#hunterdumpedushere

This is part 12 of a 13-part series where in each post I explain the meaning behind a track from I Understand. We are currently on tour right now in support of this album!

Here is the link to this post’s track: https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/dive-into-pools-of-transient-light

Dive Into Pools of Transient Light  started off as a drum&bass demo. I’m talking the genre. So needless to say, it ended up a lot different than the original concept I came up with. I wrote the recorded version of it later in the writing process, and presented it to the guys. Despite being weird and jumpy with time signatures, they picked it up right away and grooved with it. I like how it sounds a lot better than that drum&bass version.

I won’t spend a lot of time on this one, because the meaning is very straightforward and easy to explain. This song is written for someone who lost a close friend to cancer. This process is terrible, and I can’t put into words how much I really do hate cancer. I’ve tried to do that adequately for years.

Can’t.

But my heart goes out to anyone who has lost someone to cancer, or who has stood by someone who has it, even if they have recovered. My heart goes out to you even more if you have survived it. I know multiple survivors/victors and they are the strongest people I know. Never give up; you are an inspiration.

This is part 9 of a 13-part series where I explain the deeper meaning behind each track from I Understand.

Here is the link to this week’s track: https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/fatal-sleep

Preston and I wrote the skeleton of Fatal Sleep in my apartment in about 10 minutes. We later took it to Jason (I don’t remember where Aslan was - probably at the 17th annual Gathering of the Juggalos) and Jason hated it. It was like a Fleet Foxes song but 10x more boring. So we tweaked things, played through it over and over again, and came out with one of my favorite songs from the album. I feel like it has everything that one of our songs needs to have.

It even has what I like to call a Killswitch Engage time signature change. (4/4 to 6/8, they did it on almost every song they wrote for awhile.)

The song is about growing up, and how hard that is. I wrote it for a friend that has been through a lot throughout their life, most of it involving false friends.

Whether it was getting caught up in the wrong situations (such as vandalism) or struggling with wavering mental health, they have had to roll with many punches during the short time they have been on this earth so far.

This song is also about hitting a breaking point. Reaching the brink, so to speak. Considering - even attempting - suicide, and constantly being let down by those around you during the most vulnerable times of your life.

Ultimately, the subject of this song cut out the poisonous people from their life and moved forward. They are now more of a beautiful, awesome human being than ever before, and they are successful at what they do.

Haven’t we all had that friend that our parents didn’t like? Maybe for some of us it was for relatively innocent reasons - maybe they ate all your food when they came over to hang out.

But a lot of us had friends that pressured us to do things that we didn’t want to do, and I’m not talking in the good, motivational kind of way. I have other friends that this song is not about that almost had their entire lives ruined by the company they kept. They were scared to cut ties and let go.

This is part 7 of a 13 part series where I discuss the meaning behind each song from our album I Understand.

Here is the link to this week’s song:

https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/take-the-island

Take the Island was one of the last songs that we wrote for the album musically. It was Aslan, Preston and I in a basement trying to figure out what the last few songs needed to sound like musically that really birthed the jam/groove feeling of this song.

I like it very much, because it starts off sounding completing different from the standard HDUH sound but by the end of the song comes around to a much more post-hardcore feel.

This song tells a two-part story of surviving hardship, from the perspective of the same person. The first part of the song is about being physically assaulted and how that not only affected them at the time, but for years to come. They were beaten in public and lived in fear for some time that they would come face to face with their attacker again.

The second part of the story tells of being diagnosed with a mental illness/disorder as an adult, and comprehending/handling that information. When you go your whole childhood life figuring out who you are, it shakes your world to find that there is and has been something “wrong” with you the whole time.

But what this person discovered and came to peace with is that there was never anything “wrong” with them. Having a name or a diagnosis didn’t change who they had been and are as a person. It just explained why they operate the way they do.

You are not your mental diagnosis. There are numerous people living their daily lives with undiagnosed mental illnesses. I would even go as far as to say that I don’t think anyone is 100% mentally healthy. That doesn’t change who you are, and it does not mean that you will not succeed or that your life will come to an end if you seek help.

I enjoy the person this song is written for just the way they are, and they are a stronger person for overcoming what they have and continuing to be successful despite a diagnosis.

The analogy of taking an island represents conquering your mind. No matter what you have been told or what you feel about yourself, you are a beautiful human being an you WILL succeed in some form if you overcome your fears.

This is part 6 in a 13 part series where I explain the meaning behind each track from I Understand. This week we have Ornate and Carved.

Here is the link for this week’s track: https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/ornate-and-carved

Ornate and Carved started off as a folky, acoustic singer-songwriter type song that I wrote really early on in the process of creating this album. I remember sitting in Oklahoma playing the song for family thinking about how it could be a much bigger song overall. Obviously it changed quite a bit since it’s conception.

