I'd say The General is the one about child abuse. I always thought it didn't have vocals at that time because when Belltrami worked on it in October of 02 it was an instrumental, but the song being about abuse & being mentioned in January of 01 suggests that it may have had lyrics at that point after all.

Maybe he just had not recorded them yet, or maybe they were already done and he just chose to take the instrumentals to Beltrami. Either way this points to the song existing in the year 2000, which is 2 years earlier than we had proof of before.

I think the real response at the moment is we don't know for certain.

They both have Beltrami work on from the tour intro (that we do know). That could mean they were once one song that has now been split into two, or it could also mean they were always two songs and that they just combined the strings to play as an intro to those gigs back in the day. Now obviously when asked years back what that intro was they said it was The General, they never mentioned Monsters so that would maybe suggest the song was later split after all.

The credits have it registered as The General And Monsters which would imply that they are one song though, but then the 7" is advertised as having The General as a B-Side with no mention of Monsters at all.

So who knows for sure? It's all conflicting hints.

I still would not be surprised if when this 7" appears it doesn't have Monsters on at all. Like I said it's not advertised.

I said this the other day but I think the things the fanbase thought they knew for sure (eg. Me and my Elvis being Soulmonster) actually aren't sure at all.

Thanks man. I mean people can obviously get things wrong of course, I got most of the lyrics wrong for example (Although I at least got the word monsters) but there are youtube channels of people out there doing commentary that just seems way off base.

No idea.