Track By Tracks: Zero Fire - Second Sun (2019)

Graham King - GK - Vocals, Guitar

Erik Thorkildsen - ET - Drums, Unclean Vocals

1. Slides:

GK: This song was written a few years back around the time my grandfather was passing away in the hospital, and was about the experience and feeling of talking to him where we both sort of got the unspoken understanding that this would probably be the last conversation we would ever have. The lyrics are very simple, but to me they convey those feelings of helplessness with hope for a different outcome that you know is impossible.

2.Ghosts:

GK: Ghosts was a song I wrote in response to some criticsm I once heard about our band second hand. Someone had posted one of our songs and someone else from the local scene was complaining about how we "weren't metal". The lyrics are about some of that "old guard" mentality where certain people have a very strict definition of what constitutes representation of a genre. I don't care if you call us metal, call us rock or if you call us whatever you want, I just want to make music that I like, and that I think someone else who enjoys some of my favorite bands would enjoy.

3. Disaster Symphony

GK: This one's just about dealing with someone who's only real goal is to bring you down or make you feel like less of yourself to boost themselves up, and talking about when that behavior becomes obsessive, it just starts to eat that person away from the inside.

4. You Own The Sun:

GK: This one is just a nice little segue track to usher in "Side B" of the EP. The producer of this record Quinton Strutt came up with this after we mentioned wanting to try and create something to sort of break up between the slower drudge-y Disaster Symphony into the more high energy Gout Mouth

5. Gout Mouth:

GK: Gout Mouth is about the feeling of being trapped in a relationship that both people know isn't working. This one was interesting to write because I've never personally experienced this scenario, but I've definitely sat on the sidelines with people I've known over the years where you can start to see these situations where the cracks start to show, and you can kind of get the feeling that it's the beginning of the end.

ET: In the later stages of writing and recording Second Sun, I started to share some vocal trade-offs with Graham. Gout Mouth is a track where I got to actually deliver a full-fledged line vs. just a backup vocal. As such, the bridge line on this track, "The second sun rises on the second stage" is a reference to my mother who— throughout the recording process of this EP— was battling breast cancer. "Second stage" being a reference to the severity or spread of the disease (she was actually fourth stage, but that didn't roll off the tongue as nicely), and "second sun rises/rising" being a hopeful, begging wish to insert whatever you choose to believe here to keep her safe and push her into a second phase of life, post-cancer. 

This line sets the tone of the song for me on a personal level and interlaces whatever Graham's intended message with this song is, with a stark message to my mother's disease that it won't make it out alive; it'll die and she'll move forward.

6. Heart Divided:

GK: I wrote this song a while ago about the feeling of dealing with the internal conflict that comes from spending time with someone who changes their mind about how they feel about you on a frequent basis. Sometimes everything is great and you feel like everything's going well, and then the next day that mood totally flips, and you're caught in this weird loop of constantly trying to "make it up to them", which I don't think is a health way to live. I've been in situations like this in the past where you only get a really good perspective of the situation once you're out of it, and you can see these times where you've been manipulated into being in situations that you really don't want to be in, and that person makes you feel like it's your fault that they're unhappy.