Singled Out: Still Rain (Danzig, Sevendust, Seether)

The Still Rain song, "Pain" was a concept we all had a hand in. Remember, we basically lived in a van while touring nonstop, so we talked a lot. Usually the conversations were about new song ideas. We were young and the notion of different people's fetishes was still pretty shocking to us. We actually marveled at the idea that some folks actually enjoy a little pain with their pleasure.

We envisioned someone in a confession booth confessing he has a few guilty pleasures to a priest and wondering if this made him a horrible person. We all participated in the concept, but the lyrics are Donnie's. I believe in the second verse our character is imposing his will onto other uninitiated partners.

We were originally going to base the album cover concept on this song and the character. We thought about photographing a guy looking at himself in a broken mirror and subliminally placing whips, chains, handcuffs etc. in the reflection, as if he was in his personal little dungeon, but we decided it was probably too difficult to execute. We officially canned the idea when we took a look at the Black Flag cover for Damaged. It was nearly exactly what we had in mind.

Musically, the song is intentionally very simple. We were beginning to discover the power of repetition in music and its ability to induce a trance-like sensation to a listener. Simple drums and simple riff, over and over. I remember at the time we were listening to a lot of Misfits and Danzig. All the ?whoa-oh-oh? was clearly inspired by Glenn's vocal style. I think we accomplished what we had in mind for that tune, and it works great as the opener for the album. It worked great live, too. The beat is memorable enough that the crowds would always pipe up when I kicked it off. It's still one of my favorites.