Released February 1, 2004
Album Credits:
The Abominable Dr. Gironimi contributed Voices from Hell, Automated War Hammers, Stringed Implements of Destruction and Synthetic Acts of Violence.
Count Andy contributed to the Second Wave of the Stringed Destruction and stepped to the frontline for track 6.
Actual Credits:
Jay Gironimi – Vocals, Programming, Guitars, Keyboards
Andy Forbes – Guitar solo on track 6
Liner Notes
“Acting as Your Own Personal Nero” or “Having Fun with Album Credits”
We’ve made it through five of these things without me bringing my health up, but that streak is about to end.
I have cystic fibrosis, which for the purposes of this exercise means I can’t eat and I can’t breathe without a lot of medication. Those medications are/were pretty expensive. For the first 18 years of my life, that was my parent’s problem. Once it became my problem, I didn’t handle it well.
Pre-Affordable Care Act, you could stay on your parent’s insurance until you were 21 as long as you were enrolled in community college. I think that number went up a bit if you enrolled in a traditional 4 year university, but I hated school and I was pretty sure my time on this earth was running short, so I stuck by my community college guns.
That stubbornness made keeping easy access to those medications tough. I managed, but it was not good for my overall mental health. I was not very pleasant to be around at this time, unlike now when I am clearly a complete joy.
This album was recorded right before I turned 21, so the clock appeared to be ticking on my ability to stay alive. Add a couple of breakups in there and well…this is what you get.
I think I intended this album to have a lot of gallows humor, but listening back to it now, it’s too much “gallows” and not enough “humor”. I remember being really proud of this album at the time, but I find it very difficult to listen to now and not super fun to write about.
As for the recording, my mom’s boyfriend at the time had somehow ended up with a surplus Gateway laptop from his job and I commandeered it as my official recording computer. I bought an external hard drive, a recording interface and even an actual drum machine, all charged to the credit card because I was sure paying that would be someone else’s problem in the near future.
Sometimes one of the outputs on the drum machine would switch polarity, but the laptop was prone to crashing, so if the computer made it through a take, I often just left the out of phase stereo drum track. This was also part of a three album run where I had gotten the idea that I didn’t need to use a bass because I could make up the sonic difference with synth sound from a mid-range Casio keyboard that I also slapped onto the credit card. This was a pain in the ass when it came time to remix it earlier this year, but I actually think this sounds really good (and the drums are finally in phase!).
Andy had a startling realistic looking air soft pistol that became a bit of mascot for some reason. I’ve never owned an actual gun, but I thought that thing gave the operation some production value. The cover picture is a self timed picture I took using a digital camera, then printed out to get the ripped layout effect. The back picture is an Easter lily with a Simpsons reference taped to it (Moe’s “No Funeral” sign from Season 11, Episode 9, “Grift of the Magi). The flowers showed up at the hotel I was working at and once again, I thought it added some production value. I didn’t discriminate when it came time to add some panache. All the copies I made came in DVD cases which I thought might help it stand out, even thought I ripped the idea off from Discordance Axis. Here’s the original cover in case you want to make your own.
One funny thing I remember about this came from working a second summer job at the local rec camp. One of the kids said he was into real heavy music, so I gave an 11 year old a copy of this album. He threw it at me the next day because there was a line on the back that said “We would like this album to stand as proof that God hates you” and he said that I was making fun of God. I don’t think I was, but I understand his impulse. I remember he got really into Pearl Jam the next year for some reason. I hope he’s doing okay.
Honestly, I’d say I was maybe 25 years old before I had any real grasp on how to interact with others, so if I met you before then and you feel I owe you an apology, I’d be happy to issue you one.
Track by Track
“The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel” – I considered this the signature All Hallow’s Evil song for a while, but I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore. Musically, I think it’s solid, as I managed to rip off both Arcturus’ “Kinetic” and In the Woods… “Closing In” in equal measure. Lyrically, it’s very clearly written by an angry kid.
One thing I like to do is write lyrics that have two different meanings, under the idea that if I can think of two separate meanings for the same words, then when they are out in the world, people will be able to find many, many more. This, of course, assumes people pay attention to the words at all, but I’m planning for the best case scenario, I suppose.
As such, the title “The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel” was intended to referencing putting a gun in your mouth, which seemed real clever to me at the time. I was not suicidal, but I wasn’t necessarily thrilled with being alive and I love the band Sentenced, so that’s how we got there.
