Songfacts®:

• Drummer Brann Dailor explained the song told Kerrang!: "A burl is a bulbous growth on the side of a tree caused by the tree going through stress. The song itself is very simple - Brent (Hinds, guitar) was super-stoned and started tuning up and something popped out while he was doing it. It's a bit different for us because it's basically a straight up rock song, rather than being proggy and intricate."
• Guitarist Bill Kelliher told MusicRadar.com about the recording of the song: "Brann had the riffs for the chorus, and we put some other riffs and parts to it and made it into a song. Brent played most of the guitars on that. He used a Morpheus pedal, which is really cool because it can drop the tuning of your guitar. You can play a full, six-string chord and literally hear every note. I came in and put some harmony guitar in, and in the bridge I did some textures. I tried using the Morpheus pedal myself, but it didn't work with the two of us going through it. I went with straight-on, distorted guitar."
• Bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders explained the song's meaning during an interview with Banana 101.5 FM: "The burl is the knot that's found in various trees — it's almost like a cancer of trees. Within that burl are unique swirls or curls. A lot of people will cut those down and sell them to wood-makers, wood sculptors, and furniture makers because it's got a unique design to it. And this is a true story which happens in the Pacific Northwest — a lot of people go out in the woods with chainsaws, they find these burls, they cut them down, they load their pickup trucks with these burls, take them in to town sell them to various wood-makers, take the money from that, purchase more meth, go back in the woods and continue that circle of insanity. So it's based on a true story. People will steal your cars, steal copper…and people will go out there in the woods and steal burls."
• Brann Dailor created the treatment for the rather strange video. Sanders explained to Banana 101.5 FM: "It kind of follows the story of the song itself, but with a campy B-movie humor side to it. It could possibly inspire some Halloween costumes — who knows. We wanted to throw some humor in there and hopefully people can crack a laugh at it. Videos are short-lived so we want something that has an impact like, 'Hey man you gotta check that video out it's nuts or it's crazy or it was insane.'"
• This ode to forest-dwelling meth-heads is one of several tracks on The Hunter with bizarre subject matter. Said Hinds: "We've got a song about fighting, there's a song about lifting heavy stuff, there's a song about people on meth creeping around in trees trying to get the best wood grain out of a tree to sell it at Lowe's for [drug] money... The album is kind of silly. We're taking the piss out of things."