Like most songs that work their way through the production chain from inception, to rehearsal, to demo, to commercial recording, and in this case - music video - "Taken" has evolved over a period of 12 months to become what you now see as an apocalyptic mythos-zombie thrill ride. But it all began with my personal frustration at feeling breathless when I was anxious or overwhelmed. If I had a day ahead of me that was packed solid with 2 radio interviews, 10 students I was teaching guitar, voice, and drums to, meetings with the distributor, the CD package designer, the video producer, and all topped off with a show at the end of the night headlining some power metal fest (AFTER I read bedtime stories to my 3 children), I would actually begin to hyperventilate, and it would piss me off! Do you have any idea how hard it can be to sing when your breathing is all f***ed up? Almost impossible. I would get angry with myself and that would only make things worse. Then I would get depressed. So I wrote this song about it. "Taken my breath away and I turn blue, Taken my breath away yeah I choke on you!"

When Jordan (Gelber, Starbaby Enterprises) came to me and wanted to produce the music video, I had images of water and suffocation in my head and she had a whole zombie movie she wanted to make with Leah Jung. It evolved into a great story of a beautiful Siren and her minions luring the band to her zombie-infested island of doom, where the band would be condemned to play for her forever, eventually joining her zombie horde. All the great things a metal music video should be made of: fantasy, death, gore, and beautiful women - set to a fast and crushing soundtrack �

We had a blast making the video. The special effects makeup crew was over the top. There were a couple of zombies I couldn't even look at, they were so disgusting. One of them was (bassist) Brendan Kelleher's girlfriend Caitlin Daly, who steals the show. God she was hideous to look at. And the editor/videographer @othompsonski (Matt Thompson) was unbelievable. That guy must have put in over 200 hours in a few short weeks to pull the whole thing together by album release day.

All in all, I know I speak for the band when I say we're thrilled with how the video turned out and we're excited that the album is finally released and out there. "Ravensong" may be our 7th album, but we're still as pumped up about it as we were for our debut in '87. That feeling never goes away, because it's always brand new music that we're sharing with our fans, and we're trying to attract new fans too, and we hope people will like it. So far so good. Once we're back on the stage in October I can settle in and "breathe"!