(Isaac) The music to "Feel Real" was literally the first thing I wrote for our new album "Dead, Everywhere." We were on tour when our label Victory Records called us to say they wanted us to do another album and we were all ecstatic. We are all really fond of our first album "Violence" but we felt there was so much more we could accomplish with a second one. We all agreed that we wanted the new album to be more straightforward, driving, and aggressive. I think that's best demonstrated in this song and in a personal favorite of mine on our album called "The Rejected" which our guitarist and other main songwriter Josh Spohr knocked out of the park.

Weirdly enough, inspiration for this song came from my malfunctioning recording interface. As soon we got home from our tour I sat down to start demoing out some ideas I had but when I tried to record the first guitar part all that came out was some sounds I can only describe as amplified engines revving up. It was incredibly bizarre but the sounds were so dirty I thought "I can use this somehow." So I took those sounds, pitch-shifted and cut them up and that became the beginning of the song. Aggressive was the word that stuck out to me the most when writing the music to this song. I wanted everything in the song to match the dirtiness and messed up quality of those sounds so there are a lot of bending strings in strange ways on guitar leads and weird distorted sounds all throughout the song. The verse I wanted to be very simple so Tyler, our main vocalist, could do what he does best over it without being drowned out by the music. Too many times I feel you just have to let the vocals take over. Same went for the chorus. The simpler the chorus the more catchy you can create a melody. The bridge breakdown was actually written for a different song but it was so aggressive I felt it fit the context of this song so much better. After I got the song down the way I liked it I sent it to everyone in the band and we all agreed this was the aggressive sound we wanted to achieve with this album.

A few months later we went to Ohio to record the album with our producer Caleb Shomo. "Feel Real" was one of the first songs we worked on together. The structure basically stayed the same but Caleb added a lot to the song. The dude is insane. He took the idea of the FX I had and completely improved on them. Our guitarist Matthieu Murphy is a big fan of 90s electronics so Caleb took that inspiration and applied it to all the FXs in the song. Caleb does what a great producer is supposed to do: take your ideas, improve on them, and make what you always had in your head become a reality.

The vocals and lyrics for this song are some of my favorite on the record. Tyler Konersman, writes the majority of the lyrics for TOTH and I think he did a great job. Tyler is very collaborative with me when it comes to lyrics. He'll have a bunch of stuff written and ask my opinions on stuff and is cool with me changing whatever I'm not feeling for my singing parts. We all had an incredibly rough year, all lost things and were dealt blows. It's been a tough ride and that's what I think Tyler wanted to get to at the core of this song. I think he did a great job. Vocally he killed it as well. The screaming vocals are incredibly driving and make the song that much more aggressive. And the "Life doesn't fight fair, so why should I?" makes the song in my opinion.

(Tyler) I was back home in St. Louis, working on material for our second album and It was a hard time in life for me. I felt lost with no direction and was battling some serious depression. I guess you could say I was struggling to "find myself". I remember writing down "FEEL REAL" over and over again and it seemed to calm me down. It helped me realize that what I was going through was just another step in life that I was going to overcome. I was unhappy with a lot of aspects in my life and feeling very nostalgic so I spent a lot of time walking around my old neighborhood. Basically retracing my steps mentally to find out how and when I got to where I was at this point in my life. It's a hard realization that we're not the same dumb kids we used to be but you can find the silver lining in growing up and moving on. "Feel Real" is a song about that process of self realization.

(Isaac) All and all when it was done and we could listen to the finished produce we were all incredibly happy with it and felt it really represented what we wanted to do with the album. Tyler wrote a spoken word intro to the album and "Feel Real" we felt connected perfectly to it so that's the first full song you hear.

I hope you enjoy the song and enjoy our new album, Dead, Everywhere, which hits stores January 27th, 2015. Thanks guys!