Mouth of the South 'Transparency' track by track
Mouth of the South singer Josiah Lyle gives Lambgoat a track by track rundown of the band's new album, Transparency.
Arlington, TX metalcore band Mouth of the South recently released a new album titled Transparency. Although not signed to a label, the Christian band's debut sold more than 450 copies in its first week, debuting at #10 on the iTunes Metal chart. If your interest is piqued, you can stream the effort below:
Introductions aside, vocalist Josiah Lyle has provided us with a track by track rundown of the entire album:
Prologue
This song is exactly what the title says it is. The point here is to introduce the theme of the album, which is that as I express my shortcomings and weaknesses and doubts and come clean with everything I find life renewed in God. This album is not just about throwing away sinful desires but killing the nature of sin itself.
Uprooted
I'm 22 years old and I dropped out of high school, got my GED and never went to college. Because of all this I've had a lot of people look down on me and treat me like a waste of a person. "When are you going to go to college?" or "When are you going to get a real job?" are questions I've been asked countless times. A lot of the times when I've seen other people do those things just because they are told they need to they end up feeling empty and they can sometimes live life with regrets thinking about the dreams they used to have. I feel like what I do in my life has a real purpose, and that even though it doesn't fit into most peoples mold of a "successful" life I'm still living my dreams and when I look back on this part of my life I won't have any regrets. I know I am not the only one who has gone through this or feels this way. I've met tons of people on the road who have very similar stories but we band together as a family and scream "I am not alone, we are alive and we will not be stopped!"
Selfless
My father is a huge influence in my life. Our family has gone through quite a bit of crap over the last few years and through all the storms we've faced he's always been like a rock. He has truly been one of the biggest influences in my life. Since before I was born my dad has always been into music. He's played in a couple different traveling bands and has been a worship leader since I was two so he definitely has been incredibly encouraging with everything I've wanted to do with my life regardless of how wild it may have seemed. I look up to my dad more than I look up to anyone alive today.
Whanau
My older brother, Jaron, has been quite the influence in my life. I've always looked up to him like a lot of younger brother do. Jaron helped me through quite a bit of the struggles I've gone through in my life. Even though he's been a huge spiritual influence he has always seemed to keep getting caught up in the wrong crowd. He's been on and off of drugs for a few years and about a year ago got arrested for some stuff and got sent to prison. It's tough having someone you love and look up to fall so far and throw away their life but to me family is such an important thing and we have to be there for each other no matter what crap we get ourselves into. I will always love and pray for my brothers. The name of the song is "Whanau", which means "family" in the Maori language, which is the native tongue of New Zealand where I spent two months with my brother on a mission trip. He and I got matching "Whanau"tattoos while we were there also.
Monologue
I went through a time in my life where I let my circumstances sway my faith. Not many people know this but a few years ago I played guitar in Mouth of the South and after a couple years we got frustrated with some things and called it quits on the band. A couple weeks after that the girl I was dating broke up with me and I thought she was going to be the girl I was going to marry (young love can be misleading sometimes) and 10 days after that my mom announced to our family that she was leaving my dad and moving to Santa Fe to be with another guy. Everything I had got flipped upside down. My ministry, relationship, and family had all been lost. This may not seem like that much compared to a lot of other situations but I let it get to me and it led to me questioning my entire faith and really not wanting to believe that God was real. I was mad at God but if I believed in him then I had to believe that he is perfect and you can't be mad at a perfect God so it made me madder at myself so I decided the only logical thing for me to do was to not believe in God (which isn't really logical). I let my emotions become my reality. I thought that if I couldn't feel God then he must not be real. The real question I needed to ask was if God is real there has to be proof outside of my emotions and if that's the case then why do I not feel a real God in my life. This question led me to really start seeking out the claims of the bible and Christianity and I found evidence not only in scriptures and history but also in my own life that I ignored and it all pointed to the reality of God and how I was running away from him.
