supposed to be a solo. And every time this band writes a solo, Michael always sings over it and it always ends up being a duet between Austin and Michael.
Michael: Austin on his wee-dle-dee-dee guitar and Michael with his “hyyeeeeeeaaaaaa” vocals-
Jade: -Third person.
Michael: Oh, yeah… Didn’t even do that consciously…
Jade: And after the solo there’s a little breakdown section and Michael says a bad word. It was the first time this band ever had to do a radio edit.
Michael: Which is cool! My mom was upset about it because she wanted to play it in her classroom and she can’t because there’s a wordy-durd in that part. But that’s fine… Highschoolers-
Jade: – Don’t listen to screaming.
Michael: Don’t… I was gonna…
Jade: Don’t listen to aggressive music.
Michael: …They do. There’s a bunch of highschools that are really into our band. Anyways, lyrically, like I said, there’s tons of Firefly references, which is really cool, but the reason why I chose to write this song in relation to Firefly is that I identify with one of the main characters a lot in his struggle. The first episode, which is called “Still Flyin…’” No, it’s not… It’s called “Pilot.” Anyways, there’s a flashback to when he was a much stronger leadership-ly guy… Anyways, I identify with that character a lot. In the show, he’s a lot more grumbly, aggressive, and a lot angrier. And I identify with that nowadays because there’s been a transition and the song is sort of about becoming that darker, more difficult to deal with person. And you’re not exactly stoked on it, but you’re coming to terms on it. The song is sort of a love-letter to the rest of my bandmates. Like, a sort of “thank you for dealing with my shit. And I’m sorry for giving you so much shit.” And you guys are the reason that the band- nothing has anything to do with one singular member- is the reason we move forward. And that’s really what the song is about. And the last line of the song, “Though I’ve given up on hope, I haven’t given up on faith…” I often feel that there’s no hope for me in doing anything great on my own.. And all of our songs have some sort of faith-based reference and it’s about putting my life in the hands of the people that care about me. Be they the guy behind the camera, the guy sitting next to me, the guy sitting in the other room, the guy dealing with his tires right now, the girlfriend back home, or the guy upstairs. Y’know. Not, literally the guy upstairs because this is a one-story house. I mean God. But, anyways, it is about appreciating the hands that my life is in.
“Lysie Royalton”
Jade: The second song on our EP is “Lysie Royalton.” I actually wrote this song a year-ish before I joined the band.
Michael: He brought it to us and we kinda put our Apprehended stank on it. He wanted to bring it to the band and see what else it was capable of with other creative input put onto it and then it became this beautiful little baby!
Jade: It kinda sets the mood for the whole EP even though it’s the second track. It’s an extension of “Flyin’” in the way that it also shows off other things that we’re capable of.
Michael: Right! And that’s why we intro our live set with it. It sort of kicks in… Right now we play this song when you see us live and it sort of sets you up for how the rest of the live set is gonna look, how it’s gonna sound, how it’s gonna feel, how it’s gonna taste-
Jade: -It shows off how we both sing live.
Michael: That, too!
Jade: It’s a big thing. It’s kind of our mantra, I think.
Michael: I don’t know if “mantra” is the proper word, but that’s fine.
Jade: It shows off our “Apprehended stank.” It sets the look and feel for the rest of the show because we jump around live. And it’s a fun one to jump around, too, so it’s a great song to open with.
Michael: It’s probably the most fun song that we play live, in my opinion.
Jade: We do a lot of harmonies.
Michael: Yeah, a lotta harmonies. This song… When you look at the ProTools breakdown of this song, the folder- the session folder just looks hilarious. There’s so many vocal tracks. Every time you hear my voice (which is most of the song), there’s at least 4 vocal tracks happening, if not more. Probably more. And every time you hear Jade singing, there’s just as many. And every time you hear both of us singing, there’s all of that, plus harmonies. There’s just so many vocals.
