Open Wounds

This song is about an abusive parent that is treating his child very badly, which leads to the child's insanity: "You can't stop me from falling apart, 'cause my self-destruction is all your fault." This could mean suicide, or cutting themselves (open wounds).

John Cooper, Skillet's lead vocalist and bassist, wrote this about his fractured relationship with his father, which grew strained after Cooper's mother died and his father remarried shortly after. "It just became a bad situation, from that point me and my dad just fought and fought," he explained to Listenin.org. "I think the reason it was so hard is that everyone looked at our family like we were model family, even though it was actually really bad, haha... terrible, and I just felt betrayed by my dad and stuff. The reason I finally wrote a song about it, honestly, is because things are going well with my relationship with my dad. It's a relationship that has been healed in the last few years and so I thought okay, it's time to write a song about it 'cause I know there are lots of people out there that feel the same way but is under the pretense of a really great family, and that's what always bothered me so bad, was that it really wasn't all that great."

Downstairs the enemy sleeps Leaving the TV on Watching all the dreams we had turn into static Cooper explains the above lyrics: "My dad and my stepmom fought and he would sleep on the couch, and when I was growing up we didn't have all night TV, haha. You'd go down stairs and the TV at midnight would just go to static or go to those little colors and I remember just thinking anything to get away from him."