Fringe Division was a project I’d started w/my good friend David McNeil just over 10 years ago. We pretty much wrote + recorded a song or two each evening we met up. I loved the freedom + the fact that Dave + I went into it w/a 'anything goes' attitude. No limitations - which was something I always seemed to do w/ Jim Dead. Songs had to fit a style or whatever. We went into each evening w/nothing + we wrote + recorded at least one song. Some of them nonsense while others, like this, were really personal. I took that same attitude w/me to King of the Stuntmen + then into this.

Usually Dave was responsible for coming up w/the music + I would provide some lyrics + the vocal… like I say, there were no boundaries or pressure… just loads of messing around w/ideas + then saying “let’s go for it”. Those evenings were some of my favourite times + I rate some of those songs as the best I’ve written.

Crumbling from the Inside is one of those songs. When I started writing songs for The Great Destroyer this kept cropping up. So I felt a pull to revisit it. I asked Dave what he thought about me revisiting it + he said sure (he was also cool w/me changing the title!).

When it came to recording, I messed up the guitar on this over + over. Hitting E instead of Em + vice-versa. Even when recording the verse + then the chorus separately. I just couldn’t nail a take. Anyhoo, I don't know how he done it, but Craig managed to piece the vocal take together + he built it from the ground up - removing the guitar, playing bass + building a pretty ace percussion in order to give us a structure to work from.

"A couple times you lost where you were, got frustrated, hit your guitar strings and snapped your fingers… I noticed that the finger snaps thru the vocal mic were nice and clean, so isolated and looped them as a snare or rim hit kinda thing. The ‘kick’ sound is one of the times you hit the muted guitar strings, but pitched down a few semitones and EQ’ed to take out the top end. I reckoned it’d work as an alternative click track to allow me to lay down a rudimentary bass part in the meantime, but it kinda fit the stripped down vibe so it’s stlll there. For now…"

It was only right that Dave was involved + he was happy enough to record some keyboard + that ominous guitar. Craig put all the pieces together + that’s what you hear. I re-recorded the vocal on one of our last sessions.

So, this one belongs to Dave + Craig. They really built this one. It's darker than the Fringe Division version, but not a million miles from it. It feels like Tears for Fears meets Drab Majesty. Or something like that.