Jade: Yeah, I’ve looked at it. Let’s look at the chorus: there’s a Michael main and then a Michael double. And then there may be the same melody panned stereo, so that’s 4 singing the same melody. And then we’ve got maybe 3 or 4 part harmonies AND an octave. So, there’s, like, up to 15 tracks that are playing JUST vocals at the same time. Just singing. That’s JUST Michael! And then I come in on top of that!
Michael: (laughing) that’s the whole album, but this song in particular, we just like…. Every time I finished a line, or every time Jade finished a line, like, either one of us would say to Kevin, “Oh, but check out this harmony!” And we’d try it and Kevin would be like, “Yeah, let’s do another harmony.”
J+M: Both laugh
Jade: Sorry, Kevin!
Michael: And he’d be like, “That sounds sick! that sounds sick!” He was stoked.
Jade: I hope you’re looking at this, man- you did a great job on the vocals.
Michael: Incredible. I loved it.
Jade: [to Michael] So did you.
Michael: Thank you, so did you. So did Matt did.
Jade: Matt did vocals.
Michael: Matt did a part. It disappeared at some point in the file transfers. R.I.P. But, anywho…
Jade: another cool thing about this song is that Austin shreds THE. WHOLE. TIME.
Michael: The lead never ends.
Jade: There’s a lead throughout the entire song.
Michael: Well, that’s how you wrote it.
Jade: I mean, yeah. It’s way more impressive if you see us live because you can’t really hear it on the recording if you don’t know how to listen for it. But, if you see us live, watch Austin. If you can take your eyes off of Matt’s glorious hair. But, yeah, there’s millions of vocals and millions of leads and stuff.
Michael: And then there’s a part in it where Joshua starts a drum fill and it still hasn’t finished.
Jade: He’s still playing it.
Michael: It’s the longest drum fill in history. I think Neil Peart’s probably jealous of it.
Jade: Mmm.
Michael: Shots fired. Anyway…. Neil Peart’s the guy in Rush, right? Yes he is. Yes he is? Yes, he is.
Jade: Is he alive? Is he rolling in his grave?
Michael: He’s alive.
Jade: (aside) He’s rolling in his grave. Preemptively.
Michael: He’s put some pillows in his coffin. Though, they already have pillows. That’s weird… What if Neil Peart wants to get cremated? Anyways…
Jade: So, one of my favorite parts of the song, actually, Michael, is the screaming part at the end. You just go all-out.
Michael: Like I said before: take the balls and put them on the wall. But, yeah I just really wanted to let it loose on that part. It’s not a huge part; it’s not fucking crazy or anything. But there’s an end on the last line where I just kinda unhinged it for a second and it was really cool. Lyrically, though, the song is about a whole mess of things. But for the most part, it’s about assigning blame. Trying to and not really knowing how to or if you should. It’s about having questions and not knowing who to blame for why you don’t have answers. So, there’s Lysie Royalton in a convoluted nutshell!
“Seams Gorge, WV”
Michael: The third track on the album is called “Seams Gorge, WV” and, let me tell ya, it’s a doozy.
Jade: it started out kinda crazy. It starts out in 7/8 time, which is a kind of technical time signature. It’s kind of complicated-
Michael: – It Doesn’t make any sense to me-
Jade: – To learn. Austin brought us this part and he said, “Oh, guys, I have this thing in 7/8.” And we were like, “Uhhh, we know what that is, but why? Why are you bringing this to us?” So, we had to grind it for a while. Once Austin taught it to me, we taught it to Matt and Josh, and then Michael actually writes vocals live in our practice.
Michael: I whined for so long about writing this part. It took me, legitimately, about 3 three weeks just to write the first couple of lines in this song. It was stupid. But once we got past the timing, we knew the vocals had to fit the aggressive, disjointed, “holy-shit” feel of the song. So, we went the harshest we’ve ever gone. This song has the most screaming and the most diverse screaming in the first 1/4th of the song than in the rest of the album. There’s highs, there’s lows (as low as I can go). Austin comes in with some lows. There’s this awesome part that, unfortunately, got lost in the file transfers that Matt did. He still does it live, so you gotta pick up a live set at some point in your life because when Matt does it- it’s the “breathing water and smoke” part- it’s really frickin’ cool.
