At some point while writing this record, I’d given my addiction a personality. He was like a junk yard dog on the other side of a fence I’m cursed to walk by from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. I wanted that to come through on this recording in particular. The guitars had to be jagged, the bass had to growl, the words had to snap and bark.
I was attending twelve step meetings in the basement of a church in the south end of Halifax. One was held a few hours before I had to go to work singing songs at whatever bar, around the various substances I was desperate to avoid. This is where the religious imagery comes from. I’m not a religious man, but I was trying to find a god of any sort to save me from myself. I wrote the words in my head during one meeting just by looking at the old cross stitches hanging crookedly around the room, and from listening to the harshest truths I’ve ever heard, delivered by some of the most unassuming folks I’d ever met. Truth is cold. It’s uncomfortable, it’s harsh. That basement was cold. Damn cold.