- Released 11/11/11
- 23 Tracks
Notes from Dave:
This album was planned years ago. I worked with it on and off again, but always knew the date it was to be released. Several of the songs themselves were several years old by the time the album was released on November 11th, 2011.
Anomaly and The One are the oldest songs, made back when I met my ex-wife. They were the starters for the album, but I shelved it for a long time because of my life getting nicely complicated.
My favorite song on this album is Atlas. It was written when we were going through a financially shitty moment and I was trying to get things together, based around what I should have always been doing in life. The song was written out of pure frustration. It may be my all time favorite song.
The clips from “Rocky Balboa” were perfect and almost seemed tailored for this song. The speech Geraldine Hughes gives near the end of the song consistently inspires me when I hear it. It is one of my favorite films, with the series itself being among my favorite film series. The Rocky character himself is highly admirable.
Heavier was originally a single verse I wrote that ended with the same sound on each line. Later, I wrote a two verse song that did the same thing and I simply appended it to this one. This is how Heavy became Heavier.
The Rise of Henry
This album also introduced the newest part of my psychotic personality in his own song, The Rise of Henry. This song was fueled by the movie “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer“. It tells the story of me continuing to have issues where I have blackout moments and find out I’ve done something horrible. Henry is a split personality whose depravity knows no depths, so writing for this was wide open. It is a very sadistic and sick mentality that shows itself at the end and reveals a few things he’s done with my wife, though she was also mentioned in the hook.
Weirdly enough, she actually really likes this one and has tried to get me to write more Henry songs. I have one that I’ve never released and have considered a Henry album, but I think it may be better off as a single track.
While this album gave birth to new work of mine, including digging deeper into my current style, it also found the end of the Paris songs. I had been growing tired of using her as my punching bag but didn’t want to just stop without doing something to end it. I also knew that the end couldn’t be simple.
Enter the nearly 9-minute tale of her finally growing tired of me making fun of her. In the song, she and a few friends kidnap and drag me back to some undisclosed location (Dick Cheney wasn’t there though). She then proceeds to enact her revenge on me which was quite ridiculous, including my final word to her in the verse.
Also, The Happy Time with Paris isn’t a real song, but I do think I was channeling the spirit of UTFO when I recorded that part.
My ex-wife clearly had too much fun doing the vocals on this. It took a while to record because she can’t help laughing at herself after saying almost anything.
The album also features instrumentals from artists I had only recently found, like JacekDupa. He has a dark and heavy style that fits great for some of my work. Vherbal, part of Anno Domini, has instrumentals featured on the album and has inspired me to (eventually) write a Vherbal based album, using nothing but his instrumentals.