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Living Sacrifice teamed up with lambgoat.com to premiere the opening track to Ghost Thief, “Screwtape.” It features guest vocals from Demon Hunter vocalist Ryan Clark. Guitarist/Vocalist Bruce Fitzhugh had this to say about the song:
“Screwtape” is about temptation and the proverbial ‘devil on your shoulder.’ It’s about the thought process we go through to justify a thought or action that is not good for the soul. The title ‘Screwtape’ comes from CS Lewis’s book ‘The Screwtape Letters.’ In the book, Lewis made the protagonist a demon named Screwtape. It is an interesting literary tool to write from the perspective of the one that is trying to lead astray. So I took the same idea for the lyrics. I also think this is something that everyone can relate to whether they believe in God or not. It’s another way to look at one’s conscience and how humanity views the conscience.
Musically, it seemed like a great way to kick off the record because it’s a thrasher and sets a good tone for the record as a whole. We knew we wanted to have Ryan Clark guest on the record before we even had the song. This song made sense because I wanted to have him use his singing voice and the chorus just works for his voice. Demon Hunter has been huge supporters of Living Sacrifice over the years and I did some vocals on their record Storm The Gates Of Hell a few years back. It was a great opportunity to hang in the studio and have fun making music.