This song literally consists of patterns. However, a deeper meaning lies within the music. Life follows cycles, much like the rhythm of this song; situations tend to end as they started. At different times in life, one has to accept the fact that certain situations will always be the same, no matter how much one tries to change them.

Patterns

If you've ever given someone enough rope to hang themselves with, this is a song you can relate to. I wrote this to express the annoyance I felt after dealing with a stressful situation during a time that was supposed to be exciting and fun. It may not be a relationship breakup song (like typical death core), but it's as close as i'll ever get to writing one. - Jon

Splinters (Old Version)

Writing these lyrics came naturally; it's a similar lyrical theme of Splinters, except it focuses more on the idea of "giving up" and submitting instead of being angry. The best way to describe these lyrics are accepting something in a person that you don't want to accept because you realize you have to, even though you think it's for the worse. The verses to this song came to me first and the lyrics weren't touched for several months after they were written, so the meaning has changed over time. - Jon

Dead Inside

The title of this song "works" for several reasons; the first half of the song, before the drums cut out, was written by Martin Jose two years before the release of this recording. It was never used, but I had always liked the riffs and I had contributed a bit to the song structure. It also works for the second half of the song because two years after I had joined my first band, I could actually play technical riffs (sort of; the playing is extremely sloppy and I regret not practicing the hard riffs more before recording). -Jon

Two Years Later

I wrote "Illusions" in my senior year of high school, and it was originally going to be an instrumental. I got most of my influence from what I was witnessing around me, whether it was a fallout between friends or just simply realizing that not everyone was who he or she seemed to be. I really got inspired to write these riffs after listening to "Codex" by Veil of Maya. I just remember thinking to myself "Hey, I can write something that sounds different from what I usually write too!" I didn't end up using "Illusions" for anything until Jon and I sat down and realized it would be great on our first album. Once Jon laid down the vocals, I knew this would be better than I could ever imagine it to be. Even to this day, this song carries such a deep meaning to me and will always be my favorite I've ever written. -Nick

I'm not a procrastinator by any means, but I really procrastinated writing the lyrics to this song; I'm fairly sure they weren't done until two or three days before the recording session for vocals took place. This was the last song we recorded and mixed, and it was very fitting. I had a hard time thinking of what to write for it because it was clearly the best music on the album, so I had trouble figuring out what kind of lyrics to write for it. It wasn't death metal, and it clearly wasn't typical punk or metalcore. I ended up writing about how I felt at the time before leaving for college, and what was going through my mind about my friend group and people who were close to me; why were so many people so distant? Why did everything feel different? Maybe I'm the one who needs to change? In the end, I realized that there was nothing wrong with me and it was good that I was my own person (which is where the last verse came from), and when I came back for winter break I realized I was right. This song holds a lot of meaning to me because the lyrics are essentially the end of everything in my life that had to do with high school. - Jon

Illusions

The lyrics to this were written in less than 5 minutes while I was at work; I figured I'd submit it to my school's monthly poetry magazine and never look at it again, but when I showed them to Nick they ended up fitting perfectly over the music (literally one sentence was edited to make it flow just a bit better). They were written as they came to my mind, which is what the title implies. There are times where I feel like i'm standstill when all I want to do is keep progressing and moving forward, and I felt that way a lot during the summer, so the theme came to me easily. - Jon

Stream Of Consciousness

While I'm at school, I can't exactly practice screams; I tried, trust me, and I ended up waking up people on other floors of my dorm building while they napped. Since I couldn't practice screaming, I decided to try and expand my horizons to other types of music and ended up listening to Marilyn Manson, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Motionless In White, and some random pop songs I liked when I was younger. From Manson and Dillinger, I really wanted to learn how to do that punk type of scream, so I practiced it a lot when I got back home. It sounded like total shit, so I layered it with some high screams and it didn't sound completely terrible. The lyrics are typical angry hardcore lyrics; there's someone who really pissed me off but there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, so why not vent my aggression through lyrics instead? People can change, they probably won't, but college is the ultimate second chance. This guy probably won't though. Anywho, i'm pretty sure the music for this was heavily influenced by Stray From The Path, but all the riffs were written in one day other than the chug pattern after I say "Shifting GEAAAARRRRUUUUHS". - Jon

Shifting Gears

Jesus fuck, this song. Alright, so Nick comes up to me and says "I have these extremely technical riffs" and they all fit together really well. I sat down and listened to the song dozens of times before I even had any remote idea of what I wanted to write; up until this point, I only wrote about my thoughts or emotions. Nick told me to try a more Veil of Maya lyrical approach where TV Shows or Video Games are themes, so I decided to write about my favorite video game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Placing lyrics over these riffs was an odd experience for me, to say the least. We put everything together in December of 2012, recorded the full song, and weren't able to finish mixing it until August of 2013. Charlie told us that we used 97 out of 100 mixing tracks in FL Studio, and I probably have 5 - 10 different versions of the song on my iTunes. I still really want to take the electronic intro and turn it into a rap song. - Jon

