Day 12: "Legacy"



Explanation: The name “Legacy” was given because of the song it was taken from and who wrote it. The title is a tribute to Glenn Gizzi, one of our old guitar players who wrote this epic clean guitar piece in “Lessons Never Learned” which was one of the first songs written by Phinehas.

"That I May Love You"



Explanation: “That I May Love You,” was also written by Glenn. It is originally in an older Phinehas song called “True Love.” The reason why I named it “That I May Love You” is because of the correlation with the old song’s lyrics. The line goes “that I may love You as You have loved me.” It’s a prayer: that we may love Christ as He loves us. Also, if you have a physical copy of our album, then the lyric booklet connects this title to the “The Rider’s” lyrics. The last line of the album then becomes, “Your will be done, that I may love You.”

Day 11: "thegodmachine: The Rider"




Lyrics: "Trapped in the trenches/overrun by idols/we’ve strapped pride to our bones and sealed it with our skin/looking for a way to beat this system/we’re trading life for a corpse/entangled with the dead and silenced by our guilt/we’ve strapped pride to our bones and sealed it with our skin/i’ve encased myself in a tomb/with gods as dead as me/surrounded by stones of depravity/i’m already dead/and i’m running out of answers out running all the answers/we want more/every failure leaves me deeper in the ground/show me what i’ve become/hanging skulls on my branches/waist below the earth/i was a fool of lust since the day of my birth/oh my love i haven’t let you go/golden skies will divide to receive your soul/oh my son you’ve just begun to grow/but we’ve strapped pride to our bones and sealed it with our skin/turn this tomb to dust/oh my God You never let me go/as lifeless as statues/as fleeting as dust in the air/we’ve robbed your splendor and replaced it with deceit/replaced with ruin/show us what you see/grace come swiftly/oh God give us rest in you/like the waves upon the shore/we can’t hear you in our hearts anymore/grace come swiftly and drag the axe further towards me/the Son of man approaches the hollows/He breaks the guilt in one fell swoop/beheading our treachery/oh God would you bring a burning downpour of Your… blood/i can hear the hordes of ghosts screaming in Your choir/but would Your love make any difference in a graveyard/there’s no running now/His thunder shakes the earth/there will be no trace of betrayal/all creation trembles before You/as You lift Your hand/Your will be done"

Explanation: The final full song on “thegodmachine” is about God’s perfect and just judgment upon our hearts. The concept is that we are a garden but have become rooted in our idols, thus stealing God’s glory and putting it into our fake gods. I’m not just talking about the Old Testament “golden calf.” I’m talking about money, sex, vanity, or anything that you seek validation from or for. We are too prideful to understand the importance of not putting ourselves higher than God. The choruses are sung to us from God’s point of view. In this song he sees us as little saplings that are being strangled by the weeds we’ve surrounded ourselves with. In God’s eyes, we have turned the garden into a tomb/graveyard rather than fulfill the true purpose he has given us. The chorus is about him uprooting us from our devils and redeeming us with life. The ending of “The Rider” is from my perspective as a deformedly growing seed asking for judgment day because I cannot reconcile what I have become when I realize that the creator of the heavens has been pursuing me my entire life and I have denied him. The last couple of lines are more of an image I dreamt of: the entire world watching in fear as God lifts his hand high as if he is preparing to bring it down upon us and wipe earth’s slate clean. This song is one of my favorites off of the album because of the almost apocalyptic theme it hints towards and that no matter how messed up we are, God pursues us to the ends of the earth. I believe that Christ has the power to raise the dead, to break guilt and addiction, and to completely make beautiful what we have destroyed.

Day 10: "Pendulum"




Lyrics: "Bright lights are breaking through the sky/dark clouds are pouring from your feet/the seas and valleys all run dry/reach through the sky and capture/my heart a child trembling in sight of his wake/your blood was the bridge between/a new song"

Explanation: “Pendulum” is the reprise of the entire album before the destruction of thegodmachine. It revisits almost every chorus throughout the album and combines them into one single song over a different movement and progression. The songs link somewhat lyrically and I thought it would be perfect to arrange it that way. The bridge of “From One End Of The Sky To The Other” and the chorus of “I Am The Lion” become “Reach through the sky and capture my heart.” It twists the melodies to work together so you can hear the songs in a completely different way, a worship song.

Day 9: "Grace Disguised By Darkness"




Lyrics: "I’ve felt their lives slip through my fingers/now i watch them circle the drain/with breath like the torrent they sink to the bottom/i’ve wasted so many chances/my efforts not a drop in the barrel/with a body like a boulder i sink to the bottom/i’ve shown my teeth and have had them kicked in one too many times/in my yearning He split the rock, and the water gushed forth/a voice keeps yelling, a voice keeps yelling/”this is where your proud waves end”/my fingers trace lines, on the surface i’m consumed/the sinking feeling, the sinking feeling/”this is where your proud waves end”/i take my first step, and i’m thrown over the edge/i tried to walk on the water but now i just swim/where is your mercy/what grace is this that saves me/i scream Your name/are You outside of Your wrath/oh God Your name/amongst the pile of dead/i see a light split the water from the heavens/i feel God glowing inside me/my heart shakes with the music of the spheres/i no longer tremble in fear/for Redemption has found me/and in Redemption comes the overflow of peace"

