As I was driving to the studio to record and film this tune, my brother and I were deep in conversation about the so-called and misleading “information age” and the intersection of social media, news, and politics. All news agencies seem to seek out the most inflammatory headlines they can find (never mind the details), cashing in on a product that never goes out of style: Fear. And with each controversial story, every extremist from every corner of the earth seems to crawl out of the dark to throw their opinion around like a molotov cocktail. Comments sections and Facebook feeds fill up with the most vitriolic contempt. Everyone is certain they are right and that they can prove it by shouting the loudest, never asking if they have the whole story. Meanwhile, someone is laughing at us. Their coffers fill as we rip each other apart. They flourish by pitting us against each other. And slowly the extreme voices are the ones that guide our daily dialogue…

My brother called this the Echo Chamber of Lunatics.

Musically, this improvisation is built primarily from two lines, or at least the implication of two lines, that dance around each other until reaching a peak in the middle, with a tremolo picked passage giving way to counterpoint between shifting notes in the bass and dissonant chords in the top. The inspiration for this concept definitely comes from Bach, but also Lamb of God, who write almost every song with a pedal-point riff and yet seem to never run out of great ideas. Of course, pedal-points in metal didn’t start with them- they have been ubiquitous in the genre since its inception. They create an implied counterpoint, filling up space and creating the illusion that more than one line is playing. Lately I have been applying my own spin on this traditional feature by moving the bass notes through different chord progressions trying the accentuate the counterpoint between the high and low voices. In this piece it definitely creates the effect of two entities vying for primacy, only to unravel after the conflict reaches a boiling point.