Manmade Hell

I wrote "Illusions" in my senior year of high school, and it was originally going to be an instrumental. I got most of my influence from what I was witnessing around me, whether it was a fallout between friends or just simply realizing that not everyone was who he or she seemed to be. I really got inspired to write these riffs after listening to "Codex" by Veil of Maya. I just remember thinking to myself "Hey, I can write something that sounds different from what I usually write too!" I didn't end up using "Illusions" for anything until Jon and I sat down and realized it would be great on our first album. Once Jon laid down the vocals, I knew this would be better than I could ever imagine it to be. Even to this day, this song carries such a deep meaning to me and will always be my favorite I've ever written. -Nick

P.S. I've been wanting to do an acoustic rendition of this song for some time now, and I'm really happy we were able to release it on the new album. Special thanks to Charlie for getting the acoustics to sound great.

I'm not a procrastinator by any means, but I really procrastinated writing the lyrics to this song; I'm fairly sure they weren't done until two or three days before the recording session for vocals took place. This was the last song we recorded and mixed, and it was very fitting. I had a hard time thinking of what to write for it because it was clearly the best music on the album, so I had trouble figuring out what kind of lyrics to write for it. It wasn't death metal, and it clearly wasn't typical punk or metalcore. I ended up writing about how I felt at the time before leaving for college, and what was going through my mind about my friend group and people who were close to me; why were so many people so distant? Why did everything feel different? Maybe I'm the one who needs to change? In the end, I realized that there was nothing wrong with me and it was good that I was my own person (which is where the last verse came from), and when I came back for winter break I realized I was right. This song holds a lot of meaning to me because the lyrics are essentially the end of everything in my life that had to do with high school. - Jon

Illusions (Acoustic Version)

If you've ever given someone enough rope to hang themselves with, this is a song you can relate to. I wrote this to express the annoyance I felt after dealing with a stressful situation during a time that was supposed to be exciting and fun. It may not be a relationship breakup song (like typical death core), but it's as close as i'll ever get to writing one. - Jon

We re-uploaded this song because it's one of our favorites and we got sick of hearing non-edited velocities on the drums. Also, it's a bit louder, because METAL \m/

Splinters 2.0

Jon and I wrote this song back in 2010 in my bedroom. It took us roughly two hours to write not only the guitars and vocals, but also to come up with ideas for bass and drums. This was our favorite song from our first band, The Epidemic, and we finally decided to record it because it's something we've always wanted to do. We hope you enjoy it. -Nick

P.S. To this day, Jon still doesn't know what the lyrics mean.

Til' The End (Epidemic)

Charlie wrote this as Nick and I were rerecording Illuminated Path. He finished it about three days later and sent it to us, and we played around with a few ideas in it. We decided to call it "No One Knows" because it doesn't sound like the rest of the album, and we don't know why. - Jon

No One Knows (The Bitter End)

We wrote this at 2 AM, and we just wanted to make something really creepy and ambient. Charlie drove to my house even though the roads were solid ice, and we set up a microphone and just started whispering into it. Charlie read from a poem he wrote for a poetry class in college, and I read from a book I enjoyed reading. We reversed everything we said, put a bunch of reverb over it, and had a lot of fun creating it. - Jon 

In Passing (Page Ninety-Nine)

Have you ever sat in a room with your bandmates, proposed one idea, and everyone went with it? This song was written in about 10 minutes because of good chemistry. Originally, we recorded it and didn't put drums to it, and everything was off time for an odd reason. After hours of stress, we decided to pull a Bill O'Reilly and we said FUCK IT, DO IT LIVE. We rerecorded the entire song, this time writing the drum parts first, and we had no issues.
Lyrically, this track is about the concept that everything you do has an impact in not only your life, but everyone else's lives as well; therefore, it's important to make the right choices, know when it is appropriate to say what's on your mind, and that sometimes, you'll have to not personally succeed in order for everyone else to. I dealt with this a lot during my first year and a half of college, so the lyrics came pretty naturally to me. - Jon

Illuminated Path

We had these riffs sitting around since the Winter of 2012, and by the Winter of 2013/2014, it was about time we used them. Originally, we were going to put lyrics over this, but we felt it worked better as an instrumental opener. The title came about because it was a shot at redemption for our instrumentals, considering the only pure instrumental we had ever had before this was "Two Years Later," which was played horribly by me. - Jon

Redemption

Members:
Jon Hammer- Screams/Drum Programming

Nick Zamora- Guitar/Bass/Cleans/Drum Programming

Charlie Hron Weigle- Mixing/Synth/Electronics

Days In Ruin

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