for them. The group began doing pre-production in April 2003, listening to around 20 demos at drummer Ryan Pope's house. By the end of the month, they had tracked scratch guitar and vocals for 13 songs. The process consisted of Pryor playing to a click track, Rose and Pope would build drum tracks over. By early May, the drums were recorded for 13 songs, with guitar, bass and vocals only being finished for a few of them. Around this time, Jason Russell of Hot Rod Circuit was in the city to practice with Pryor's other band the New Amsterdams, and ended up singing on "Man of Conviction", the only track finished up to that point. The group took a short two week break as most of the members went on holiday. They began tracking again in early June, and continued into July. They worked on some new songs, alongside a few by guitarist Jim Suptic. The members initially listened to the demos of these new songs and thought how to approach them, before playing them in the studio's live room as a full group, marking it one of a handful of times the whole band were in the studio together for the album. At the end of June, keyboardist James Dewees tracked his parts; he had little time to do this due to his project Reggie and the Full Effect was due to start touring in early July. Overall, Dewees finished around 95% of his parts before embarking on tour. Suptic laid down his guitar parts in August while both the New Amsterdams and Reggie were on tour. Pryor later recorded piano, for "The Dark Night of the Soul", and backing vocals, for "Holy Roman", at his home in Lawrence, Kansas. Pryor and Rob Pope recorded a drum machine and vocals for "Is There a Way Out" in the basement of Pope's house. Rob and Ryan Pope recorded bar noise for "Martyr Me" at The Free State Brewery. Jeremy Goldstein, who worked at Quadrant 5 Studios, did sound manipulation on "The Dark Night of the Soul". Recording wrapped up in October with 58 days in total spent recording; 18 songs had been tracked altogether. Shortly afterwards, Rose mixed the recordings. After the track sequence was approved by Vagrant Records, it was sent off for mastering by Mike Fossenkemper at Turtle Tone Studios in October and November. Composition During much of