Natural Man

“The Devil walks the earth like a natural man.”

The theme of Year of the Dragon is all the things that happen when the dragon (i.e. evil, chaos, fear, etc.) comes to town. I wrote this to be THE “dragon” song on the album.

Like a movie introducing the villain of the story in the second scene, “Natural Man” creeps in as track 2, heavy-footed and sinister.

We wanted it to sound like the unholy child of a Spaghetti Western and an Alfred Hitchcock film. While it was a lot of fun to make—whispers, screeches, screams, breaths, stomps, even our own Bach-style gothic organ composition in the bridge—we did succeed in creeping ourselves out for the first time while making recorded music.

Lyrically, it’s a homage to Southern Gothic authors such as Flannery O’Connor, and it deals with the spooky and disturbing subject matter one might expect from such a song, but with a little twist at the end.