why do you guys not get more love? your so good

The Upload

Chemical Warfare: B-Sides

Not My Problem (Acoustic)

Around The Sun (feat. Brandon Saller of Atreyu)

Pushing the Tides

Rainy Day

Bullet For My Valentine

Shatter

Gates of Babylon

Sorcerer "Gates of Babylon"

The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!

Oblivion - from Mastodon's album "Crack The Skye"

Oblivion EP

Oblivion

Hear the new single from Mastodon's album "The Hunter" - coming for you on Sept. 27th.  Enter a contest to win a new MacBook Air at contest.mastodonrocks.com!

The Hunter

Curl of the Burl

Digimortal

Invisible Wounds (Dark Bodies)

This was another song I wrote during those same emotionally turbulent high school years in the mid-1980s. If "Breakin' My Heart" was about the immediate shock of betrayal, "Shattered Illusions" dug deeper into the aftermath - that hollow feeling when you realize everything you believed about someone was built on lies.

The opening line "Midnight shadows, a phone that won't ring" perfectly captured those sleepless nights, waiting for someone who was never going to call. I remember writing that verse thinking about how naive I'd been, how I'd "built castles on empty words." The metaphor felt so real to me then - all those promises and dreams just crumbling down.

What I'm proud of in this song is the pre-chorus structure. Adding that extra emotional build before hitting the chorus made the impact stronger. "Shattering my world" felt like the perfect phrase to describe how completely someone could destroy your sense of reality when you're seventeen and think you know everything about love.

The bridge represents growth - moving from victim to survivor. "I'm done with your lies, done with the pain" shows that progression from hurt to empowerment that I was learning to navigate as a teenager. The outro ties it all together with "Your love was fiction, but I'll rise from this fall" - probably the most mature line I wrote at that age.

Like my other lyrics from that time, this sat dormant for decades until AI technology gave me the opportunity to finally hear these words with music. There's something magical about bringing teenage angst full circle with today's creative tools. The song now has that dramatic, emotional sound that matches the intensity I felt when I first wrote these words.

Shattered Illusions

[Verse]
Dust rises high
Choking the gods' golden sky
Wheels carve the earth deep
Hooves thunder where the dead sleep
Blades glint in the sun
The war's only just begun
Screams mix with the drumbeat
Blood pools beneath scorched feet

[Chorus]
The chariots roll
The battle takes its toll
Kadesh won't bow
Who claims the crown now?

[Verse 2]
Ramses calls to Ra
Eyes blazing like a falling star
Enemies in crescent waves
Both sides digging shallow graves
Bronze clashes with bone
A thousand cries cut to the bone
Smoke drowns the air thick
Time slows in each click of the sick

[Prechorus]
Pharaoh’s pride
Hittites collide

The Chariots of Kadesh

The New Order

The Ritual

Electric Crown

Start a War

I Want to Fucking Break It

Bloodstone & Diamonds

Now We Die

Pre-order Mastodon's new album 'Emperor of Sand' - available March 31: https://wbr.ec/emperorofsand

Pushing the Tides

mastodonrocks

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