« What is the meaning of laws, when our nations negotiate all? » (quote from the song’s lyrics)
We grew up being told that our country was a safe nest for human rights conventions, a historical hub for humanitarian organizations, a neutral haven for diplomacy, a sheltering home for the needing ones and a centuries-long advocate for peace.
Yet the older we get, the more frequently we see this image turn into a Dorian Gray portrait. We recently witnessed our federal representatives minimize dual-use goods exportations or support partial views on major international law violations. We discovered that our asylum system had silently turned into a racist and humiliating discouragement plan, and we still haven’t been able to make our international entreprises accountable for their colonialist crimes.
Looking back at our school history manuals, we wonder where this whole fairy tale has gone, or if it ever existed, but we’d like to allow ourselves and invite you to keep believing in the idea that a peace-making switzerland might be one day an actual thing.
We wrote this track last summer and recorded it between tours in our studios in La Chaux-de-Fonds with Scott Evans (Thrice, La Dispute, Neurosis). Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe, The Armed) contributed to some additional production and it was mixed by Tom Dalgety (Ghost, Pixies, Royal Blood, Tiger Cub).
We wanted Peace Trader to be punchy and sad, something that could carry urgent empathy and hope.
It’s also the first song we’re releasing where a bass player was part of the writing process from the very beginning, which had a big impact on how the arrangements came together and how the instruments interact.
You can hear that in the overall balance, especially in the drums, where we mixed very different sounds, some of them recorded in an empty warehouse.
When we got to recording the vocals, we realized it would feel better to drop the tuning by a half step, which ended up making it the lowest-tuned Coilguns track we’ve ever released — and also meant Kevin’s bass strings were incredibly loose during the sessions.
