"Apocalypse" is the culmination of a lot of hard work, long nights, and unplanned jam sessions on tour. Over the past few years the basic idea of the song, which started during a sound check somewhere in New Jersey, has been played, abandoned, screamed at, and, finally, brought into its final form. As a band, we're extremely proud of where it's ended up.

We chose Apocalypse as our single for this record because it expresses a lot of what we have gone through in the life of the band and, specifically, in the creation of this album. It is always a challenge to be original, to find some new perspective or sonic experience that truly declares itself. There is a kind of magic, though, when you feel like you're running out of time or you're about to fail at something that you've been working on or wanting for a while, and at that point it's either the end one thing or the beginning of another. I think that's true of this song, true of Lost Machines, and definitely true of Sleeperstar.

We spent a month in Nashville recording with the brilliant Dustin Burnett, and he really helped us take Apocalypse from "really cool rock song" to something truly special. What Dustin brought was a natural approach but a more aggressive feel to our sound, taking risks and pushing limits that we had tried to get across in our live performances. The result is that this new music is very up-front, bold, and really a big step in a new direction for Sleeperstar, and we couldn't be more ready for people to hear it.