The World of Demons

Here's what's up today in AB land: Drums are done. We recorded them with Jocko at more sound studios right here in Syracuse. They sound huge. We are all fucking ecstatic. I started on vocals there yesterday and will be finishing them up in the next few weeks. Then Scotty, Jon, and Mayo will be heading out to Salem, MA to do guitar and bass tracks with Kurt at God City where we recorded Not Now. Not Ever. and Mill City. Yeah, the record is being weirdly recorded. We're working with two studios and recording vocals before guitars. Why are we doing it this way? Cause fuck you, that's why. We do what we want.

Seriously though, what we have so far is sounding great and I couldn't be happier with how we've chosen to do this. Jocko at more sound is one of the most talented people that Syracuse, New York has to offer so to have him doing our drums and vocals is an honor. On top of that, his live room has this x-factor that adds all sorts of body and personality to the drums. He's doing a fantastic job and I'm really excited to think that once this record drops we might be able to bring a little more attention to one of Syracuse's best kept secrets. We couldn't just let go of Kurt, though. The man is a guitar wizard and he'll be performing his magic as well as a bit of analingus on this record so make sure to listen for his many contributions.


Like I said before, I'm still finishing up lyrics but they're almost done. I can't remember if I posted up Sin Eater or not. When I finish up the last song I'm going to post all of the lyrics in order with a kind of cliff notes explanation of what I'm trying to do. If that song wasn't posted yet I'll put it up in that post. For now I'm too stoked on this new song that I just finished today to focus on anything else. It's still a rough draft and may be tweaked but I really really like it so I think it will stay how it is. It's got a real similar feel to Diesel & Gunpowder but it's written in a style that I've never really tried before. I made a reference to D&G to tie this back to Mill City and I made a reference to The God Complex (song) to keep up with the continuity of the theme of the record. I'm really happy about the way it came out. Check it and let me know what you think in the comments.


MAKYO

I can't just walk away
I know that there's a better answer. A better way than this.
But the Devil's playing games
And the razor blade is begging me to listen to my wrists:

"Just let go. Just let go.
Take the vein and I will take your pain
Just let go. Just let go.
You're not meant for this world. I am meant to take you away."

My will is weak.
And my hands tremble.
I take the razor and I say,
"Not Today. Not Today."

"Open up and bleed or there'll be Hell to pay."
"Not today. Not today. In some future I may falter. Not today."

So here we stand at this familiar impasse
It's you and me, motherfucker. It's just you and me.
Just you and me.

I gather up my strength and touch the ground.
Feet don't fail me now.

"See me. Hear me."

I don't need you to take my pain
"See me. Hear me."

I open up and bleed in a different way
"See me. Hear me."

"See me. Hear me."

I won't give voice to delusion
I AM.





So there you go. I bet you're shocked that I wrote a song about battling with suicide because it's not something that I talk about all the time. Yes. That was sarcasm. This is pretty well-treaded territory for me so I'll save explaining all of that junk and let you delve further into the blog if you want to know how I feel about the subject.

Some things you might be interested to know about this song:

1) It's kind of a modernized version of the story of Buddha's Enlightenment. In the original story, Siddharta Guatama sat underneath the Bodhi tree in a state of intense meditation and was visited by a host of demons, the final being Mara. As Mara attempted to tempt and scare him from his goal of acheiving true consciousness he persisted and finally responded by touching the ground to signify that he was grounded in reality. Thus, he achieved his enlightenment.

2) Aside from the Buddhist history lesson, and for anyone that really doesn't give two shits about who Buddha was or what he did, this song is about how the constant mental battle I have with myself about suicide. There are references to this fact peppered throughout this record and throughout everything that I write (these references are both intentional and unintentional) and this song tackles the issue head on. This one kind of creeps me out in a way because while I've written on the topic of (my own) suicide before this one conjurs up an image for me of staring at my own reflection with a razor in my hand. That really hits me in a weird way that nothing I've ever written before has. And the whole arguing back and forth with the Devil inside my own head concept gives it something extra for me that just makes it more alive and real than pretty much anything else I've written.

