Singled Out: Awaken' The Veil

Keavin Wiggins | 12-23-2020

Awaken recently released the song "The Veil" for their forthcoming album "Monsters & Machines" and to celebrate we have asked Chad Griffin to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

We had just completed the songs for our new record. We were very happy with the song choices and the diversity that was on the record. We still felt something was possibly missing, but couldn't quite put our finger on it.

Dustin purchased a new guitar right at the end of tracking the songs we had chosen and recorded for the album. Dustin turns around and gives me a call, "hey man... I just got a new guitar and you know what that means... I have to try it out. I have to write a song about it. (That's usually the first thing he goes to do is he just has to write a song with a new guitar to test it out. That's his thing.) So he does and he sends me this fast-paced four on the floor catchy tune with this chilled out groovy verse. I told him "that's it... that's what was missing!" I felt this record had pretty much every type of song we could think to write that fit our sound, but we didn't have that catchy four on the floor type track that was reminiscent or could be compared to "The Passerby" from a previous record. A song that was a really big stand out with the fans for us. I pulled out some lyrics I had actually written for another band that never got used and they were always some of my favorite that I had. The original song from the lyrics was "When the Veil is Lifted" I shortened the title to make it stand out more and put them to the music Dustin had sent and it meshed perfectly. The song was then pretty quickly recorded and added on to the record. It was then chosen as one of the first releases. The message fits a lot of what is going on right now. There are a lot of facades being tossed around and people aren't being their true selves. Everyone wants to identify with how they think politically or cover themselves with the opinions they think others want them to have. Why can't we just be real, speak real, live real?.. We complicate things instead of simply getting our points across. The world would be a better place if everyone just lifted the veil they use to hide their true intentions and talked things out. Live and not hide. That's what the song means to us and we hope people get as much or more joy out of listening to it as we did writing and recording it.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here