Songfacts®:

• This track is about post-break-up depression and treating it as if it were an infection, "something eating away inside you."
• Guitarist Dan Donegan discussed his solo on this track with Ultimate-Guitar.com: "Some songs just depend on how I feel that day. For 'The Infection' I was so pumped up from the opening of the riff and just kind of that high-energy riff that by the time we got to that middle section because of the adrenalin rush and the excitement from the energy from the previous parts, I felt like riffing into that. I felt like going into maybe a longer [section.] It's probably the longest or one of the longer extended solos on this body of work."
• Asylum is the band's fifth studio album and the second one they self-produced. Lead singer David Draiman told Metal Underground the album shows how much they've matured as a band since they debuted with The Sickness in 2000. "There's heightened levels of complexity and precision and it kind of showcases the abilities that we've learned over 10 years of songwriting and touring," he said. "It's definitely everything that fans would expect from the band and a few things that they wouldn't with a new level of maturation that I think is very evident over the course of the entire record."
• This was one of the first three songs written for the album. Draiman wrote it about his breakup with his fiancee, who initiated the split.