My Next Album Will Be Awesome
The final throes of getting an album put together are upon me! Before I get into specifics, let’s take a look at what I’ve been doing since January of 2015.
The second half of 2014 was spent recording Heat Stroke, which released in 2015. I don’t want to spend much time talking about that album right now for two reasons. One, I’m going to post a neat retrospective on it here next month. And two, I don’t like it that much. Heh.
A few months after Heat Stroke was released, I put out a proper mastered version of 2011’s Punk Rebel Renegade. That was a fun project. I remember having some tumultuous yet exciting times during the recording sessions, and revisiting it to release it in mid-2015 was entertaining as well. A year later, I put out a final version of 2008’s Boobs, Butts, and Feets, probably my most interesting album to date.
So after getting those 3 albums out in 18 months, I felt a little fatigued. However, my plan was to put out a full-length, new album sometime in 2017. Yeah. Obviously that didn’t happen. Along the way, I realized that was the case and decided to put out two singles: “Merry Effing Christmas” in December and “Kill the Buffalo” in the first half of 2017. From the time immediately after releasing Heat Stroke until now, I’ve been dreaming up ideas, recording stuff, writing lyrics, and all that jazz. So that brings us to present day.
I have dozens of songs in various stages of completion at this point. Everything from 100% complete in the case of “Kill the Buffalo” to short instrumentals with placeholder drums that can easily be extended.
So this is the fun part. I have to decide which songs to complete and which ones to abandon. Right now, this is what the tentative tracklist looks like.
- Intro
- What It’s Like
- Kill the Buffalo
- Eff It
- Nutsacreligious
- Stick It to the Man
- [secret song title]
- Get Offended
- Caligynephobic
- You Don’t Want to Know
- Hm
- Things Unlikely
- Slut
The list may change. I may end up removing songs, adding songs, reordering them, renaming them…but as I see it now, yeah, it’s awesome. Since I’ve been sort of secret about the next album, I’ll divulge some information about each of the tracks.
- The intro has yet to be recorded, but it’s essentially been scripted in my head for over a year now. I want to be sure of the album title before I record it, but it’s going to be funny, hopefully. My vocal cords will hate me by the time I’m satisfied with the recordings.
- I’m pretty happy and proud of “What It’s Like.” It’s pretty straightforward, but what I like most about it is its attitude. There’s this sardonic tone throughout the whole thing…well, most of it. Some of it is just silly to counterbalance.
- You’ve heard “Kill the Buffalo,” right? I don’t think I need to say anything about it other than that yes, it’s going to appear on the new album.
- “Eff It” has been in gestation for 5 years or some crap now. It remains one of my very favorite songs, and I can’t wait to finally release it. The vocal style and tone found here is what shaped a lot of what I’ve been recording. I’d like to be able to describe it, but it’s hard. Like, it’s less monotone than what I used to tend to utilize. It’s less guttural and more…open. I don’t know. Lyrically, it’s sarcastic and hits a little below-the-belt (in more ways than one.) Maybe no one else will think it’s different from my other crap, but I do.
- “Nutsacreligious” will likely be polarizing for most people. It definitely does not have a standard song structure, and I’m not sure who will enjoy listening to it other than myself. Even in its current demo state, I like it a lot.
- “Stick It to the Man,” as of right now, might be my favorite track on the album. It began with a cool little guitar riff. From there I added synths, a pounding kick drum, and random samples of German speech. It has a semi-standard song structure and even a guitar solo! And all of that is smashed in a sub-3:00 long song!
- Track 7 will hopefully be awesome. I came up with the song title about a year ago and to this day I still laugh to myself whenever I think about it. But it’s not even that funny. So…I don’t know.
- For “Get Offended,” it’s been a while since I’ve worked on it, so I can’t remember how far along it is. At the time I wrote it, a long time ago, the world seemed like it needed to find reasons to complain. Cut to a year later or whatever, and it appears that there are some real reasons to complain. So the point I was trying to make with this song might come off wrong in 2018. So maybe I’ll leave this song off or change the lyrics up a bit.
- “You Don’t Want to Know” is one of those songs that is like, half-finished. The music and lyrics are there, but it needs to be rearranged. I want to say that it’s like a cross between “Release” on Boobs, Butts, and Feets, Static-X’s “This Is Not,” and like, “Overture” by Hanzel und Gretyl or something. It’s kind of slow but also heavy and erratic.
- Around the time I began working on “What It’s Like” I also started on this other song called “Things Unlikely.” I fear that when all is said and done, they’ll sound too similar. But now that I’ve pointed it out to myself and you here, I’ll do what I can to keep that from happening.
- Tracks 9, 11, and 13 don’t even have specific music picked out yet. I just know I want those song titles. But as I said above, I have tons of material laying around to use. It’s just hard to say which pieces of music I’ll choose.