The Story Behind "Wash It All Away"

This may be my favorite song that I wrote with Social Fallout. Robb Rich, our rhythm guitarist came in with the opening riff one day. He had been working on it for years with drummer Jeremy Horkman, and was looking to finally complete the song. While Robb played the intro lead guitarist Tim Frank almost automatically came up with the haunting guitar part that comes in after a few bars. Jeremy and bassist Mike Köenig figured out where they would join in on the mix and I had a concept in mind.

At the time I was still quite religious (more on that in future posts) and the concept that came to mind was something of a Second Coming/Apocalyptic scenario. The idea is that in the end it’s too late to get rid of all the dark things in our society. There are those songs that talk about how you should live like you were dying and how it’s too late to change once you’re dead. “Wash It All Away” is in a similar vein to those songs, but on a societal level rather than on a personal level.

I love my lyrics to this song, but I think it’s one of my best melodies as well, along with “How Happy Am I?” The melodies were always informed by the music, which means that I also think these were some of the best riffs that Robb and Tim came up with during my time in the band. (Yes, as far as I know, you can still check out Social Fallout in Green Bay with Tim and Robb as the remaining original members. I moved on to different things, mainly writing.)

You can check out the original recording of “Wash It All Away” below.

Wash It All Away

Breathe in deep 

For this breath will very well be your last

Forget tonight 

For today is all you’ve got

Say goodbye to those that you love

Say your last prayer and hope that God will still hear you

And now the fire comes 

To wash it all away

Tonight hate will die in one last bright blaze of light

Look to the sky 

One last time

And watch it all 

Get washed away

The sky goes black 

For just one moment, that’s all you’ve got

As the lights turn back on 

Weep for those that never

Found the Light on their own

Now watch as the fire comes

To consume you all

And now the fire comes

To wash it all away

Tonight hate will die in one last bright blaze of light

Look to the sky

One last time

And watch it all

Get washed away

Murder

Hate

Rape

Wash it all away

Lie

Cheat

Steal

Discriminate

Wash it all away

And now the fire comes

To wash it all away

Tonight hate will die in one last bright blaze of light

Look to the sky

One last time

And watch it all

Get washed away

The Story Behind "Breakaway"

This is one of those songs that doesn’t really have much behind it. The major point of the song deals with the duality of the human mind. We often act one way when we feel another way. It’s similar to how we always respond by saying we’re “Good” when someone asks, “How are you?” In this case it has a lot more to do with relationships.

Simply put the song is all about how someone will allow us to be with them despite knowing what actually goes on inside ourselves. At the time I wrote this I was with someone who I didn’t want to be with in the same way that she wanted to be with me. That was a major inspiration for the song. I can’t run away from my demons, and yet you still want me in your bed because you don’t know what’s going on inside my head.

As far as the music, I really liked the build of the music. It felt like it escalated when we wrote it, and I still enjoy that aspect of it. I don’t think we moved mountains whenever I listen to it, but I feel that we crafted an enjoyable hard rock song. It’s not one of my favorites, but I still find it quite enjoyable (and yes, I do listen to our songs on occasion).

You can hear the original recording of the song below.

Breakaway

Break away

Demons come in they won’t go away

I do what I can to keep the wolves at bay

I don’t lie

I don’t cry inside

Won’t you break away

(Why don’t you) break away

Why don’t you

You don’t know what goes on in my head

But still you feel me beside you in bed

I don’t lie

I don’t cry inside

Won’t you break away

(Why don’t you) break away

Why don’t you

Take away everything that you’ve ever shown me

Take away everything I thought I knew

Take away everything that you’ve ever shown me

Take away everything I thought I knew

I don’t lie I don’t cry inside

Won’t you break away

I don’t lie

I don’t cry inside

Won’t you break away

(Why don’t you) break away

(Why don’t you) break away

Break away

The Story Behind "Love Knife"

“Love Knife” is one of my favorite songs that I wrote with Social Fallout. The music is heavy and the concept itself is heavy. A little too heavy for some people, apparently. My former instructor in Creative Writing (one of my favorite instructors) Colleen Abel, tried to lead the class to a feminist discussion on this song. I submitted it as a poem, which was already problematic, but the focus turned to the feminist qualities of the song since the person accosted is a female. That’s not what the song is about though.