Jade: It’s like a melodic scream.
Michael: Yeah, it’s a tonal, like, sing-song-y shout-scream. And when he does it, you feel like he is your Uruk Hai captain calling you to battle to destroy the Elves. It’s awesome. And it’s a shame hat it’s gone, but you can see it live and it’s gonna make your bones feel uncomfortable.
Jade: Yeah, so, at the end of this whole intro, there’s this bell part- *chuckles*
Michael: Yeah, there’s this bell part that matches the melody that Matt sings at that part.
Jade: So, there’s this bell part. I love it; it intros the chorus and then- after the end of this really chaotic kind of thing- there’s just this breathe of fresh air. Everything smooths out. We go to a time signature that people can understand.
Michael: – A real time signature.
Jade: 4/4… haha
Michael: An American time signature!
Jade: This song does this… [exhales deeply]
Michael: And it basically takes the rest of the song… Well, not the rest of the song, but it takes that time to just…
Jade: Deflate.
Michael: Just give me a minute. Haha. But the song does that.
Jade: And in the chorus, Austin has this crazy lead. I love it.
Michael: [laughing] Each commentary of every song we do is gonna have an, “Austin has this crazy lead and it’s so cool and weedaddledeeedaddledeeedadleeedoo!”
Jade: And at the end of each chorus there’s a post-chorus, believe it or not, and Austin’s lead makes way for my lead. So we have this cool “call-and-response” thing after each post-chorus (the second of which is instrumental). We come together and we do a cool riff together.
Michael: And that’s when the song really starts to build momentum. Like we said, it gives a breath of fresh air, but it builds the tension and it builds the energy back up really slowly. You realize you’re about to get hurt again when my favorite breakdown in the entire album comes up. It’s this really heavy, just chunky breakdown. I didn’t wanna scream; I didn’t wanna do anything. I sang it as a really calm part, but we did enough vocal tracking on it that it’s this huge, “manly” choral part. And it sounds really haunting next to this just bruising breakdown. And that’s when the song starts to get stupid again. Goes back into 7/8.
Jade: Yeah! Josh does this cool blast beat right at the end of my favorite breakdown, which is different from [Michael’s] favorite breakdown. There’s this dissonant part and then a cool heavy part. And then Josh does a blast beat at the end. I think this is the only blast beat he’s ever done with this band, is that right?
Michael: Probably.
Jade: And then it ends in 7/8 again- somewhat faster than it did in the beginning of the song.
Michael: And it ends with an equally bruising breakdown just before it goes supa-fast again and the line is, “Give me the ocean/Give me the sky/Burning at both ends/Bleeding you dry,” and that sort of personifies the whole meaning of the song. I wrote it initially as sort of a fictional horror story about a West Virginian mining town. There’s just this disaster and so many people died that it ripped this hole in reality and people just don’t know what’s up or down, real or fake, life or death. And singing it over and over again, these songs… Every song takes on a new meaning as your life progresses (as a writer). And I realized that the song was originally about how much effort I put into my day job, my cooking, my work. I constantly feel like I’m trying to meet these demands that come from really nowhere and don’t make much sense for me, but I kill myself for these demands. It’s really about that. It’s about crushing yourself for no reason and the damage you can do by working too hard. I know that’s a really weird thing to say, but when you don’t give yourself a chance to live… When you’re just striving… It does weird things to your brain. And that’s really what the song’s about. It still fits the whole horror thing because it’s… It’s a complex song. It happens. That’s pretty much it- that’s “Seams Gorge, WV.” We have a shirt
Jade: The “Give me the ocean/Give me the sky.”
Michael: Right. It’s online only now if you hit us up on MerchNow.
“Wisteria”
Jade: The fourth song on At Arms Length is “Wisteria.” To us, as a band, (aside from “Still Flyin”) this is probably the most important song that captures our sound. It has a great meaning.
