The song "Superpaun", the first single and video from our album "Dark Devotion", is a great example of when artists blindly lead themselves into something cool by simply dicking around at rehearsal! We were warming up and getting ready to rehearse, and while I was tuning my bass our guitarists Jeromy Graves and Paul Sullivan were mindlessly noodling around, paying absolutely no attention to each other whatsoever, and I happened to notice what they were playing was perfectly in time and key with each other. Now the two parts alone were kind of simple, stupid parts but together they were something cool! At this point is where I stepped in and engaged in what I refer to as "shit farming", taking their crap and making something out it (this happens more often than it should haha!). I pointed out to them that they were playing together and to keep going while I threw out a beat to our drummer Eric Bongiorno that I heard in my head, played the bassline I was hearing and we were off to the races! I threw out the basic arrangement and keys/parts as we went along and literally within a half hour the song was done, and is pretty much what you hear on the album! All of us come from different schools of thought where specific parts are concerned and you'll notice very rarely in this song are we all ever playing the same part but rather complimenting each other's ideas. So with "Superpaun" we had one of those magical writing sessions where the synergy was really cooking in the idea department and the song just kind of wrote itself very quickly from a musical standpoint, everyone kind of instantly and simultaneously throwing in their part of the stew.

Now the lyrics have a very funny story attached to them, again there was this crazy, unique timing that created the perfect storm of writing a tune… Right after we had worked out the song and were talking over parts Paul's phone rang and we heard him telling someone that they had the wrong number. He hung up and said to us, "Ah it was someone looking for Super Pawn…", which is a chain of pawn shops in the Phoenix, AZ area. Not more than 10 seconds later Paul's phone rings again, this time he kind of smiles as he looks at the phone number and answers "Super Pawn…". Apparently it was the same woman thinking she was calling the Super Pawn as she had her wedding ring in hock and wanted to go get it…and of course Paul played along and told her it looked like it had been sold so she might want to come down there! Yeah he's that kind of bastard haha! We all busted out laughing and a bell went off in my head…that's the song title! I then proceeded to go off and write the lyrics, changing the pawn shop name to "Superpaun", using the old English spelling of a chess pawn and writing the lyrics about someone who exceedingly kicks ass at doing other people's dirty work regardless of what it is and for whom.

Poor woman…I wonder if she ever got her ring back?!??!? =)