Track By Tracks: Solitary - The Truth Behind The Lies (2021)

1. I Will Not Tolerate:

Andy pretty much wrote the majority of the song himself at home, we just sorted the middle and solo section at rehearsals. It was the original lyrics with the exception of the chorus which we binned off around 4 weeks before we were due in the studio. In fact the verses were my first draft for Abominate which also didn’t work, but they fitted perfectly for Tolerate. It's an anthem for anyone who isn’t prepared to accept things for how they are and isn’t afraid to say so.

2. The Dark...The Resilient:

Andy crafted the first part himself; he wanted something a bit different from the other ideas he was working on at the time - Tolerate and Spawn of Hate - and I came up with the second half. It was the first new song that Gaz worked on with us when he returned to the band. Lyrically it’s more like a story of an accident where the perpetrator does a runner: verse one and the pre chorus deal with the victims view point, verses 2&3 is about how the person who doesn’t take responsibility for their actions feels. Deep stuff.

3. Abominate:

I'm sure that the intro was the first riff Andy came up with post The Diseased Heart of Society being released. We messed around with six or seven verse riffs but eventually I came up with the solution and the rest of the song just slotted together. The words came from another song which just wasn’t up to scratch. I sort of had Liam Neeson or Jason Statham type acton film characters in my head, the kind of bloke that they portray that waxes everyone and isn’t really that concerned about the consequences.

4. Homage To The Broken:

Similar to Abominate I think the original idea stems from the intro riff which was just something we stumbled across when warming up. I then set about putting all the other parts together and I’m pretty sure it was around the time that the ...And Justice for All boxset was released as I was quite comfortable adding numerous subtle variations of the intro riff into the verses, so I must have been subconsciously influenced by that masterpiece. The words for the verses were inspired by a visit to a multi story car park in Manchester where a river flows past it. The river is pretty polluted but was still flowing and I sort of thought that’s how some people’s lives exist and I just built on that idea. We don’t need bars we build our own cells was a way of saying how lifestyle choices can imprison people.

5. The Truth Behind The Lies:

This was another of Andy’s creations. It’s an absolute bastard to play and was by far the most difficult song on the album to track, mainly due to the speed it needs to be played at. I was totally inspired by the music and I wrote all the lyrics on holiday in Spain. It’s all about the Brexit farce and the propaganda that both sides published and that a good percentage of the people who voted to leave based their decision on their prejudice towards Eastern Europeans.

6. Catharsis:

This was one of mine and Royston’s written in the old school way of just the two of us coming up with riffs and the drum patterns to create magic. The only difference between this process and the stuff we came up with in the late nineties was the fact we didn’t use the mic on tape recorder and a C90. It all came together fairly quickly just before we went to do a show in the Czech Republic. The lyrics were another holiday special but in Portugal this time! It’s all about the debilitating state of anxiety, luckily not something I’ve ever suffered from, and the idea for the video we did stems from the original lyrics for I Will Not Tolerate which were about ex-servicemen living on the streets.

7. DTR:

Like Catharsis myself and Royston bashed out the majority of the ideas for the song as a power duo. Andy came up with the great riff that ends the solo section and I think that’s my favourite part of the song. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t fully play through DTR and Catharsis as a band before we started tracking the drums and guitars. We definitely didn’t have any demos of DTR as I remember writing the lyrics when we were in pre-production with Simon Efemey in late November. Gaz learnt both songs via videos of the guitar parts. When it comes to the words I think everyone knows a person who the lyrics describe - it’s all about being true to yourself and not pretending to be someone you’re not.

8. Spawn Of Hate:

Andy wrote the intro, verse and chorus and I came up with the other parts, but I definitely think that Gaz’s bass line gives the song all its power and venom. Me and Andy drove over to Leeds so Gaz could show us what he’d planned to record for his parts. I think this was the first song he played us and as soon as the song kicked in and Gaz started thundering away we both looked up and grinned - we knew Gaz was onto a winner. I came up with the chorus and initially I tried a number of variations for the verses before settling on some lyrics I’d originally written way back in 2006 for I See Nothing from the Requiem album.