3) This is the third to last song on the record and is written to be the climax, or the turning point, or the kairos or whatever you want to call it. Today I was talking to a friend and she was talking about some shit that happened to her when a kid that she thinks has been fucking her up for a while and she's talking about finally facing it. I said something to the effect of, "It's your dragon. You're finally strong enough to fight it." I was thinking about that a lot when I was writing this song and I guess that idea has unconsciously been driving this whole record. Everybody has a dragon. Everybody has that one big thing that underlies everything else. That thing that haunts you. It chases you wherever you go. It will manifest itself in every move you make until it is challenged and defeated in some way.
This whole record is about starting with this broad problem of "Fuck God and Fuck Religion" and then moving on to realizing that the problem is deeper than the symptom and exploring the root causes which are "I witnessed some really shitty things and was victim to some pretty shitty things" and then at this point of the record, facing it and resolving it. This is the song where the dragon is fought. I called it the Devil. You can call it whatever you want on your God Complex record. Hopefully at this point it's been sufficiently defined by the songs before it. If not I can spell it out for you: The Devil in this context refers to my father. Chuck Pahlaniuk said something in Rant about how the foundation of many different religions is the idea that in order to gain any real power, a man must kill his father. In this song the idea is that I've been trying to kill my father by killing myself (because I am my father) but resolve it by finding a way to separate myself from this Devil and just fend it off instead.

Are you confused yet? If you are it's fine. It's also acceptable to just not give a shit. Like I said before, the lyrical end of this record is meant to be experienced at different levels based on how much effort you want to put into tearing it apart and how much or how little you care about how I feel about my dad.

4) This song and this whole record are really heavily fueled by the fact that I've been in one form of therapy or another for the last 2 years as I've been working on my Master's in counseling. Along the way I've done a lot of stealing from various artists and authors to get the point across. If you read any of the books I've listed in the must read section you'll probably find something that I've ripped off verbatim. Hell, I even stole a line from myself in this one.

5) The phrase "listen to my wrists" came from a dream I had about a year ago. In the dream Scotty was hanging out at my house and doing that thing we all do where we sing whatever we have stuck in our heads under our breaths while we're doing whatever it is we're doing. In the dream the line he was kind of singing intermittently was, "One day you're gonna listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen to your wrist." In the dream it was so catchy that, without ever hearing the song he was singing, that line got stuck in my head and I was singing it. I finally asked him what it was and he told me it was a new pre-release for a Modern Life is War song (yeah I'm a fanboy. Deal with it.). I said something about how it was really a catchy line and I wished I had written it. When I woke up and realized that it wasn't a MLIW song I was psyched. I wrote it down on a piece of paper next to my bed and vowed to use it at some point. So here it is.


OK I think that's enough info about that song, don't you? Thanks for stopping in. Let me know what you think and keep checking for updates on recording and an eventual listing of all the lyrics in the record, in order, with a little explanation of what the hell is going on.


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Perfect speed is being there

Every 6 months or so I have a manic episode that lasts about a week. I'm just coming down from this last one and I can finally take some of the 10,000,000 thoughts that have been racing around in my brain at 10,000,000 miles per hour and try to organize the into something. I've got way too much in my head right now so I'm going to give you a quick rundown and then follow up a little bit later. Look out for a decent amount of posting here in November.

So, I have a lot of things fueling this mania I have going on. I have a new job that I love (I got promoted from the overnight and now I'm working as a full time drug counselor), a new business in the works, I've been incorporating my "sleep when you're dead" life-mission to skip sleep and hang out with my friends doing crazy things, and a new record that we start recording next week.

Yeah, you read that right. Drum tracks are next week. This thing I've been talking about on here for a year or more is finally materializing. I'm a little freaked out because I don't have all of the lyrics written but the good news is that what is done is awesome and what's to come is outlined in my head and just needs to materialize in word form. Oh yeah, the other thing that's awesome is that the music completely rips. I've had friends tell me that it's the best stuff we've ever written. I've also had friends tell me that it's kind of weird and they don't like it. I'm kind of psyched on that fact. Hopefully you like it, or hate it, or whatever. As long as you feel something I'll be happy.

