Off your Face" were premiered live. After touring concluded for the year, the band was set to finish the album that October in time for a January 2004 release. While satisfied with the recorded material at first, with time the band became more critical of it and decided they would only be demos. They felt strongly about the songs "Picture", "Will the Future Blame Us?" and "Angels/Losing/Sleep" but felt that the rest of the songs didn't live up to them. "Even though we loved the energy of what we'd done, not enough of the songs were making the hair stand up on the back of your neck and so we realized that we needed to do more work," bass player Duncan Coutts explained. The album's projected release was pushed to June and then August as recording continued. The album's mood and direction would shift again when Maida traveled to Sudan and Darfur to shoot a documentary with War Child in the middle of recording. "We were there for a couple of weeks, and we came back from that and went right back into the studio, and it was like: 'God, this song sucks. I’m not saying that anymore.' You start reflecting on lyrics and any message you’re trying to get out there, and it really altered everything again." The band recorded in six-week spurts, traveling between studios in Toronto, Los Angeles and Maui, recording and re-recording more and more songs. With no deadline from the record company, they kept recording and gaining more perspective. "We'd get together, write, record, take two weeks off, go back in and we ended up doing that on and off for the last two-and-a-half or three years," By this time, over forty songs were in the can including "Picture", "Don't Ask Why" (Where Are You), "Holy Ghost" (Angels/Losing/Sleep) and "Vampires", which was briefly considered for the album's title. The sessions became strained at times as the band couldn't figure out where the album was going. "We had so many songs," said Taggart, "and we just started to go crazy." Many songs went through multiple incarnations such as "Boy", which caused the band a lot of stress and took over three weeks to break down and re-record. They were also butting heads with their producer. "There were some fucking horrible sessions," Maida admitted. A particularly brutal session took place at Satellite Park Studio in Malibu. "It