Black Book- This song was written while I was on tour with Opiate and my little brother was on tour in Iraq. The intention was to speak for him and his isolation and what he was going through over there just by telling my own story of isolation and struggles over here.

Being on the road has had the highest highs and the lowest lows I've ever seen, where it's easy to become disassociated from reality when you're really in the thick of it. I realized in hindsight that the vocal melody is subliminally reminiscent of "Suicide Is Painless", better known as the M.A.S.H. theme song. Go figure.

The production was cool for this one because the drums in the verse are programmed but the cymbals are live, then we pulled all the music out of the pre-chorus to leave just a crazy stack of vocals, and finally the live drum set and full band kicks your face off and into the chorus. The slide guitar in the chorus is kind of a pun because whenever I would sing the line "Hundred thousand miles in my wake on the road to Hell" I always pictured my path would lead me through the Deep South. That's also a reason we chose the hedonistic, tribal drums and group "Hey!" in the bridge. It's a mesh of isolation meets becoming an anonymous part of the crowd to cope with it.