I Will Be Heard

A very positive song, Hatebreed lead singer Jamey Jasta wrote "I Will Be Heard" about the drive to overcome obstacles and achieve your goals. "It's a good message, and that made me feel just amazing that people believed in my lyrics and the music that I was writing," he told us. "Because I'm not really an accomplished guitar player. I actually wrote that song on a guitar that my father gave to me when he was in the hospital, and I wrote it on that acoustic guitar. I thought, 'Man, if this sounds heavy on acoustic, it's going to be crushing when we really play it.'"

This is the kind of song you write while fighting to achieve your dreams, and that's exactly what Hatebreed was doing when they wrote it. They released their first album in 1997 on the independent label Victory Records, then spent the next five years touring and refining their sound. When they recorded demos for their Perseverance album and shopped them around, they got a very enthusiastic response thanks to this song. Suddenly in high demand, they got to pick amongst several offers, choosing Universal Records as their label. According to Jamey Jasta, they interviewed at least 10 different producers to work on the album, ultimately deciding on Matt Hyde, who had produced Porno For Pyros and Slayer. "It changed my life forever, that song," Jasta told us. "It took us all over the world. We hadn't had a record out in four or five years, so it reinvigorated our fan base. People really related to it. Everywhere I went there were people with the words tattooed on their bodies."

The video was directed by Marc Webb, who would go on to direct the films 500 Days of Summer and The Amazing Spider-Man.