Michael: As far as the pacing goes for the rest of the album, the intro to the song is this really bouncy, fun, and energetic rock riff that we put an effect on. It gives the album a chance to just breathe for a second and gives the listener a chance to recharge their ears. And it comes in right after the heaviest song on the album and that little rock riff sort of serves as an interlude. And then we very rudely cut that off and just remind you who and what you’re listening to. And the rest of the song just keeps going again with the right regular pacing of the rest of the album. We show off a lot of good stuff in this.
Jade: Yeah! I sing the chorus and… Well, I sing the first part of the chorus, which is cool because-
Michael: – You sing THE chorus. You typically sing the line going into the chorus, I believe, and then the chorus. And I sing the line coming out of it.
Jade: Okay.
Michael: He takes the chorus and that really works for us in this song.
Jade: It’s cool because when I do that, I’m supporting Michael both figuratively within the lyrics and feel of the song, and also literally so he can take a breath. Everything before that is really hard and everything after that is really hard.
Michael: Everything is really hard.
Jade: We sing really hard stuff.
Michael: Right. And I think that, again, that plays into our style as vocalists. This song is very heavy on the vocals. We mentioned this about our second track, “Lysie Royalton,” this has as much- if not, slightly less- vocal production because this one needed a lot. There’s just a lot going on. There’s a lot of high harmonies; there’s a lot of dark vocals. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into the subconscious parts of the vocal tracking that you don’t really hear but you more feel. That was a huge mantra with us when we were recording vocals. We did a lot of extra stuff so that you felt it, rather than heard it. But, there’s this big choral part that’s at the very end of the song- that’s an aspect of music that I never want to lose in the band. We all sing. We’re all decent singers. A lot of us have choir backgrounds-
Jade: – I don’t.
Michael: -And we want to always work that in. This is the chance on the album to work in that choir part. And it’s actually a part I wrote about a year before we even decided to… Well, that’s irrelevant. Aside from that part, the rest of the song just sort of speaks for itself and it keeps itself very simple and straight forward structurally. And it think that lends itself nicely to the album and to the song.
Jade: Some of the other songs have more complex arrangement and this one, the arrangement kind of took a backseat to just straight songwriting and composition. The lyrical value is what’s really important with this song and we wanted to really capture that.
Michael: Right. Lyrically, the song as I heard the song, I knew it had to be about a very specific tragedy in my life and tied to a lot of different things. I wrote this song on the tail end of a close friend of mine who got killed. And I used it as fuel to write this really emotional song about loss and how to cope with it. Not necessarily the loss of, “Oh no, someone died.” It’s… I use my grandmother (who passed years ago) as a lot of reference. I used my grandfather, who I am cultivating a very close relationship with now, as a reference. I used a very close friend of mine’s mother, who passed form cancer, as a reference. It’s just about learning to appreciate the people in your life and making sure that, when you lose them, you didn’t fuck up by not appreciating the purpose that they served in your life. I felt that with my grandmother- I didn’t know this woman very well. And I made a promise when she passed that I wasn’t gonna let that happen again. When Chip, my friend who got shot, when he passed… Obviously, the pain was there, and it hurt, and I miss him. I miss him a lot. But, I appreciated him. He was a strong presence in my life, even though it was brief. And I’m proud of that. I’m proud that I didn’t let his death become something hollow. The pain was immense. And it meant a lot to me. And I think “wallowing” [in that pain] isn’t the word, but reveling in the fact that I felt and that I appreciated his life enough that his death was so heartbreaking. It was a huge inspiration for this song. And the lyrics… The song’s called “Wisteria” and, in our region… Wisteria is my favorite flower…Vine. It’s a vine that grows on trees. It grew in the woods next to my house that I grew up in. It’s this beautiful purple flower (sometimes pink) and it kills its host, as vines do. I equate the wisteria to grief: it’s beautiful if you let it be, but it will choke the life out of you, if you let it. I found that hauntingly beautiful. That’s why I decided to name the song “Wisteria” and all of that is why I needed this song to be and why this song is so important. This song is my favorite song on the record. It’s beautiful. It hits hard. It’s some of the better lyrics I’ve written. I’m really glad that I was given the opportunity to get this out and feel good about it. And I hope you guys enjoyed it.
