Released September 27, 2009
Written, produced and performed by Jay Gironimi
Liner Notes
This album exists mostly due to Rock Band 2. In 2009, Harmonix announced they would accept outside submissions for their Rock Band Network, which would meant independent artists could have songs available for purchase on the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 2. As soon as the announcement was made, I got working on a re-recording of “The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel”.
A lot had happened since the release of With Regrets…. My grandfather died right before the album came out, which set off a fun chain of events that ended up with me working full time in a call center and living with my grandmother and aunt in a house where they though the toilet was haunted. To say I was their caretaker is a little strong, but I would call myself the manager of the house. Also they didn’t get along and there was at least 1 slap fight and 2 suicide attempts.
I wasn’t feeling particularly creative at the time, so I thought some re-recordings might be a fun way to see what I had left in me. I had such fun making “Cold Taste” that I ended up putting down four other tracks as well. They came out pretty good! Honestly, you can probably just listen to this album to sum up the first 3 or 4 years of All Hallow’s Evil, though they probably lost a bit of their edge once the coat of polish went on.
But back to Rock Band. I contacted a company called Rhythm Authors to do the actual submission and programming. They took a small fee but I still ended up making like $300 in the process. One fun side effect is that there are a lot of people who feel compelled to get 5 gold stars on every Rock Band song, so the closest anyone’s ever come to covering an All Hallow’s Evil song is uploading a video of them playing a perfect run of “Cold Taste…” in Rock Band 2. And honestly, I thought that was pretty neat, even if everyone seems to either hate playing the solo or just hates the solo in general.
For what it’s worth, I got to play it myself a couple of times at a friend’s house (I had a PS3 and you couldn’t get the Rock Band Network songs there). I got an 85% on the vocals.
The cover of this is just an old picture of me that I printed out and scribbled on. I think my mom was actually a little disappointed to see her child scrawled with devil horns.
-Jay G, Feb 2024
Track by Track
“One Small Break” – Other than the improved fidelity, the biggest difference between this and the original is that this has an actual bass part. That was kind of a pain in the ass to come up with, because there was already a lot of action on this and it was tough to find space for another instrument.
“The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel” – This also needed a bass part written, but it was a little easier than “One Small Break.” This was also back when I decided I should start doubling my leads, because that would force me to plan them out a bit better. Not that this is all that much different from the original solo, but the doubling kept me honest and made a cool chorusing effect.
“Give Guns to Children” – I thought adding a distorted tiny speaker voice to this might make the allusions to cable tv a little more obvious (read more about that here), but reality just bolted past this song. I still really like it, though I’ll add once again that I do not think we should arm children.
“Perfect Plastic World” – This is the third released recording of this song. I guess this is as close to perfect (ha!) as it’s getting, but I kind of wish I had trusted my growls a bit more. Once I started to work on my actual singing, I felt like my ability to growl took a big hit, though honestly the backgrounds on here sound fine. I also like this solo a lot more than the first version.
“Memory” – This is the song that benefits the most for the re-recording process, because the raw style of the original didn’t really suit the material. The bass part is a little busier than it needs to be, but again the original didn’t have a bass part and I was trying my damndest to make it interesting.
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