Killers instead focused on straightforward rock song structures with aggressive guitar lines and feedback. "The sonics were way different," Hindalong said, "because this was the '90s." Daugherty was listening heavily to shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Curve, and Swervedriver, and this influenced his guitar work on the album. Daugherty used a Groove Tubes guitar emulator for many of the tracks, which were also recorded in mono, as opposed to the stereo effects that were dominant on past albums. Daugherty would also employ an E-bow and a Fuzztame on "Amazing," as well as a MXR Distortion+ unit on "Weather Girl," the latter of which was influenced by the guitar work of Bob Mould. Hindalong's drumming became more chaotic, "like a kid who ate too much Halloween candy." "The drums were so busy, rather than the regimented '80s," Hindalong added. This proved challenging for some songs – in particular, the opening track, "Gripped," which Hindalong considered "intimidating." It took him three days to get the proper drumbeat on tape, as "there was no Pro Tools back then." Because of this, a mistake where Hindalong accidentally hit the microphone with a doumbeck on the recording of "Grace" had to be physically cut out and replaced with a backwards percussion effect, then overdubbed with a cymbal crash to hide the final edit. This was the first Choir album on which Michaels received a musical credit, as he was playing a chord progression on Daugherty's Epiphone Sheraton guitar while Daugherty was out of the studio. The band liked how this melody was developing, and it was expanded into "Weather Girl." Lyrics The twin strands of worshipful meditations and more earthbound love songs that marked past Choir albums unraveled with Kissers and Killers, which was exclusively about the complexities of romantic love and obsession. The band had just completed a worship album and opted to focus on non-faith content with this release. While Hindalong admitted that "I [didn’t] know what was going on in my head a lot of the time," the album's lyrics were still influenced by events in his life. A key example is "Amazing," as the opening lines, "Amazing how slugs know / More about the weather," came from Hindalong's time spent working at a hardware store. "One old man [...] would come in, and he just knew everything about everything. 'I never pay attention to the weatherman; I knew it would