Songfacts®:

• Black Metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal that took root in Norway in the early 1990s. An outlet for young, adolescent aggression, it has been met with hostility from mainstream culture, mainly due to the misanthropic and anti-Christian standpoint of many artists. Moreover, a few of the genre's pioneers have been linked with church burnings, murder and National Socialism.
  
  This track from My Morning Jacket finds them expressing skepticism about people holding on to things as absolutely bleak and dark as black metal once they reach adulthood. Bassist "Two-Tone" Tommy explained to IFC: "There's no doubt that an obsession with anything - even a genre of music or a TV show or a movie or collectibles - can be a distraction from what's really going on or a way to hang on to the past in a way that keeps the responsibilities of life/adulthood at bay. But there are also things that can only be expressed, or are easier to express, through escapism and especially through music, so much so that its importance should never be discounted. How difficult would adolescence have been without the music that helped carry us through it? No one enters adulthood feeling none of the emotions they did when they were 16."
• Vocalist Jim James is accompanied on the song by an all-female choir made up of a group of women the band is friends with. Their contribution was recorded in a funeral home in Louisville, which Two-Tone commented, "makes it more metal."
• Two-Tone told IFC about the recording of the song: "Jim's demo was built on a loop he had made from a Thai pop song called "E-Saew Tam Punha Huajai" by Kwan Jai & Kwan Jit Sriprajan. His mission to the band was to perform the loop like child soldiers roaming the streets. We recorded several takes but the first one - where we're all just getting a feel for playing the loop together - was the keeper."
• This was used in the TV shows The Vampire Diaries ("Homecoming" - 2011) and Suits ("Tricks Of The Trade" - 2011).
• In a 2011 interview with Uncut magazine, James explained how Circuital differs from the band's previous album, the eclectic Evil Urges: "We wanted Evil Urges to be like a giant video game with lots of 'levels.' This one just wanted to be all in one space, more circular and encompassing. It's more the study of a family unit, whereas on Evil Urges we were trying to look at all the different people in a city."
• Jim James was only in his early 30s when Circuital was released, but his contemplative lyrics about the passage of time reflect a maturity beyond his years - which was influenced by a life-threatening incident on the Evil Urges tour.
  
  "Some of it came from a head injury I had two years ago when I fell off the stage," James told The Toronto Sun of his reflective songwriting in a 2011 interview. "That made me question a lot of things. I was in a weird place - while I was recovering from this very strange injury which took a long time to get over, I was watching people starting families and having kids. I felt like an outsider - like I was watching through Plexiglass as real life happened to people I knew. And I was thinking about when different versions of you stop and start, and how you have to let yourself change. You can't try to stay the same person. There's the child inside you that doesn't want to die as you become an adult, but you have to move on. I'm just constantly trying to find out who I really am. And I'm still struggling to find a definition I'm comfortable with."
• If James is holding on to anything, it isn't black metal. "When I was younger, I had more room for that energy," he told The Toronto Sun. "I still have respect for the bands and the music, but sonically, my brain can't handle the landscape of that music any more. That might be due in large part to being in a touring rock band. I'm constantly hearing loud music. So when I want to listen to music, I don't want to hear guitars."