Explanation: This song is my story of salvation. I’ve been a Christian since I was a kid. When I wrote this song’s lyrics (4 years ago), I was in the middle of going through one of the roughest experiences in my life. I felt that I was destroying the relationships with the people I love, that I was falling further into my own depravity, and I hadn’t felt the presence of God in what seemed like years. I felt that I was in a giant pit that was half full of water, and I was drowning while clawing at the edges to lift myself out.  I was dealing with depression, being exiled and excommunicated from the school I was attending, and was trying to find purpose. I fell far into alcoholism and smoking. All I could feel was that I was drowning and I couldn’t see over the wave towering over me to see if there was just another wave behind it that was going to destroy me or if there was a break. I felt that God had left me to die in this pit that I dug myself and that his mercy was nowhere to be found. Then one of my friends became a Christian. I remember calling my mom and telling her about it. My mom told me that I should tell my friend to read the book of John in the bible because it is the best description of who Jesus is. I told my friend, and then decided to take my mom’s advice and read it for myself. The words felt like they reached out and took hold of my heart and shook my entire existence. The words gave me purpose when I thought I was worthless. “Grace Disguised By Darkness” is about Christ finding me and pulling me out of the pit of depravity I had thrown myself into.

Day 8: "My Horses Are Many"




Lyrics: "This is what it’s like to be on fire burning through the coals/what a way to release this fury and be consumed/a false prophet and a terrible liar/trading money for souls/abomination of a broad horizon/you sold them for a frail mansion/it’s nothing but dust/your recompense and tongue will be fed down your throat/oh you’d topple the pillars of a church to make yourself a god/when you speak it’s a dead language/forfeit the grace you never preach/limb for a limb/you’ll be torn to shreds/eye for an eye/you’ll be torn to shreds/throw it down like you never want to see it again/if this is a slippery slope you’re at the bottom of the ditch/take advantage of the children yet you call yourself a man/if this is a slippery slope you’re at the bottom of the ditch/headlong"

Explanation: “My Horses Are Many” is about my experience as a kid when my family moved to Texas and was looking for a church to attend. I have had a lot of awful experiences at church, and this song is about just a handful of them. I remember distinctly going to a huge church when I was 6. In the Sunday school class, I remember seeing every kid at the end of the lesson get up and move in a single file line towards the altar. Kid after kid handed the preschool-pastor money, change, or even a check that their parents had obviously given them. As a little kid, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing until years later, but I remember feeling embarrassed because I had nothing to give and I was getting closer and closer to the end of the line. When it was my turn in front of the preschool pastor, I said “I’m sorry, but you can have my grapes” out of embarrassment, handed him the last of couple of grapes that I had been eating during the lesson, and then started crying when I saw the pastor’s look of disapproval. The line in the song, “take advantage of the children yet you call yourself a man” is NOT about those grapes that I regret giving up (haha), but the embarrassment, the brainwashing, and the peer pressure that churches use. I have nothing against tithing, but making the children in your Sunday school class get in a single file line and make it a habit of giving money at an early age is a bit of a disturbing tactic to me.  This same thing happened at a different church I attended years later, only the entire congregation was in a single file line dropping money into a golden altar in front of the stage. That was after the pastor preached “tithe or you aren’t right with God” for an entire year. Bible belt America’s leaders will have some serious explaining to do on judgment day. Every shepherd will be held accountable for his flock. This song is me reacting honestly to these experiences.

Day 7: "The Wishing Well"



Lyrics: "A thunderstorm a distant shore, i’ve witnessed this before/patience was fleeting/if a thousand coins on the ocean floor would bring back love to me/i’ll wait forever/fill the sea with dreams of a wishing well/waves bring back my coins to me/drain the deep that teems with my empty shells/slaves of sand still call for me/i once had love to give/i once had hoped to live/the rarest stones will break my bones and golden salt stops my lungs/the perfect limbs and haunting eyes begs the seas: begin to rise/man: and when these delusions come to fruition/believe you me/i will strangle myself into nothingness/and be reborn from the dream of a blasphemous fool/in my sordid pelt of mold/i’ll earn back years to me/the god of a nightmare will fall as I take back what is…/devil: mine!/worthless swine enraptured by my vanity/your soul sank under the weight of gold you offered me/man: a waste of a life, squandered my heart until it rests upon the ocean floor barren/watching the light descend deeper and deeper/a deadening feeling starts to grow in my ribs/from where I lie, the waves overflow, with my blood/devil: from where I hide, the snakes overgrown, with your blood/man: where are my years/I’ll bleed dry by myself/i wish I was someone/devil: you wish you were someone else"

Explanation: “The Wishing Well” is quite different lyrically from every other song on the album. It is the only song on thegodmachine with no redemptive qualities. I wrote the lyrics to this song after watching the movie “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” I remember falling asleep and waking up at the end when the credits are rolling, and there was the darkest piano piece I’ve ever heard playing. It put me in such an odd and dark state of mind. I had never heard a piece so beautiful yet dissatisfied and brooding. It’s called “Going Crazy, Coast to Coast,” and it was written by Alex Wurman. If you can find it anywhere on the internet, give it a listen.

I ended up writing the lyrics and concept of “The Wishing Well” soon after. It is the story of a man flipping coins into the ocean and wishing that he was richer, stronger, better looking, happier, etc… He is completely unsatisfied with himself and what he has been given. The idea is that he regretted being himself to the point of losing his identity. The ending of the song is a conversation between the man and the devil, going back and forth over who is truly in control of the man’s life. It’s the classic idea of “selling your soul to the devil for personal gain.” In this case, it comes with a catch that is too much for the man to handle. With all of these regrets and wishes, the man’s life is torn apart. Even the devil sees him as delusional at the end; the man wishes to be important, rich, famous, and attractive because of the inner hatred for himself after wasting his life, and the devil reminds him, “no, you just want to be someone else, anybody but yourself.”