Singled Out: The Armed's Pushing Daisies and Young & Beautiful

Young & Beautiful- We really wanted to start the EP off with a sudden burst of really violent noise. We wanted there to be a sense of absolute urgency. The EP is only five songs long anyways you know? We didn't wanna waste any time getting into it. The main verse riff was crafted while having the specific goal of making the most heavy and crushing single riff we had done yet in mind. Lyrically, this song is about not really fitting into any of the aggressive music cliques where we come from. It touches on something Jello Biafra wrote about 25 years ago...the idea that "punk's not dead it just deserves to die when it becomes another stale cartoon." Imagine if the DKs or Black Flag just tried to ape the look and sound of Elvis or something else that had happened thirty years prior. If they had only worshipped that one singular influence so hard it became like a religion. The original hardcore movement would probably have been pretty irrelevant. So it's a little bit about the whole regressive attitude in some of the hardcore scene...and it's a bit about the opposite end of the spectrum too: the absolutely vapid neo-nu metal mall punk twilight core thing too. This song finds time to hate on a lot within the confines of like a minute and a half or whatever.

Pushing Daisies - This song has been around for a long time-- about six years...well before The Armed as it exists now came to fruition. The old version had completely different lyrics and vocals.

We had started playing it live at shows in the six or so months prior to working on the EP and it seemed to fit really well into our set. We thought it'd fit in perfectly with the material we had been working on and it'd be great to finally get it recorded properly. I had recently become friends with Dave Graw, a guy who was a real inspiration when we were younger...actually when the song had been initially written. He was the singer in a band called Bang Bang which is one of my favorite Detroit bands ever. I asked if he would sing on it because it seemed appropriate. Thankfully, he agreed and wrote a whole new part for it. We're all really really stoked with how it turned out and proud to have been a part of such a cool collaboration.