The original idea for the song came from reality TV. I don’t watch reality TV, and I didn’t watch it then, because I’d rather patronize television that features talented individuals (particularly shows that are written by real writers), but I was interested in the idea of voyeurism. The idea of the social obsession with voyeurism still intrigues me, and it might be a concept that invades my stories in the future. In reality, aren’t all stories really about seeing into another person’s life without actually having to deal with them? That’s a large part of what this song is about. This is one of only two Social Fallout songs that actually did not come from personal experience in some way.

In the end Colleen was proven wrong by the students in the class who did not feel that the song was in any way an insult to feminist ideals. I did end up rewriting it as an actual poem, but I’ll save that for another day. I’ll detail what I updated then, but I will say here that I kept the voyeurism concept of murder with the same characters. Below you can find the music for this song.

Btw, I should say that the title of this song came from Tenacious D, particularly HBO episode where Jack and Kyle first meet Lee and describe him as “...love knife material...”

Love Knife

He says, "I need you my dear

For now till the end of time

You are my strength, my love divine."

He pulls her close in a kiss that lights up the heavens

He pulls a knife from his coat and slits her throat

I see it all through the rose colored windows

The rose colored windows

The blood stained windows

Corpse in the tub

Drenched in her blood

The shower's on where she fell

To make her clean for Hell

Empty her veins

She feels no pain

What's your next line

Have I lost my

Mind is on fire should I turn away

I feel the punch of a train

As blood pumps through my veins

I reach for the door

But turn back to see once more

I pull myself from the torn

To view her on the floor

It's at this sight that my mind is still racing

My mind is still racing

I'm anticipating

He says, "I needed you dear

To make me whole,"

While inside

I'm left feeling cold

He drops to his knees

To kiss her lips

My heart hits the floor

Wanting one more hit

It's at this time that I ask myself

Why do I need death

I need to see death!

The body's now clean

This scene so serene

He walks out the door

And I'm left wanting more!

The Story Behind "Kill Society"

You’ll notice that I took a break from The Black Ring to post another song. I still have quite a bit of The Black Ring to post, and felt as though I should break up the pattern a little.

I feel as though I should preface the story behind “Kill Society” by saying that Social Fallout went through bassists like Spinal Tap went through drummers. At the time that we wrote a recorded this song, we were no longer working with Jim Nasty. Our bassist in this era of the band was Köenig, or Mike Koenig, we all liked the idea of using his last name as a stage name (my stage name was Dr. Whitey McWhite, since I was a black lead singer in a metal band, and to this day there are people who only know me as Whitey).

Anyway, I bring this up because when Köenig left the band this was the song that he cited directly as his reason for leaving the band. It wasn’t the lyrics or anything like that. His issue was that he didn’t feel that he could have his family listen to our music because of how heavy the vocals were. He felt that I should have written the vocals with less screaming, and found another way to present my message. The band stood behind how the song was written and we parted ways.

As you can tell, I was really into social issues at the time that I wrote these lyrics. Looking back now I find it funny that I was a Republican at the time that I wrote these songs. Naturally, a large part of my issues at the time dealt with the structure of society, and this song was almost a call to anarchy. I don’t way to say here at this moment that I am Democrat or Republican or Anarchist as I did write this song primarily for the sake of entertainment.

Future essays will probably give you an idea of where I stand on that spectrum. This song does serve to show some of my view point and was cathartic in helping me purge myself of the inner demons that I felt at the time while going through some personal issues. You can check out the song as it appeared on Chapter 1: Peaceful Aggression below.

Kill Society

Break the trend 
Will it rise again 
Government fails 
We'll rebuild from within 
Empty lives 
Filled with cries 
We'll give them more 
From those who take from the poor! 

Kill society 
We'll make it what we want it to be 
The fallout has begun 
And it's we who have won! 

Blood will be shed 
Till all are well fed 
Tear down the lies 
Let's see what they hide 
Murder our pride 
Or fall and be tried 
This our call to war 
Now make your way through that open door 

Kill society 
We'll make it what we want it to be 
The fallout has begun 
And it's we who have one 

The writing's on the wall 
For corporate America 
Warmongers choose to take away 
Our peace and democracy 
I'm not asking for human contact to end 
But for society to die 
So let us all take a stand 
And better this land! 

Kill Society 
We'll make it what we want it to be 
The fallout has begun 
And it's we who have won 
Kill society!

The Story Behind "Bloodletting"

I’m torn on my feeling about this Social Fallout song. I enjoy it but I feel it’s a little too different from the rest of Social Fallout’s material. I also feel like some of my lyrics are a little too cliché. At the same time, this is also one of my angriest songs lyrically, and the lyrics serve the title in a personal sense for me. I was going through some personal issues where I felt that I was getting screwed from many different directions. I wanted to put my frustrations to song while being vague about my personal situations.

