Dust & Bones, along with the entire album, was recorded in a home studio. The first single from Alt/Grunge Rock artist Michael Jack Dole, AKA Empire of Gold, is a concept playing with the thoughts, theories and fears of human mortality. It plays back and forth with Theology and Atheist views about our dreams, hopes and eventual reincarnation into heaven followed by thoughts of humans and life being nothing more than just dust and bones. Ideas such as human dreams of chasing money just to one day “cash” it all back in after death and the pointlessness of everything American society teaches us.

The single embodies everything Empire of Gold has built his reputation on; grunge. He delivers a heavy performance while staying true to the dynamic range and minimalism that is missing in today's rock. The verses have a quiet, rumbling signature sound that build to a powerful chorus. No need for a wall of guitars and the ability to subtlety bring the song to a deep moving riff right after the chorus is everything we all crave in this heavily over-produced era of rock.

The song was recorded into Logic Pro X using a lunchbox of pre-amps. EoG still stays true today as a self-sufficient DIY project but during the mixing & mastering process some help was recruited. Since staying true to EoG's sound is extremely important, only small independent engineers were sought out. Mixing was done by Kevin Carafa, a local of Portland, OR, who has built quite a name for himself on the popular small budget site, Fiverr. Kevin was able to make the songs shine with it's original sound while bringing it up a notch by having a more mature and engaging tone. After Kevin's touch, it was sent out to Dirk, owner of small, independent audio post-production studio ACSY Sound, located in Germany. Dirk did an outstanding job bringing a well balanced sound to this album while keeping the dynamic range intact.