“Quick Hands//Arms Length”
Michael: So, this song is called “Quick Hands//Arms Length,” but the bulk of what we’re going to talk about is the “Quick Hands” section.
Jade: We had kind of a different idea approaching the composition of this. It’s a lot chiller. More of a Fender kind of sound than a Mesa kind of sound. A very light kind of sound. But I never expected that, when we gave Michael the instrumental, that it would be spoken word. I never thought I would be a part of a song that had spoken word in it.
Michael: You were not happy when I said that this was probably going to have to be mostly spoken word.
Jade: I said, “No, see if you can sing it somehow.” But, when he turned it in and we got a sort of finalized version of it- when we finished recording it in THE studio- it grew on me. Because we had never heard the entire version until we really recorded it. You were still writing it!
Michael: It was a hard song to write.
Jade: And you say that in the first line!
Michael: Haha, yeah, yeah… I guess I do. I had to go spoken word on this one (and mostly screaming) because there had to be a different texture. I had to wake you up for the last song. But I wasn’t thinking that when I wrote it.. As a singer, you have to be in your feelings a lot. You have to be in them so much that you have to start coming to terms with it. You have to stop being so angry and you have to turn those feelings into something beautiful. That’s something that’s hugely cathartic to me. I get over the shit that I’m writing about when I’m writing the song and I feel better. And I feel this release. And it’s great. And that’s so beautiful, but.. I couldn’t do that with this song. I knew it had to be different. I couldn’t turn these lyrics into something beautiful.
Jade: Didn’t you… When you were recording this, you wanted to do the spoken word part in one take? You wanted to feel it. You wanted the listener to feel it.
Michael: Absolutely.
Jade: You wanted it to feel very natural.
Michael: I did multiple takes of one long take. Of when the song starts to where the song really takes off and becomes something else. And, when the song takes off, we did the same thing. Kevin and I were really, like, “we wanted to get as much of one take as we possibly can.” There’s probably some cuts. If you ask Kevin, he’ll probably tell you that it’s chopped to bits. We really wanted to get every take to have a lot of that real, live feel. And I think that translated really well. It’s mostly one take. It’s not phrases overlapped. It’s huge chunk-all in one take over huge chunk- all in one take. Which, I dunno how many people do that, but it was something I really wanted to do with this album. And that helps sort of stretch the EP out a little bit more.
Jade: Thorughout the EP, we try to show everything we’re interested in writing, not just our niche, our dip, in our ditch that we can write in this and just deliver 5 of the same songs.
Michael: ‘Ditch’ is an appropriate word. You write yourself into a ditch and then you become, “Well, this is what they sound like.”
Jade: Right, we did not want that. I didn’t want that. You didn’t want that.
Michael: I still don’t.
Jade: No, never. We like writing… instead of writing here, we like to write here. We want a huge range of emotions and sounds, ups and downs, and “Quick Hands,” for a while, is the down. It’s very quiet and pensive. And I feel lke, it really displays our highs and lows. So, at the end of the spoken word part, the quiet part, you talk about the skin of your hands… I dunno, you talk about that.
Michael: The highs and lows is a really good way to describe it… The album up to this point has taken you up and down, but this dips way low.
Jade: This is the lowest low.
Michael: With “Wisteria,” you’re like, “Oh, shit, this is some heavy shit.” And then you get to “Quick Hands” and you’re like, “I dunno what he’s talking about, but it sounds real serious.” And I didn’t mean for the EP to end this way (to end on such a low note), but I feel that the way that these guys wrote this song, you don’t end up feeling as quite as dark as I end up feeling at the end. And that speaks to their craft. There’s a lot to this song, even though it was mostly done in one take. [To Jade] You should tell them about the part that I wrote for you and Austin and you guys just threw it out and remade it.
Jade: Michael had this back-and-forth sing-scream thing-
Michael: Well, it wasn’t back and forth, I wanted you guys to be both at the same time. And what you came up with was way better.
Jade: And you had to get lunch.
Michael: I went to go be sad somewhere.
