A House Divided

Album: Super Collider (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Frontman Dave Mustaine brought in session trumpeter Bob Findlay (Neil Diamond, Steely Dan, Extreme) to play horns on this track. Drummer Shawn Drover told Metal Mayhem: "He played on 'Silent Scorn,' which, I think, was on The World Needs A Hero album, if I'm not mistaken. So it's been actually several years since he'd played on the song, and for me that was a nice surprise once I found out about it."

    "That's not every day that you'll have a horn player play on a heavy metal song, you know," he added. "But again we're one of those bands that can kind of delve in to that and we're not afraid to it. It's not like it over - you know, takes over the track and all the sudden become sound like Earth, Wind & Fire or something like that, but you know what I mean. But it's just something that adds a little flavor to that song. It's not a big deal for us, you know what I mean. It's not like we're - we're not trying to do anything too wacky or weird. It's just something that we thought or Dave thought that would be something to enhance that part of the song. That's pretty much the long and short of it."
  • The phrase 'a house divided' refers to a group or organization weakened by internal dissensions. It comes from a parable that Jesus recounted in Mark's Gospel (3v25) where he countered accusations of Him being under Satan's power. When President Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election in 1968, he said: "It is true that a home divided against itself cannot stand. There is a division in the American house now." He was alluding to the biblical passage as Abraham Lincoln had done previously in a 1858 speech, when he was warning of the danger of slavery-based disunion.

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