Released January 22, 2002
Written, performed and produced by Jay Gironimi
Liner Notes
“A New Beginning”
or
“Can You Let Me Know When You’re Done With The Computer, I Want Make an Album”
The legendary first official All Hallow’s Evil release. Some say it was recorded by candlelight in a haunted cave. Some say it was recorded by plugging a Boss Metal Zone pedal into the family computer. The second group is correct.
It is funny to me, writing this over two decades later, that I thought a Boss Metal Zone pedal was going to solve all my (sound related) problems. The Boss Metal Zone pedal has been ridiculed as making your guitar sound like angry bees for so many years now that it managed to hit a brief correction to the backlash, where some people insist “you just have to use it right.” I was not using it right. I plugged it into a Korg Toneworks pedal and then plugged the output of that directly into the Sound Blaster Live! soundcard on the family computer. And this was an improvement on my earlier attempts.
Perfect Plastic World is not the first All Hallow’s Evil album. There were two previous albums; one is now lost, both are bad. On a high school senior year snow day, I discovered Pro Tools Free, an aptly named free version of the popular recording software that would just barely run on the family computer. It was a pain in the ass to work with, but marked the retirement of my cassette 4 track, so apparently it was easier to deal with than my Tascam PortaStudio. The first All Hallow’s Evil album, Death: The Anti-Life, was recorded by placing a cheap computer mic up against my Marshall Valvestate amp and playing along with a metronome. I did not record the metronome into the computer at all, save whatever bled into the guitar mic, so what I got was a lightly in time, very bad quality guitar track. I then found a program that would let me use my computer keyboard to play a midi drum kit in real time and recorded that. I was bad at this and my computer didn’t always have the processing power to keep up, so every once in a while, the computer would try to catch up on requests, triggering a bunch of sounds at once. I can only liken it to the sound it would have made if you threw a drum kit down the stairs in the NES version of Castlevania.
The second All Hallow’s Evil album, Rot, is lost now, which is probably for the best. This was when I figured out how to plug my Korg ToneWorks multi effects pedal directly into the input on the computer sound card, which gave the guitar a cleaner sound, if not quite a good sound. I also got more comfortable with editing, so rather than playing each song from front to back, I started doing takes. Even though that was a big step towards normal, I still did those takes in a weird way. I couldn’t figure out how to punch in, so I built up each part of the song separately—record all the parts for the verse, leave some space, record all the parts for the chorus, leave some space, and so on—then stitch it all together at the end. I’m sure it sounded great and the fact that I only made 3 copies was a logistics thing, not a quality issue.
You’d think that would bring us to this release, but this is also not the first version of Perfect Plastic World. I recorded a full length version first, even made up some packaging on the family printer and sent a few off to record labels (I didn’t hear back). My buddy had a Zoom multi effects pedal that had some built in drum beats on it, so I recorded those beats and edited them in ProTools to get them closer to what I wanted. But then I decided I hated it. It didn’t sound ugly enough. All I needed was a little money to complete my vision.
I didn’t get the money from a record company, but I did get a couple hundred dollars in living assistance between semesters of community college. So I bought some Wendy’s and I bought a Metal Zone.
I also chopped up those recorded drum beats from the Zoom multi effects into individual hits and loaded the samples into a program called Hammerhead Rhythm Station. It didn’t sound “good”, but it sounded uniquely ugly and that’s what I wanted. Trying to describe it now, I say the production sounds like a cross between Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal and Ministry’s Psalm 69, but I don’t think I had heard the Ulver album at the time.
Listening back to this EP now, I recognize it as outsider art, though I absolutely did not have the frame of reference to think of it that way at the time. It’s a sickly, angry kid working like a mad scientist in the family computer room to present his vision to the world. Listening back to it 20+ years later, it feels like the work of a different person, but there are little parts of it that get stuck in my head, so clearly it still resonates somewhere in my brain. But it’s also not very good and you don’t have to listen to it.
To be a little kind to myself, I will offer some context. This was recorded in about a week back in January 2002 on a computer with 128 mb of ram and the dreaded Windows ME operating system. There’s not a lot of reverb on the vocals both because I didn’t know how to use reverb properly and because the ProTools D-Verb plugin liked to crash the computer. The cabinet emulation button on the Korg pedal made it sound like you were playing the guitar in a kitchen cabinet, so that’s why I recorded it with the direct “can of bees” sound. Also, the bass is just my guitar with an octave pedal on it.
Anyway, I remastered it to protect your speakers, but I did not remix so as to preserve the original artistic intent. Also, I don’t have the tracks anymore.
And yes, the cover is a picture of me holding my grandmother’s head (certain members of my family think of metal as “kill your grandma music” and I can be a real shit stirrer). Not only did she actually take the picture of me, she kept this cover on her wall until she died. She actually pitched cover herself later, which was her laying on the ground next to a rifle with an All Hallow’s Evil shirt and ketchup on the floor. Weird lady. I miss her a lot.
Track by Track
“Live to Die” – I wrote this about a drunk I knew. I tried to add some “weird” touches to keep this from being a standard metal song, but very little of that works. I think the little pre-chorus riff is pretty neat though.
“Perfect Plastic World” – If you ignore the cringe inducing lyrics, this one mostly works. The intro riff is inspired by Katatonia’s “Brave”, but played much faster. I was really concerned with playing fast riffs, because I felt like I had to make up for cheating by using a drum machine. Really I was just ahead of my time, everyone is cheating now.
“Hopelessly Stained” – Hey, you’ll never guess who walked a mile to the record store in a break between classes at the community college and picked up My Dying Bride’s The Dreadful Hours. Fittingly, this song is mostly dreadful, especially with the awful tom sounds and wildly off key vocals. I actually think the last riff still works though. I just didn’t really know how to put together a song yet.
“Cancer of the Soul” – I was worried that the first version of the album wasn’t heavy enough, so I wrote this song to balance the scales. I very much wanted to write catchy songs, but I also wanted people to go “wow, that’s heavy” and that’s a tough line to walk, even for people who know how to write. Again, that was not me at the time.
“A World in Ruins” – Pretty sure I was trying to rip off the first Arch Enemy album here. The vocals on this one feel like a nail in my ear, but after listening to it the other day, I still have parts of it rattling around in my head. I may actually attempt a re-recording at some point to see if there’s actually something here, thought I’ll probably cut a minute or so out. I didn’t not understand how to get to the point back then.
“Self Made Martyr” – This got added to the EP a little later, though for the life of me I cannot remember why. It was on one of the earlier All Hallow’s Evil albums and I guess I just thought it was good or something and re-recorded it. Listening to it now makes me make the same face I’d make if I used lemon juice as an eye drop, but I suppose I have to give myself credit for attempting a crossover hit so early in the game.
I should note that by “added to the EP a little later” I mean added it to the copies I was burning to try and sell at the monthly open mic at the community college. More on that later.
The Official All Hallow's Evil Archive 