Apocryphon

Austin, Texas heavy metal outfit, The Sword, close their fourth album with its title track. Speaking with Spin magazine, guitarist Kyle Shutt explained that rather than having a specific concept it is "more of a metaphorical reflection of everything we've gone through up until this point."

The album and song title came from frontman John D. Cronise's research into Gnosticism and early Christianity. Shutt explained to Spin magazine that it is a word meaning "secret writings or secret teachings about things that maybe shouldn't be known. We're using metaphors to mask what we're really going through."

This song was an instrumental for most of its life, despite the fact Cronise had always intended it to have a vocal. He explained to Artist Direct: "I'd written the lyrics for all the other songs, and I was spent in a way. I was out of ideas. Then, it was suggested, 'Well, we always have an instrumental on our records. All of the previous albums have one. Maybe we should leave this as an instrumental.' We did that for a while. In the back of my mind, I always had this nagging voice that it wasn't supposed to be that way, and it really needed lyrics. I actually wrote the lyrics the night before the vocals were recorded. Usually, everything is written well ahead of time, and it's rehearsed. Hopefully, it's even played live a couple of times. Strangely, that one came right at the eleventh hour."