Addicted was a record that was made as a conscious effort to be absurdly positive, and even at the time, I was aware that it was almost deludedly so. I knew that the cornerstone of the project would be Deconstruction, the album that was written as an effort to confront myself and my hang ups about heavy music, religion, sex and those sorts of things. So Addicted served as a kind of ‘opening act’ for Deconstruction… I liked to think of it as the curtains that hid the Deconstruction show were closed, and Addicted was playing in front of it to get people’s attention.

I had found through all the change and the process that there were certain people in my life that were turning into very dependable friends and cornerstones to bounce things off of musically and otherwise, and I invited them to play on the album. I have always been interested in female vocals (as I prefer them to male) and as luck would have it during the recording of Addicted, Anneke Van Giersbergen sent me an unsolicited mail with an attached video of her singing ‘Hyperdrive’ from Ziltoid.

Being a long-time fan of hers, I figured I would take the bull by the horns and ask her if she was interested in singing on the album, and she agreed. The music on Addicted is shiny, easy, and very positive, but again…(especially in relationship to Epicloud), it’s almost deludedly so… there’s no true acknowledgement of the ills of the world, and as such tends to be (for me) an exhausting experience. However, this is THE WHOLE INTENTION of Addicted, and is why it’s named what it is. The idea that you can get addicted to anything, experience, optimism, drugs, whatever… and the breaking of the cycle in Ki leads to the confrontation that the addictive nature in personality ultimately just covers up an inability (or rather the fear) of dealing with the roots of the cause. This made sense, except for the question remained: ‘If you’re willing to confront these things…how do you know what is a fear versus a projection’ how do you know if you’re lying or deluding yourself?…’