However, there is a second, even cheesier meaning to the title: guitar strings are also commonly made of nickel plated steel. So the title can also refer to the catharsis of music. I don’t know that that’s actually clever, but I appreciate that I was trying.
My problem with the lyrics mostly comes down to them leaning way too far towards the “I’m not the problem” territory of youth, made even worse by the fact that I thought I was in my twilight years. The general thesis either being you can feel bad for giving too much of yourself or you can try “The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel”. Again, not necessarily proud of the sentiment, but it helped me a lot at the time.
The last chorus is specifically about writing through the pain, talking shit in a Dante fashion, though I’d read maybe 10 pages of his Inferno at that point. As always with these early songs, the literary spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak.
When All Hallow’s Evil started doing live shows, we played this one a lot, both because it makes an easy musical statement about what All Hallow’s Evil is—lots of guitar, but also a weird electric piano break—and because it’s a lot of fun to play. I eventually re-recorded this in 2009 so we could add it to Rock Band and people could play along with plastic instruments. Most of the feedback was “fuck this solo.” I think I made just over $200 on the deal though.
“Devil’s Curse and Angel’s Wings” – This was my attempt to write a serious song about zombies. It didn’t quite have the shambling legs of The Zombie EP. It’s probably a little long, though I imagine I felt like it was an epic while I was writing it. I remember listening to this a few years back and being really embarrassed by it, but honestly there are some pretty good riffs here. Perhaps they’re not strung together in the most elegant manner, but I like that was was reaching for things I couldn’t quite grasp.
And that little piano and pizzicato string break is 100% my dollar store version of “FreeCard” by Dark Tranquillity.
“Down at the Graveyard” – Speaking of things beyond my grasp, I find that the history of All Hallow’s Evil is littered with moments where I wasn’t quite as talented as I needed to be. This is a lounge song inspired by Alice Cooper’s “Blue Turk”. I think the foundation is there, but my delivery isn’t quite good or interesting enough to carry it. I think I could get it right today, but I’m scared to find out I’m once again not as talented as I think.
“It’s a Lovely Day…” – I changed the name of this one when it came time to put it back on the internet. This song was inspired by that dream in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor sees the playground wiped away in nuclear fire and was originally titled “It’s a Lovely Day for a Holocaust”. Given the direction of the last few years, that title doesn’t read well out of context—probably never did, but I was a lot more naive back then—so I dropped off a few words. It’s possible I’m overreacting, but when in doubt, throw it out.
In any case, this entire song exists pretty much as an excuse for that strange breakdown in the middle.
We actually played this song live once towards the end of the All Hallow’s Evil live experiment, but Andy never actually learned it, so I took that as a sign to drop it from the set.
“There’s Always Suicide” – The working title for this one was “Amorphis” and I’m not quite sure why. I mean, I love Amorphis, but this sounds nothing like them. Once again, my performance doesn’t quite rise to the occasion of the song, but there’s something here. Honestly, listening to it now makes me wish I’d just put a cheap bass on the credit card. A little bottom end really would have helped out.
“Until It Goes Too Far” – I was lightly flirting with giving up my mad scientist/control freak approach to writing and recording, so I asked my buddy Andy—who at this point was an official member of All Hallow’s Evil—to write a few songs for this album. Since he had actual things in his life beyond obsessing over songs no one would really listen to, that never happened, but he did play the solo on this track.
I hate the lyrics to this one, because I think they’re a little too “pull yourself up by the bootstraps, champ!”. I’m clearly trying to reason with myself here and it sucks.
“If We’re Lucky…” – This was actually written and demo’d a little before starting the actual album. I had the whole “if we’re lucky, someday soon we’ll all be dead…” part first and worked my way out from that. Again, I just thought that was a darkly funny thing to sing and built a whole song around the idea.
This almost didn’t make it to the remixed version of the album though, because it turns out I never saved the drum track. Since I wrote/recorded this before everything else, I used a slightly different set up for the drums and forgot to include the file in the archives. So I actually recreated it here using similar samples.
“Memory” – Occasionally I write something based completely on the shape of the riff. Like I see the chords in my head without hearing them and kind of think through them based on how it feels. That’s how I came up with the main riff on this one.
This got a lot of pretty good feedback from people that heard it at the time, enough so that I re-recorded it on 2009’s Knowing Then What We Know Now. The act of re-recording made me realize just how much intro this bad boy has. If you ever hear an All Hallow’s Evil song and think that it’s too short, it’s 100% because I think this one is too long.
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