Odds of an Afterthought just released their Through Eyes of Change' EP and to celebrate we asked Tanner Greely to tell us about the single "Checkmate". Here is the story:
The riffs for this song ended up being the foundation for "Checkmate" but they didn't come until after we decided to scrap a set of riffs that ended up taking a direction we didn't feel was right. We felt the riffs that we scrapped were too slow and not as aggressive as we were imagining for the new material and so ultimately that is what sparked our mindset to write a more aggressive set of riffs for this song.
I briefly remember sitting down with our bassist Aaron when we first came up with the verse riffs for Checkmate. After finding the right tempo for how fast we wanted the said riffs to be, we just went with the flow and demoed out specific parts on guitar and bass until building a full verse, chorus, verse, bridge layout for the song. The song really came together piece by piece and I felt a sense of accomplishment when the song was fully written instrumentally.
I've always prided myself on writing hooks that grab attention. And when I say grab attention, I literally mean hooks that will make you say "holy crap that was so catchy". So whatever the chorus riffs sound like, I make sure to write a chorus melody that will line up and really turn heads. I know something is catchy when I hear it because it grabs my own attention. So I knew that this song needed to have a great hook and I knew the song needed to have an aggressive message. We wrote it to be a faster song and it felt right to carry an aggressive and an in your face kind of message. The song is about a friendship turning sour.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!
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