Eradication - Left Hand Path

Track by track commentary by Mikko Gynther

1. A Different Time and Place is an instrumental adaptation of Place for Me originally released in 2004. It's mainly included on Left Hand Path for continuity as it was the second song written for the band (the first is most likely lost forever) and the opening guitar riff predates the band. That being said it had enough musical substance to make it on the record in a condensed form. The track starts with a solo which is somewhat similar to the original at least in feel. Accompaniment is actually very close. Also the following guitar melody is original.

To make the piece more interesting a second guitar melody was added to create more harmonic content. After all the original melody uses chord roots as pedal points and doesn't really move anywhere. Both melodies were also developed to give the track more character. Originally no melodies were played on acoustic guitars. The first verse, however, had acoustic guitar accompaniment. In order to preserve some of the acoustic electric dynamics the guitar melodies were arranged for acoustic guitars as well.

2. Hard, Heavy & Loud was not supposed to be on the record in the first place. It's hard to play because of fast tempo and it was included only after getting obsessed with arranging the melodic part after the second chorus. Once it started to sound way better than the original it was obvious the track had to be recorded. Although the song took a lot of time and effort to get arranged it was easy to work with due to the solid structure of the original. In fact the same applies to all songs on Left Hand Path. Apart from A Different Time and Place very little had to be removed. It's easier to make a composition better when you don't need to worry about making it work in the first place.

In the middle of the song there is a long instrumental part which contains several different melodies and riffs. None of them are repeated later in the song. Compositional styles vary from a rather counterpoint approach to quite traditional heavy metal harmonic parts. There's also a rhythmic modulation from straight to triplet feel. While earlier Eradication pieces had long instrumental parts they never progressed quite as smoothly and fast. The new arrangement emphasizes it by adding new harmonic elements which make developing the musical ideas more natural. In a way the roots of unconventional structures of later compositions were there already in the original version.

3. Long Lost, Finally Found was an obvious choice. We have enjoyed playing it since it was released in 2006. It's more laid back than our faster pieces but there's still plenty to play, a nice groove and a solid structure. Also the original wasn't played and sung well so there was room for improvement. Compared to Hard, Heavy & Loud there's way less changes in the new version, only a few here and there to make it less repetitive and more interesting. Some of the changes, however, show some serious signs of getting old. Rhythm guitar was removed from the second chorus in order to make room for other instruments. Original guitar arpeggios were played on electric violin instead.

Lyrically there isn't a whole lot to the song. It's just the band speaking about harmonic freedom found during a fresh start after line-up changes. Looking back it felt like a major difference although it's rather obvious that to some extent similar feel was there even earlier on songs like Stalkers.

4. Love was released on The Unknown in 2007 but it was written around the same time as songs for Long Lost, Finally Found, late 2005. In fact it was close to be included on the release but left out due to having enough to rehearse already. Musically Love is a rather typical Eradication piece. There's always something happening, a few modulations, time signature changes and rests here and there.

Around the time of writing reality TV was a big thing and a lot of kiss and tell was published by yellow press. It all felt extremely cheap and that's what the lyrics are all about.

5. Writing Stalkers was initiated by Ville. Back in early 2004 he jammed the riff featured after the spoken intro in rehearsals. Mikko spiced it up and very spontaneously came up with the verse riff that follows. The rest of the song came quite naturally although the composition gets carried out quite a bit. Writing still took several months as we were busy recording at the same time.

Along with Long Lost, Finally Found Stalkers was an obvious choice because we were happy with the original arrangement. Compared to the other pieces Stalkers is probably the most faithful to original. There's only a few small changes and many of them are simply additional melodic guitar parts on one rhythm track while the other keeps the original rhythm part.