Track By Tracks: Slashdance - Everything Goes With Black (2021)


1. Miss American Vampire 1970:

Opening track, it’s probably the most “gothy” track on the album. It was important to me to come out flying that flag that this is the road the album is going down. It has a pretty representative balance of where the album is going. It’s all deep vocals and vampires but also there’s a 1960’s Farfisa organ to take the edge off and let you know this is not as deadly serious as all that. Lyrically it’s about an ACTUAL VAMPIRE THEMED BEAUTY CONTEST that took place in 1970 which is about the most rad thing I’ve ever heard of.

2. Everything Goes With Black:

Title track from the album. I wanted to get in this one next because it’s a total 180 from the opening song and lets you know how wide a net I’m trying to throw with this record. It’s a straight up love letter to the Industrial Rock bands of the late 80’s and early 90’s like Ministry and KMFDM. It may be one of the only songs I’ve ever written that turned out exactly how I heard it in my head. Black factors into goth, punk, metal and all spooky music it just made sense to do a song about it. I liked the title enough that I named the album after it. The music video for it just came out and is black and white naturally.

3. Undo The Damage:

This was the first song I wrote for the album. It definitely veers into Joy Division territory with the drum sound. I have a vintage Clone Theory pedal which is what Peter Hook used on those Joy Division records, and still to this day. I’m a lot fuzzier though, someone said it was like if Lemmy was in Joy Division which is probably a pretty fair comparison. You’re probably not supposed to intentionally add white noise and static to a recording but I did to end the song anyway to make the crescendo more chaotic.

4. Brief Lives:

The most synth heavy track on the record, this one is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever written or at least one of the ones I’m the most proud of. I’m a huge fan of Brian Eno and David Bowie’s work together and that comes through on Brief Lives. I think synths are a lot cooler sounding when they are layered with guitars and other non electronic instruments. It gives the song an ethereal quality which fits with the song lyrically. My all time favourite comic book is Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman and the song is about that. Gaiman fans will recognize Brief Lives from a separate Neil Gaiman Sandman story.

5.Killing Time:

The fuzziest and most fun song on the record. It’s a gothy punk song about a board game from the 1980’s that bites kids' fingers and leaves fake bite marks from red markers. I’m not making that up! The Farfisa organ makes a return. Really catchy...I always like to get a song that rides the floor tom hard on every album.

6. I Call It Witchcraft:

The first single & music video off the record. Before Slashdance I’d been (and still am) in a band called Which Witch is Which which is a much more straightforward fuzzy post punk rock band. This song is probably the closest to that so I thought it’d be the easiest transition for fans coming over from Which Witch is Which which I guessed would be Slashdance’s first followers. The lyrics are about the time I marathoned the straight to VHS horror series “Witchcraft”. There are like 13 of them and they are just horrible. A lot of the lyrics are straight off the back of the VHS tapes…” when the devil wants your body what’s a girl to do?” I love that!

7. Tactical Empathy:

Went back to the heavy industrial for the last couple of songs. I have this old effects box called the Zoom 9030 which was used on early Nine Inch Nails albums and pretty much everything you put into it comes out sounding like Broken or The Downward Spiral. I intentionally tried to stay away from a NIN influenced sound ‘cause it’s so obvious when you’re doing industrial rock to go that route. Still, it was the last song I wrote and I really thought it was a banger so I let it slide. Besides they haven't done any songs like that in like 25 years so we’ll chalk it up to being retro?

8.She’s Weaponized:

Another Industrial heavy hitter to end the album. I think I pushed the limits of distortion to the maximum amount I was capable of without it turning into a mess. I mean, it’s still a mess but at least you can pick out all the parts. By the end of the song it’s really on fire, people have told me they wished the end was longer which is bad because I guess i could have made it longer but good that they wanted more.

No hay comentarios

Imágenes del tema: Aguru. Con la tecnología de Blogger.