References: "Slaughter-House Five," Vonnegut's biography, and WWII.

One of the more significant themes of Vonnegut's writing was war, particularly WWII. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden when the city was firebombed into rubble. As you might imagine, it stuck with him. It's the major theme of "Slaughter-House Five" and maybe the major theme of his whole career. I had to represent that somewhere. This is one of the more "Vonnegutty" things on the album, I think.

The line "isn't that how the war began--turning man into superman" is one of the lines I've had sitting for about 10 years. I think it summarizes WWII as well as anything. And I just like it. I've almost used it on a couple of different projects over the years, but thankfully the part of me that knew I'd eventually put out this album held it back. So it's here, where it belongs.

The drone sound you hear throughout was at one time part of a much longer concept. This song, "The Last Folk Singers" and "Tralfamadore" were at one time going to be joined together as one very long piece and that drone would have carried through all three segments with a much longer, noodly guitar solos between them. It was very Pink Floyd-ish. It was a good idea and I think it would've worked as just a one-off on a different record, but on this project I thought it flowed better to make them separate pieces.

This was one of the first songs I wrote for this album 10 or so years ago. It's also the last one I finished mixing. Funny.