Another reason I’m proud about this particular track is the fact that it doesn’t contain any cursing. I wrong this around the time that Mushroomhead released XIII, and they created that album with no cursing. Seether’s Karma & Effect was also an album that had come out recently that contained no cursing. The choice to avoid cursing wasn’t a moral choice, I don’t find anything wrong in cursing; this was merely an artistic decision. I felt that using curse words would be an easy way out artistically and it was best for me artistically to avoid that.

While I do in retrospect find this song to be a bit of a mess (our attempt at progressive hard rock/metal that became more meandering than anything), I’m still proud of our attempt at experimentation. This song also probably took the longest to finish of all the songs that we did. I had a hard time finding the melody for the track, and the bridge was particularly difficult, which explains why I decided to devolve into screaming it besides giving those lyrics emphasis. You can catch the originally recording of the track as it appeared on Chapter 1: Peaceful Aggression below.

Bloodletting

Where did this all begin

When will it all end

At a time when we bleed the poor to feed the rich

In this sad sick nation of ingrates

Where we feed our ambition with the decision

To take what we can and desecrate the rest

The bones of our dead become fodder for crows!

Is this what we have left

To burn our cross in disgrace

Is it time to give in?

So slit the throat of our children's hopes

Cause the rich are getting richer

On keeping the poor where they are

So let's find hope in the hopeless

The truth in the lies

And die fighting

Or just sit on the sides!

Is this all we've become

Am I screaming to deaf ears

Is there no turning back?

Is this all we have left

To burn our cross in disgrace

Is it time to give in?

Make me believe

I am nothing

And I might back down

Give me the flame

Start up the fire

And I'll burn this down

Down to the ground!

Is this all we've become

Am I screaming to deaf ears

Is there no turning back

Is this all we have left

To burn our cross in disgrace

It's not time to give in!

The Story Behind "How Happy Am I?"

For those of you who might have missed it on Armadillo & Sands I used to be in a hard rock/metal band called Social Fallout. I was the lead singer and lyricist for the band. Typically, the way our songwriting would work is that the guitarists, Robb and Tim, would come in with riff and as a band we would form that riff into a song. Sometimes I would write my lyrics as the rest of the band was crafting the song, other times we’d make a rough recording of the song that I would take home.

In the case of “How Happy Am I?” the song was actually crafted around a bass riff. Our original bassist, Jim Massey (who went by Jim Nasty because he swore that he couldn’t have his real name out there because I mobster-type was after him for sleeping with his girl), brought in the riff and we went right to building the song around it. The entire song was written in one practice session. It was the first song we ever wrote together. Jim wasn’t too happy with the finished product; he envisioned the song that would spring from the riff would be much heavier.

The melody to the song came to me almost immediately when I heard the bass riff, as well as the lyrics, “How happy am I.” I then crafted the lyrics around the idea of what people perceive when they see people in need. I felt, and still feel, that we put too much focus on what people will do with the help that we offer, than we do on the fact that we at least did something right.

The line, “How happy am I/ To feel dead inside/ When I give you life” deals with the idea that there must be something wrong in my life that prevents me from being able to find the joy in helping another human being. There is a certain duality to the speaker of the song. In the verse the speaker refuses to help, in the chorus they question their own willingness to not help someone who appears to be in need, and in the bridge (“Why does it matter/ As long as I do what’s right”) they realize the error of their decision.

This isn’t my favorite song that we wrote together, but I do think it was one of the most commercially viable. Being our first song, we didn’t write it with the concept of making something that was “radio friendly” or anything like that; we never had that in mind throughout our short “career” as a band together. This did feel to me like it could have been a single though. You can hear the originally recording of the song from our album Chapter 1: Peaceful Aggression below.

How Happy Am I?

See the man in the gutter down the street

He needs some money

For some food and a nice place to stay

So I walk right on by

And pay him no mind

Cause I know he just wants some booze

And I say

How happy am I

How happy am I

To feel dead inside

When I give him life

I say

How happy am I

How happy am I

To feel so dead inside

When I give you life.

See the woman walking down the street

She's got five kids

And no money to feed all of them

So I walk right on by

And pay her no mind

Cause I know she's never satisfied

And I say

How happy am I

How happy am I

To feel dead inside

When I give her life

I say

How happy am I

How happy am I

To feel so dead inside

When I give you life.

Why does it matter

As long as I do what's right