Infiltrate the System

Album: Infiltrate the System (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • A year before the global financial meltdown that lead to the occupy movement, Madball released Infiltrate the System, an album that deals with taking on established power structures and subverting authority. The title track started with a riff their bass player Hoya Roc came up with. Guitarist Mitts wrote the music for the chorus and their lead singer Freddy Cricien came up with the words.
  • The song has a distinctive breakdown at the end, which went through a few iterations before the band was happy with it. In our interview with Madball guitarist Mitts, he explained: "We had it written, everything up to that part, and we were rehearsing it, but we didn't have an end part for it. We were stuck on it, and finally I went home and I wrote an end part to it and demoed it and played it for the guys.

    I liked it, and my singer liked it even to the point where he wrote some lyrics over it. I even have somewhere - not that it will ever see the light of day - but I have a version of it where you hear an alternate ending. My bass player, he didn't like it, so it kind of motivated him - if he didn't put something on there, then it was going to stick, and I know he didn't like it. He ended up going home and coming in one day and being, 'All right, try this.' He put this ending on it that's the ending you hear now, and nobody can complain because that's the way the song finished, and it fits great now. At the time I was like, 'Oh, that's very different.' But that's what we ended up going with and that's how the song is today."

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