Amongst the Shadows & the Stones

Album: What the Dead Men Say (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • Guitarist Corey Beaulieu came up with the idea for this song, inspired by a war history website that he follows. The site posted a story of a soldier visiting the graves of his fallen comrades, which he described as walking "amongst the shadows and the stones."

    The first lyric Beaulieu came up with was, "The ghosts of war will haunt my bones, amongst the shadows and the stones," which then inspired the music he wrote for it.
  • Beaulieu had already inserted the screams on the "amongst the shadows and the stones" part of the hook. When he played the demo to his bandmates, bassist Paolo Gregoletto took that and started writing lyrics for the rest of the song. He explained to Apple Music that the lyrical subject changed as they got deeper into the songwriting.

    "I ended up thinking about how we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the war on terror, and what the real consequences have been - not only for us, but for the people on the other end," he said. "So it's about the aftermath, when the dust has settled and there's just rubble and nothing."

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