Part 2
After I wrote "Monologue" I knew that God would have a response. This response didn't work itself out in one big moment where all my questions were answered at once; it was a gradual process of God bringing me back to himself. As we were recording this album I sat down and started praying about this song and how God wanted to write it out as a dialogue to my initial questioning. I started writing the words and it all just flowed from beginning to end. I was almost brought to tears in a couple parts as I was writing it and it even chokes me up now pretty much every time I listen to it because I really feel God speaking this over me.
Riddance
Being a Christian doesn't make you a "good person". In fact a lot of us, including myself, have a whole lot of flaws and crap that we have to work past. I've been extremely passive and complacent when it comes to my sin and this song is my way of getting all of that out. I have felt completely overtaken by my lust and other sins and it's incredibly frustrating so I finally got to the point where I was gonna fight back. We don't conquer our sin by sitting back and relaxing with it. It's an aggressive process that takes fighting. It's not easy to overcome addictions especially when you don't walk away from the things pulling you down.
Convictions
I've known a lot of people who as they got older turned their backs on their faith and on God. Everyone's reasoning is different but it all ends the same. I've had a lot of crap come up in my life that has made me question my faith and want to turn my back on everything I've believed in but at the end of the day I am convinced that my faith is true and that my God is real and regardless of what comes in my life I will still follow my beliefs and praise the God that created me.
Epilogue
This song is the closing statement of it all. It starts from where I was when I questioned God to where he led me to in the reality of being his child. The goodness of God is for more than we can comprehend and nothing compares to hearing his still small voice whispering that we are his children. We find our life source when we realize that the voice that spoke the stars and all creation into existence is the same voice calling our names. When his hands calm the storms inside of us and make quiet the roaring of our heart we can feel the shaking of the earth in anticipation for the future restoration of all things. When we realize that we are his children our old self begins to die and our new beings come to life. From the mouth of God comes all things. His existence is the very nature of life itself. Faith doesn't end with a struggle it ends when God, who is faithful, restores all things and finishes the work he started in us.
Nothing but the blood
The reason we decided to do this song was because it really sums up what we stand for as a band. Everything we go through, the high's and lo's, the struggles and triumphs are only possible to overcome and move on from because of the blood of Jesus Christ. There is no way but his way no matter how hard we try on our own. Everything we have comes from the sacrifice he made in order to give us everything.
This song is exactly what the title says it is. The point here is to introduce the theme of the album, which is that as I express my shortcomings and weaknesses and doubts and come clean with everything I find life renewed in God. This album is not just about throwing away sinful desires but killing the nature of sin itself.
Uprooted
I'm 22 years old and I dropped out of high school, got my GED and never went to college. Because of all this I've had a lot of people look down on me and treat me like a waste of a person. "When are you going to go to college?" or "When are you going to get a real job?" are questions I've been asked countless times. A lot of the times when I've seen other people do those things just because they are told they need to they end up feeling empty and they can sometimes live life with regrets thinking about the dreams they used to have. I feel like what I do in my life has a real purpose, and that even though it doesn't fit into most peoples mold of a "successful" life I'm still living my dreams and when I look back on this part of my life I won't have any regrets. I know I am not the only one who has gone through this or feels this way. I've met tons of people on the road who have very similar stories but we band together as a family and scream "I am not alone, we are alive and we will not be stopped!"
Selfless
My father is a huge influence in my life. Our family has gone through quite a bit of crap over the last few years and through all the storms we've faced he's always been like a rock. He has truly been one of the biggest influences in my life. Since before I was born my dad has always been into music. He's played in a couple different traveling bands and has been a worship leader since I was two so he definitely has been incredibly encouraging with everything I've wanted to do with my life regardless of how wild it may have seemed. I look up to my dad more than I look up to anyone alive today.
Whanau
My older brother, Jaron, has been quite the influence in my life. I've always looked up to him like a lot of younger brother do. Jaron helped me through quite a bit of the struggles I've gone through in my life. Even though he's been a huge spiritual influence he has always seemed to keep getting caught up in the wrong crowd. He's been on and off of drugs for a few years and about a year ago got arrested for some stuff and got sent to prison. It's tough having someone you love and look up to fall so far and throw away their life but to me family is such an important thing and we have to be there for each other no matter what crap we get ourselves into. I will always love and pray for my brothers. The name of the song is "Whanau", which means "family" in the Maori language, which is the native tongue of New Zealand where I spent two months with my brother on a mission trip. He and I got matching "Whanau"tattoos while we were there also.
