This album follows the Nietzschean metamorphosis of spirit, from camel, to lion, to child. The camel bears the heavy load of morals placed upon his back. He carries them steadfastly into the desert where he bravely faces them in his solitude. As he metamorphizes into the lion, he faces a great dragon, whose scales shine with the values of all humankind from all time. The strength of the lion is to bear to face the dragon. But it is the child who ultimately overcomes the dragon. The child has the sacred "Yes" by which she creates her own values, her own world.

It is along these philosophical lines that this album treks. From fundamentalist Christian values to nihilistic pagan values, and ultimately arriving at a viewpoint of openness and creativity. Arriving at a viewpoint that is rather elastic and capable of appreciating the difference between people rather than becoming hostile toward that difference.

Musically, the album starts by creeping in with "Billowing the Uphill", suggesting the limning of spirit, then explodes in cacophany, suggesting the audacity of spirit. It then comes down to earth with "The Sea Before the Isle", where the spirit finds occasion to decide which way to go, winding back and forth, up and down with loud and soft, fast and slow sections.

"Shadowed Glances" introduces guitarist Cort Brown's first recorded song for Longbottom Leaf (all prior were Blake Brown's, except "Silent Effection" on the previous album by Erik Brown). A cheeky and uplifting introduction paves the way for an ominous and extremely heavy middle and end. The song looks at the idea of an afterlife in the light of infinity asking, "If infinity is the principle for Being, it by definition cannot be defied. Is an afterlife any more intelligible than simple biological cessation?" "Nonapception" follows (which is Longbottom Leaf's first music video) in a grunge-punk style, cataloguing impasse in relationship.

"An Ode to the Unknowable" continues to parade Cort's musical influence on the band and unveil questioning life in the light of the infinitely unknowable. To be born and to know death is coming, yet to stand and say "I am" and attest to the goodness found in living, even when confounded by the principle of the Unknowable as such. The song starts out with a sort of Smashing Pumpkins "Siamese Dream" guitar section and transmogrifies into a hallucination/trance section that wanders out into the solitude of the desert, where the epiphany of "I am" occurs.

"Admission of Yearning" is a dark and heavy song, with a long spiraling-out-to-the-middle trip in the center of the song. It is seeing the dragon as the god that reflects all value created to date. It is sorrow when shifting paradigms but realizing the old paradigm is no longer tenable. As the third song written by Cort on the album, it cements a direction for Longbottom Leaf that balances Blake and Erik's musical style and demonstrates a flourishing of the band.

The final song on the album is "Billowing the Downhill'. This is a dark love song about death. Without death, what would be the impetus in life toward anything at all. But, such sorrow is experienced in the loss of a loved one, such trepidation in the thought of your own demise. Death is a fact of life, it would seem. Soft, dark, and haunting, the music then bounces toward aggressive Silverchair "Neon Ballroom" style guitars, climaxing in a jazz-grunge outro that leaves the listener sadly satisfied.