All right, guys, I need to give you a little peek behind the curtain about a change that we just made.

So if you go all the way back to the beginning of this podcast, this would have been 2017 when we launched. Before the podcast started, it's like, okay, I need to have some intro or outro music for the podcast. But even at the time, you couldn't just go into AI and talk into your phone and all of a sudden get this awesome music. You know, this was a billion years ago. And so I had to come up with something that was going to be kind of the feel that I wanted, right?

And as you've all heard me talk about a million times up to this point, I wanted it to be Christian metal, right? But at the time, like, you would go to these websites that had this unlicensed music and it just wasn't really good. And so I actually reached out to the band August Burns Red, and I said, hey, I'm this podcast. This is what I think it's going to be. I don't know if it's ever going to be

anything. It's probably never going to be very big. But it'd be awesome if I could use some of your

music and J.B., the guitars from August Burns, I was like, yeah, sure, go ahead and use it. And so for the first several hundred episodes of the podcast, we were using the August Burns Red Music. And then we

had to make a switch because, you know, we realized at the time, you know, I was trying to get

monetized on YouTube and I kept having these issues. And one of the problems that I was having is I was using August Burns Red's music, but August Burns Red doesn't own their music, right? The music is owned by the label, the label's owned by some conglomerates. And so I couldn't really technically get permission from them to use

their music. And so we switched to using the song Perpetua by Holy Name, which has been what we've used for

the last several hundred episodes because they're with face down records. And I thought at the time that

you know, face down, they actually own the rights of this. They're the ones that gave me permission.

We're good to go. Now, we just kind of operated understanding that, or with that

understanding, rather, and then along the way, we had been denied monetization via YouTube and then

denied again, and we had just, we had applied so many times and we would get denied without

any type of an explanation. But then out of nowhere, like a couple of months ago, we get approved for monetization. But then when we went and looked at all of our episodes, we knew the August Burns Red episodes were, they were lost because the only way you could monetize those is if you really, like, cut off the intro, which kind of messes up the flow of the show. But then with Perpetua, by Holy Name, we were still getting copyright strikes on those episodes. And it's like, hey, what's the deal here? We have permission. And so we went to Google and we were like, hey, we have permission to use this, blah, blah, blah. Even the label was trying to get a hold of YouTube and just tell him like, hey, guys, we've given this guy permission. We want him to use

this music. And yet the copyright strike was upheld because I guess face down is owned by some

conglomerate, blah, blah, blah. So it became this big, huge mess. And so in order to kind of move

forward, we wanted to make sure that we had some music that's still honored kind of the vibe that

we wanted to go with, but where we weren't going to get a copyright strike. And so what I was trying to search for were these Christian bands that, you know, own their own music, right? So that's kind of a new thing with kind of the new distribution that we have with streaming and social media and all these kinds of different things. A lot of bands now, when they're first starting out, they're not just trying to get on a label and get on a 360 deal, which, you know, super duper takes advantage of them.

They're just trying to get on a label and get on a 360 deal, which, you know, super duper takes advantage of them. They're just trying to get the music out there, and so they own all their own music. And so there's a Christian metal band that I've liked for a long time now for a couple of years, and they're still pretty small, right? There's not a whole lot of people that know them unless you're really into the Christian metal space. And that band is called Void Awaken. And so they're a band out of Texas. And there was a song. My favorite song of theirs is a song called Conqueror. And so it's got a very awesome intro. I love the outro. And so what I did was like, okay, I got to check all my boxes this time. So I actually reached out to the band. I talked to the main guy on the phone, and I'm just like, hey, look,

like I want to check all my boxes this time. So I actually reached out to the band. I talked to the main guy on the phone and I'm just like, hey, look, like I want to make sure that we can actually do this on the up and up. Like, do y'all own all your own music? And so shout out to Carl Shed because, you know, we talked it out over the phone. He's like, no, we own all of our own music, even within, you know, the settings, you can say, hey, we want people to be able to use our

music. There's no copyright strike or anything like that. So as of right now, unless something changes or unless YouTube and Google go crazy on us, the new intro, outro music for the podcast is going to be the song Conqueror by Void Awaken. And I just love, you know, even hearing from Carl about his heart for this music because it's like, look, we just want to make brutal music that praises God. And you know that just speaks to everything in my heart. But I did want to go ahead and just read the lyrics to the entire song because you're not really going to get it, obviously, because we're just taking a snippet from the beginning and a snippet from the end. But let me go and read the lyrics. Deceiver, you are the fallen, the accuser spewing

vitriol, distorting truth, all to corrupt me. You're the progenitor liar, but I am more than a

...