Singled Out: Priory's Kings of Troy

Our track, Kings of Troy, has taken one of the more dramatic rises to power on the record. It sat as one of our B song ideas for a long time until the eve of taking it to the studio. There originally were two vignettes in the arrangement that always seemed to distract, a downward spiral following an unworthy honky tonk throwback.

But if there's anything we've learned as a band it has been to trust our gut reactions, if we're not interested, no one else will be either. So we went on to a kind of rearrangement that has become a successful method in songwriting for us while creating new material.

We plugged in new melodies where choruses traditionally repeat, layered hooks, and gave the song a dramatic instrumental narrative with introduction, climax, and epilogue. Rather than an ABABCA sectional arrangement, its ABCDAEFG. We've been told before that the album plays more like a musical than the traditional rock album.

The end product is something that is engaging, requiring an active listen. For us as musicians, this process is more interesting but more of a challenge. We become department heads of sonically polarized stage wings.

Thematically the song is the idea that the person whom you love is constantly being pursued by others, a constant siege from which you always defend. The lyrical ideas follow the instrumental arrangement, a balance of stoic charge and playful disarming.