Songfacts®:

• This is the first single from Psychic Warfare. "It's a tale about an unnamed protagonist who is forced to seek refuge in a flop house motel," stated singer Neil Fallon. "He is hiding from several nefarious psychic forces, the worst of which is his own sleep-deprived paranoia."
• The Psychic Warfare album title is taken from this track.
• The song's lyrical concept was influenced by Philip K. Dick, the science fiction author whose 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Fallon said: "[Dick's] general philosophy and questions have always crept into my lyrics, because I share an interest in it. On Earth Rocker, 'Crucial Velocity' was definitely a Philip K. Dick song for me. On this record, 'X-Ray Visions' certainly is."
• The video was shot by renowned photographer Dan Winters, who also designed the cover for Psychic Warfare. The clip finds Fallon playing a mad-scientist figure, "We're not a band that's at all comfortable acting in a video. That's probably the most acting we've ever done in a video," the Clutch singer told Billboard magazine. "We're very comfortable with Dan; we've known him since 1993, really, but we feel most comfortable when we have our instruments in our hands. It's really his brainchild and he kind of made it up as he want along."
  
  "The song has a very kind of specific narrative to it, with very specific things that happen, and the lyrics aren't particularly vague," he added. "I think Dan latched onto that by taking it as a springboard to one very literal interpretation and then to more vague ideas."