In the studio we laid a lot of extra percussion and tracks down on top of the song we had already written. We definitely used a concert drum. The feel we went for for the end of the song was a chaotic circus-type feel. We got reviewed in Stencil Mag since the release and the reviewer of the album said that if felt circus-ey. Mission accomplished.

We got pretty experimental with this one and also used a bitcrusher on my voice for some of the song, and I’m very pleased with the atmosphere it created.

The song tackles the topic of self-harm and searching desperately for alternative coping methods to use when life gets heavy. The person who the story is based on was depressed and alone, dealing with outside stressors such as their parents’ strained relationship.

They turned to self-harm and pills as a way of coping with everything going on internally and externally in their life. I feel like so many people turn to self-harm in one way or another to cope with our problems. That’s not always manifested in cutting your body. It can manifest itself in excessive drug or alcohol abuse, food obsession, and verbal self-deprecation just to name a few.

This person ultimately found comfort through holding to their faith in God, and resolved to overcome their addiction to self-harm. They rose above the pain and succeeded. Never forget that there is a way out, and there is help for you if you need it. You can call 1-855-800-1239 in Iowa if you are experiencing thoughts of harming yourself.

This is part 5 of 13 in a weekly series where I (Gabe) explain the deeper meaning and backstory behind songs from our album I Understand.

Here is the link to stream this week’s track: https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/ready-aim

I am a little late with this one and I am writing this from Nashville, Tennessee, where we have been since Wednesday night. We have been playing shows and making connections, and we are heading to Marietta, GA tonight to play at Swayze’s. Looking forward to it!

Ready;Aim was another song that really took shape very early into the writing process. Preston and I played it in my apartment and figured out harmonies and contrasting vocal lines. It’s kind of intended to be along the lines of Cave-in, an older song of mine, that is a sing-along acoustic-based ballad.

Fun recording fact - we were under time constraints especially when recording vocals in order to get the album finished within our timeframe, and Preston had a required work training during the week of recording. So he had one afternoon to record all of his vocal parts for the album. He did great, but as he progressed through the day he voice began to wear from singing all the high-range harmonies that he does. There was a certain line where his voice kept cracking out so I was the pinch-hitter and essentially pretended to be Preston for a short harmony line on the chorus. Bet you never noticed!

I wrote this song for a long-time supporter and friend of HDUH. They have supported me since I started playing music as this project and had a very powerful story that they were willing to share.

My friend grew up, like many other people, without a good father figure in their life. Their relationship with their mother was very strained which left them feeling basically alone as they grew up. My friend fended for themselves much of their high school years for housing and other necessities.

This song is a summary of surviving blow after blow that life dealt to them, despite the state of things at home. So many of us take for granted that when things get bad in the world around us, we have steady hands at home to hold us up. My friend didn’t have that.

The most powerful thing about this song to me is that when I wrote it, my friend hadn’t had a relationship with their father’s other children. The line used to be “You know that I’ve got beautiful sisters, it’s a shame that I have never seen them for myself.”

My friend, being the loving and caring person that they are, organized a trip in between that time an when the song was recorded and saw their sisters. The finished lyric now reads: “you won’t show them love so I will do that for myself.” My friend went on to take the fresh start that they needed by moving away from their hometown, and I respect them so much for that.

Here is the fourth entry in the 13-part series where I (Gabe) explain the meaning behind each song on I Understand, in one post per week.

Here is the link to this post’s song:

https://hunterdumpedushere.bandcamp.com/track/lost-my-name

This song was sonically written somewhat later in the writing process of I Understand. Within the first hour of working on it we knew that it would be the single. I had written the lyrics towards the beginning of the process of writing the album but they never fit with the music I had in mind, so we changed it up and it worked out quite well.

I wrote this song for a close friend as they went through the dissolution of their marriage. It was a time of confusion, frustration, and sadness for both parties involved.

This song makes an attempt to portray the frustration and longing to be forgiven for past mistakes that they felt during the situation, especially during the first year of the process. As my friend attempted to get their life back on track and wait for their partner to allow them back into their life, their partner seemingly used this situation as an excuse to do whatever they wanted. My friend watched as someone that they loved drift further and further away, despite the changes my friend was making.

I think just about every couple that gets married enters into those vows without truly understanding what “for better or worse” means. It’s so easy to promise being there for the “worse,” when things are currently “better.” All you can do is hope that the focus is where it needs to be, the base friendship is there, and that both sides are willing to stick with each other even when it doesn’t feel like a romance movie.

I respect my friend so much for the changes that they made in order to make themselves a better partner and resolve past addictions and issues. My heart hurts for them that their partner didn’t wish to make things right, and Lost My Name is a cry for restoration and a prayer that their loved one will one day overlook the sins and mistakes of the past and forgive them. There is not hatred in my friend’s heart for their former partner, just the hope for closure in the future.