Jade: We were in the writing process and Michael had this part and Austin and I said, “That’s fine, but we can do better with that.” And we interlaced it. Like, I do these long-held out notes and chord harmonies-
Michael: -These siren notes that I wanted. He kept the spirit of what initially wrote.
Jade: So, I sing, Austin screams, and then I sing, Austin screams and it’s a nice back-and-forth while Austin’s shredding the whole time. It’s a great part. In my opinion, it’s the biggest part of the entire EP. It hits the hardest and maybe [Michael] won’t agree, but-
Michael: -If you’ve been listening to the EP, it hits the hardest.
Jade: It hits the hardest because of the dip.
Michael: And then it’s just this fast-paced, frenetic… For me, it’s very confused and instinctual.
Jade: It’s almost as Chaotic as “Seam.”
Michael: I sang a couple of parts, but it’s all just barreling through with screaming. And I love listening to it and hearing the strain and the pain and then it dips back down. The ending of “Quick Hands” falls flat and lays prostrate on the song and says, “This song is over.”
Jade: Like, it’s over and you can relax now. It goes back to spoken word. Michael says some things and it all relaxes. And then when the vocals are over, there’s a big outro called “Arms Length” and that where the name of the entire EP comes from.
Michael: And that’s what I was talking about. The song ends on a similar note. The outro is in the same vein, but it doesn’t end so hopelessly as I would have liked.
Jade: It resolves. It’s the only part of the EP that we wrote together naturally. Usually there’s the “you wrote this part, I wrote this part, and let’s come together to work it in and make it happen.” But with this-
Michael: -We see what it grows into. This one was just born in the room.
Jade: It’s very natural. It fits very well. It’s the only thing that we’ve written together live in a live setting.
Michael: And that really changes it. This song ends… I didn’t want to end the EP… When the guys proposed that we end the song with “Quick Hands,” I said, “But it’s so sad.” But there’s no other way. I really don’t know what to say about this. It’s about a lot of deeply personal stuff to a few different people. And I don’t want to be vague and gloss over it, but I don’t want to hurt people again.
Matt (bassist): One of my favorite lyrics from the song is right when it starts to kick off: “I burned down my only home just so I wouldn’t feel the cold.” Explain that without going into too much detail, but bring that into life because that’s one of my favorite lyrics from the entire EP.
Michael: That is the summary of what it’s about. I was comfortable. I had a life. Things were okay. But it was very cold. And that’s, y’know, due to a lot of things (mostly internal). But, imagine living in a house, and then literally setting fire to everything you have just so you can feel alive again. Just so you can feel like who you’re supposed to be. Just so you can feel the warmth.
Jade: Just so you can feel.
Michael: The song is about if guilt from the people you hurt ever goes away. At some point, I reference my future children. Are the hands that I’m holding my child with- are those gonna be the same hands that did so much damage when I was a young man? Or, like the skin cells on your hands, does the guilt shed off? Does it go away? And I don’t know. That’s why the song ends in such a way. Typically, when I write songs, there’s a resolve. I feel a certain way, that’s why I wrote the song. I write the song, I hang out in those feelings, and then I end the song and I feel better. I still don’t [feel better]. And that’s fine. That’s me; that’s part of who I am. It goes the same for a lot of people. I don’t know what to say about this song, other than it took me weeks to write it. It was completely done long before I put word 1 into a microphone. It made me come to terms with a lot of parts about myself that… It made me come to terms with a lot of who I am… Who I was, before I finished. The weirdest thing is that now that it’s done, now that we have a song… It’s incredible. It’s probably the best song on the album. And it still hurts.
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About The Apprehended
The Apprehended take the technicality of modern progressive metal, mix it in with the anger and aggression from metalcore, add a dash of chaos, and a healthy helping of big anthemic, sing along choruses and mix them together. The Apprehended strive to make forward moving music with nods toward traditional styles within their genre. Honest lyrics with powerful instrumentation drive this band to the edge of chaos and back. With a live show that has been described as volatile, venomous, and chaoticThe Apprehended’s stage show is not one to be missed.
Ouch That Hertz! 