Hello hello hello. It's been a minute, as the kids say.
Addressing a few comments, and not to be defensive:
1. This is one song. We're not going to lead with a 9 minute long song. It's (relatively) direct. Like it or don't, we are hard to capture in six minutes.
2. Enigmachine, sorry about the three years in between the previous two albums. Given we had a live DVD to produce and we lost one of our founding members to a brain aneurysm and wanted to see if he would recover and then had to find talented people to contribute in his absence, I feel the delay is explainable.
More to the point, though...the lyrics...if you think they have anything to do with politics, the lyrics are more subtle than you might think. They have nothing to do with politics. I'd be curious to hear what you think they are about.
3. Evermind, thank you for giving Art of Loss a second or third chance. I do believe it is one of our best, along with Snowfall. I would encourage you to listen to the main solo in Slouching...I'd put that up against any guitar solo ever recorded. It's mind boggling what Simone does there. And the cover is pretty awesome...John crushes it. One man's non-objective opinion, of course.
4. Enigmachine again (re: the second comment) I predict you will be surprised at some of what Tom does on this record. He sounds fantastic.
5. Grappler, thank you!
6. Jingle.boy, glad you are open minded about Tom coming aboard! Also, "f*** you, Hans Brix!"
7. Samsara, a very sensible response.
8. Mindflux, appreciate your previous support. Hopefully you will find something else to enjoy on this record.
9. Bosk1, hello, and thank you!
I don't recall being annoyed by anything so it couldn't have been that big a deal and bygones are bygones as far as I'm concerned.
10. TAC, when you hear Indulge in Color, let me know when you've changed you mind.
11. Cramx3, thanks for being open-minded! I hope you find a lot to enjoy about us.
12. Chris Hinton, I'm confident you are going to like this record if you like our other material.
13. Ninjabait...there isn't enough going on in the simple 4/4 intro for it to be a disjointed mess. You can say you don't like it, though.
The outro went on as long as it did because there is a Meshuggah thing going on with a different accent passing through each of the notes in the riff and it had to cycle through.
14. Lethal, I do write the vocal melodies but Tom came with a ton of ideas including a lot of harmonies, quiet background parts and some subtle differences to the phrasing. He sounds fantastic, IMO.
Hope all of you are well and thanks for listening!
8.