So the record is done except for 3 more that need vocals. I'm still working on those but in the mean time here are a couple I haven't posted up just yet. I finished them both in the last couple of weeks. Both of these were co written by Jon.

WEIGHT

When the clock strikes twelve and it's all been done
Heavy is the weight on the shoulders of the chosen one.

One more night on the run
Then I'll carry my cross for hours, days, weeks, months.
'til I die like a martyr.
I walk. I walk. I walk. Alone.

I have borne witness. I know the way. But I will be buried under this weight.
When the bottle runs dry and the devil escapes I will be buried under this weight.



THE GOD COMPLEX

I lost my faith in God somewhere back round '89
When my old man came home piss drunk smelling like a bar room whore
Then he made my mother cry.

Yeah that's the day that God died. That's the day I realized I was all alone.
And I escaped in the music

Time passed and mama said, "Boy, that's not how a man should be."
After 20 years, even though we left, that night still comes to me.
When I'm caught in my reflection face to face with God and the Devil.
Myself and my father.
Yeah, we're all one but I don't believe in any of us.

And I say, "It's just you and me know. It's you and me.
It's you and me motherfucker. It's you and me."
Cause my father's gonna die alone with the TV on
And I don't wanna die alone with the TV on.




These were both kind of influenced by the fact that I've been spending 4o hours a week with alcoholics talking about booze and the terrible shit they've done to their families. It's been dragging things up for me and I catch myself every once in a while talking to guys that are a little older than me about the perspective of a young kid seeing the terrible things a drunk does. How we know about the things they do behind closed doors. How I saw a lot of things that I was a kid that fucked me up. How I can never go back and change that. There are a couple of guys who have broken down and told me that they watched their fathers do horrible things and swore they would never do that to their families just to find themselves where they are now doing those things they swore they would never do.

In a lot of ways this record is about being a kid and seeing the people that you view as God-like, realizing somehow that the things they do are not right and deciding to take the burden of finding your way upon yourself. That's what The God Complex is about and that's what Weight is about. The God Complex is about making the decision to do it, Weight is about how hard it is to do it alone.

Weight is a song about finding enlightenment in this journey. Enlightenment for our purposes means being able to see truth. People hear enlightenment and think it's some sort of blissful superpower but it's just the ability to see the world for what it is. The thing is that it's not all that exciting. The truth is scary. So much so that people do all sorts of things every day to hide from it. There are people who have told me that if they let down their walls and barricades and defenses and let the truth of their lives sink in that they wouldn't be able to handle it. A lot of the people I talk to at work have had horrible things happen and they've suppressed their memories with liquor. That's why the last line is about a bottle running dry and the devil escaping. For a lot of people sobriety is jolting to the system. When that bottle runs dry they finally have to face the reality of their lives. And it's not pretty. But like I said before, booze is escape. And escape takes many forms. So I used that as a metaphor for the idea that when we stand still and actually absorb the truth in the silence, we see the result as potentially crippling.

The next three songs after Weight are Makyo, I AM the Messiah, and Me, Jesus, and a Giraffe walk into a bar.... Makyo isn't written but it's going to be about owning up to the truth in search of enlightenment (it translates to "The world of demons" and its described in Buddhist texts as the experience of a practitioner moving toward discovering his/her true nature). I AM the Messiah is already written and is about discovering the true nature of the self. Me, Jesus, and a Giraffe walk into a bar... (still thinking about possibly changing the name of that one) is the punch line to the record (get it?) and it's about finding God.

Then this puppy gets recorded and it goes to market. We're still looking around for label support for this record since Rivalry is slowing down but after we send out demos next week there should be something on the horizon. Stay tuned for more lyrics, more random stories, and news about that stuff.


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