Monologue
I went through a time in my life where I let my circumstances sway my faith. Not many people know this but a few years ago I played guitar in Mouth of the South and after a couple years we got frustrated with some things and called it quits on the band. A couple weeks after that the girl I was dating broke up with me and I thought she was going to be the girl I was going to marry (young love can be misleading sometimes) and 10 days after that my mom announced to our family that she was leaving my dad and moving to Santa Fe to be with another guy. Everything I had got flipped upside down. My ministry, relationship, and family had all been lost. This may not seem like that much compared to a lot of other situations but I let it get to me and it led to me questioning my entire faith and really not wanting to believe that God was real. I was mad at God but if I believed in him then I had to believe that he is perfect and you can't be mad at a perfect God so it made me madder at myself so I decided the only logical thing for me to do was to not believe in God (which isn't really logical). I let my emotions become my reality. I thought that if I couldn't feel God then he must not be real. The real question I needed to ask was if God is real there has to be proof outside of my emotions and if that's the case then why do I not feel a real God in my life. This question led me to really start seeking out the claims of the bible and Christianity and I found evidence not only in scriptures and history but also in my own life that I ignored and it all pointed to the reality of God and how I was running away from him.
Part 2
After I wrote "Monologue" I knew that God would have a response. This response didn't work itself out in one big moment where all my questions were answered at once; it was a gradual process of God bringing me back to himself. As we were recording this album I sat down and started praying about this song and how God wanted to write it out as a dialogue to my initial questioning. I started writing the words and it all just flowed from beginning to end. I was almost brought to tears in a couple parts as I was writing it and it even chokes me up now pretty much every time I listen to it because I really feel God speaking this over me.
Riddance
Being a Christian doesn't make you a "good person". In fact a lot of us, including myself, have a whole lot of flaws and crap that we have to work past. I've been extremely passive and complacent when it comes to my sin and this song is my way of getting all of that out. I have felt completely overtaken by my lust and other sins and it's incredibly frustrating so I finally got to the point where I was gonna fight back. We don't conquer our sin by sitting back and relaxing with it. It's an aggressive process that takes fighting. It's not easy to overcome addictions especially when you don't walk away from the things pulling you down.
Convictions
I've known a lot of people who as they got older turned their backs on their faith and on God. Everyone's reasoning is different but it all ends the same. I've had a lot of crap come up in my life that has made me question my faith and want to turn my back on everything I've believed in but at the end of the day I am convinced that my faith is true and that my God is real and regardless of what comes in my life I will still follow my beliefs and praise the God that created me.
Epilogue
This song is the closing statement of it all. It starts from where I was when I questioned God to where he led me to in the reality of being his child. The goodness of God is for more than we can comprehend and nothing compares to hearing his still small voice whispering that we are his children. We find our life source when we realize that the voice that spoke the stars and all creation into existence is the same voice calling our names. When his hands calm the storms inside of us and make quiet the roaring of our heart we can feel the shaking of the earth in anticipation for the future restoration of all things. When we realize that we are his children our old self begins to die and our new beings come to life. From the mouth of God comes all things. His existence is the very nature of life itself. Faith doesn't end with a struggle it ends when God, who is faithful, restores all things and finishes the work he started in us.
Nothing but the blood
The reason we decided to do this song was because it really sums up what we stand for as a band. Everything we go through, the high's and lo's, the struggles and triumphs are only possible to overcome and move on from because of the blood of Jesus Christ. There is no way but his way no matter how hard we try on our own. Everything we have comes from the sacrifice he made in order to give us everything.
You can purchase Transparency via iTunes and/or keep up with Mouth of the South via Facebook. Meanwhile, you can also catch the band live next month as they tour with Kublai Khan and Altars.
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