Red City

This is the opening track of Stone Sour's fifth studio album House of Gold & Bones Part 2, the second part of the band's double-record concept record. The two records center on a man struggling to find his place in the world, and this song finds Corey Taylor singing in the voice of his main character, surveying the emotional wreckage around him. He explained in a video feature with Music Feeds that this lead off song sets the tone musically for the rest of the album. He explained, "Part 2 is very rich, very orchestral and it's very complex. Musically, it's probably the most diverse music that we've ever done."

Stone Sour guitarist Josh Rand explained the writing and recording process for the two House Of Gold & Bones records to Ultimate-Guitar.com: "All of us write individually," he said, "and then when it's time to do a new Stone Sour record we bring in what we've all written and then it becomes a Stone Sour song. Everybody puts their little spin on things. Corey writes the lyrics after the music has been laid out. Recording-wise this time around, we all just spent like two weeks in Des Moines, the four of us, just doing pre-production and then went to a cow farm in Jamaica, Iowa and spent three months to record both records."

The two House Of Gold And Bones records tell the story of a character called The Human who wakes up in a mysterious world, where he comes across various characters. He is instructed to make his way toward a crimson city called Red City and find the House of Gold and Bones before an event called the Conflagration takes place. Taylor explained in a video track-by-track that as 'Part 2' begins as The Human finds himself in the clutches of the Numbers and Black John, seeking to find the answers of what's going on in his world.