I acknowledge the fact that what follows here is completely self-serving and not exactly necessary. It's an entry about a band that played six shows in and around one small city. It's a band I wrote for and played in for two years, and due to a revolving door list of drummers and other assorted issues, never got to a place where we played an awesome show or released a good-sounding record. We've shelved the project and already moved on to new things, and as much as I get a massive douche-chill writing about my own band I feel it deserves something resembling a proper send-off.
I used to live in a share house with my old band, Defamer. We were (and they still are) a death metal band, and together we lived in an old house in Auchenflower that was falling apart. After Leo (my best friend) and myself quit the band we decided to write some songs that were more in the vein of the punk music we grew up on and the stuff we were listening to heavily at the time - but it had to be faster, more caustic, and under it all still have melody.
Before we got the idea to put together this band, I wrote a song for a band that consisted of my friend Will and I. The band was called Deep Stones and the Mountains Thereof (basically the wankiest band name Will could come up with, have a search on MySpace, the old profile should still be up) and we wrote and recorded one song in my bedroom, which ended up being "Social Anxiety Attack as Self-Affirmation Ritual." After this band fell apart, I commuted it to the project with Leo, and this song opened every show and every jam.
At the time, Leo and I were listening to lots of bands like Orchid, Saetia, Joshua Fit for Battle, Love Lost but Not Forgotten, Ampere, Combatwoundedveteran, Reversal of Man, pg.99, etc. We loved how fucking heavy these bands were while they played (for the most part, anyway) in E standard tuning. We liked how it was angry music that often remained coherent and intelligent. We liked how they embraced the DIY philosophy like the punk and hardcore bands we looked up to as teenagers. That's what we tried for, and we ended up writing three more songs and looked to start rehearsing with a drummer.
Our first jam with a drummer was a short one due to the fact that he crashed his girlfriend's car on the way to the jam - he learned one song and we never heard from him again. We tried out someone else, but after one jam he decided his style didn't fit with the band. We finally got a drummer, played two shows and recorded a demo with him but after decided he didn't like how melodic things were getting, he quit. We tried out another guy who couldn't physically play fast enough. We got another drummer, who played three shows with us but his hectic schedule made it so he couldn't play with us. We got a replacement, who played one show with us, only for him to leave for much the same reason as the guy who preceded him. And those were just the ones we got into a practice room - we asked countless others to play but they could smell the drummer curse lingering on us. Or something to that effect.
If you're tl;dr-ing at the above paragraph (and understandably so), all you really need to know is that we were Spinal Tap. That sums it up nicely.
Anyway, after two years, teaching the same songs to three drummers, a bunch of tryouts, one four-song demo, eight total songs written (two of which were never performed live), a few new friends, a stolen Marshall head and something in the neighbourhood of $70 made in total, it's over. A part of me is relieved, to be honest, but moreso than any band I've played in before I feel regretful that it simply didn't work. This was the first band I played in where I wrote the vast majority of the material, and I took a lot of pride in what I did, as I'm sure Leo does in regards to his contributions.
We're playing with the idea of recording everything in a single session and making it available somehow. Maybe.
Anyways, enough bull-shitting. Here's a download of our sole release and some live videos - four taken by the awesome Yudhis who writes a blog called Caffeine at Night and one taken by Leo's lovely fiancee Brooke.
A German Spectacle - Demo (V0 MP3)
