As the title track, “The Silver Cord” is an important part of the album, giving the first glance at the album’s darker electronic influence, as well as the more spiritual side of the project. In an article for SPIN magazine Stu describes the band’s conceptual process for creating The Silver Cord: “We were thinking about the soul and the spirit and existentialism and why we’re here, birth and death, and rebirth and spirituality.” Perhaps no song encapsulates this more than its Joey-led title track. Its name refers to the metaphysical silver cord first mentioned in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, which serves as a tie or tether between one’s physical body and their astral body. The first verse of the song describes an apostle telling someone to remain unborn within bardo, a stage between life and death found in Buddhism, while the second is the narrator’s rebirth and subsequent freedom. Musically, “The Silver Cord” starts as an eerie passage with heavily modulated vocals from Joey, that leads to an even more discordant section before the tension is finally released, signifying its protagonist's rebirth by reducing the discordant overtone modulation. Here the song opens up into major chords with brighter instrumentation.
“The Silver Cord” was first released on October 3rd, 2023 as part of a triple single alongside “Theia”, and “Set”, as the standard mixes with music videos from Jason Galea. In “The Silver Cord” section of the video, Joey mimes the lyrics while dancing in a forest and at a staircase accompanied by Cavs, both wearing the Radio Eyewear ‘Gator Vision’ sunglasses.
As with every tracklisted song on The Silver Cord, “The Silver Cord” has two versions: a standard and an extended mix. The standard mix runs over four minutes in length, while the extended mix lasts nearly thirteen minutes and features a variety of new sections with drum and bass elements. “The Silver Cord” corresponds to “Supercell” from sister-album PetroDragonic Apocalypse, taking the opening riff and changing the key and rhythm to form the song’s bassline. That said, it’s the only song on the album to not feature lyrics originally from PetroDragonic Apocalypse. The lyrics of “The Silver Cord” are also used in the extended version of “Theia.” It was released as the second song on The Silver Cord on October 27th, 2023.
After appearing during a soundcheck earlier that day, “The Silver Cord” made its live debut on 2024-05-22 at Stadtpark Open Air in Hamburg. The song was played similarly to the extended version with vocal modulations and motifs taken from that cut but it had a number of important distinctions. The performance cut verses heard in the extended version, featured Cavs switching to his kit, had vocal harmonies between Joey and Stu and had a much longer runtime than the studio version.