Risingson

Recorded in Bristol in 1997, it has Del Naja and Marshall on vocals over a sample of the Velvet Underground's I Found a Reason, from Loaded, with a line borrowed from Pete Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone?. Q heard a hissing groove, a bassline that changes completely halfway through, absurd lyrics made threatening by their delivery, and a staccato guitar effect. With Mezzanine past its second deadline, the band put it out on 7 July 1997 as a limited single, the album's first. Q called it the joint-strangest single of the year, alongside Paranoid Android, and the guitarist Angelo Bruschini remembered the relief when it sold. It reached eleven in the UK. AllMusic's John Bush described it as dense and dark, crowded with dub effects and reverb.

Walter Stern, who directed all the Mezzanine videos, filmed the musicians inside a house while a man in a gimp mask waits outside with a chainsaw.

Live

The band first played it at Arena Berlin on 8 July 1997, the day after the single came out, and it has become one of their most played songs, with close to 490 performances. It closed the Gothenburg comeback show in 2024 and was the second song of the xLive sets in 2026. On the Mezzanine XX1 tour they also played I Found a Reason itself. Underworld have played it live too. The upload in the hypersongs web is Stern's official video, which runs close to the album version.