Released March 20, 2020
Written, produced and performed by Jay Gironimi
Liner Notes
I followed up the most popular and accessible All Hallow’s Evil song with a tribute to death ’n roll and released it at the exact moment the world was going to shit. You can imagine what kind of numbers this one was putting up. Even to me, a guy who spent months writing and recording this, it’s kind of a forgotten stop gap. I think that has little to do with the quality of it and more to do with the circumstances of it’s release. But we’ll get there.
The two biggest influences on this EP were the Behringer HM-2 clone I bought late one night while listening to Entombed and the video game Shovel Knight. The pedal is the easy one to explain. I wanted to make a big, ugly sound, but try to tame it by running it in parallel with a more traditional sound. This worked on “Complete Somatic Rebellion”, so I wanted to bring the music into a more death ’n roll area (I don’t know if this is controversial, but as much as I respect the first two Entombed albums, my heart belongs to the groovier albums).
As for Shovel Knight…
It’s a game that is a tribute to 8 bit action platformers in the way that you remember them, rather than the way that they were. And so, having recently remastered the early All Hallow’s Evil albums, I wanted to make an album that sounded the way I thought they sounded at the time.
One big change is that this album is in C standard tuning, which is a whole step down from 99% of the rest of the All Hallow’s Evil catalog. Part of that was the Entombed influence and part of that was feeling like I’ve written every song I could in D standard. For those non-musicians out there, guitars are generally tuned to E, but I wrote in D standard most of the time because it’s a little heavier and also because in my teens I used to play along to the not very good Judas Priest 98 Live Meltdown album. The album may not have been great, but it had a bunch of songs that I knew and that meant a lot in the days of the compact disc. Changing discs was a pain in the ass with a guitar on.
This EP is short, but I honestly think it’s really good. It probably would have done better if I either got it out earlier or just held it until people were ready for new things again. I didn’t really do enough promotion for it and as it became clear that 2020 was going to be a wild one, I kind of hit the release button just to take it off the table. The best song I wrote around this time isn’t even on here. It’s a theme song Mayor McCheese would use if he was a wrestler. Just showed up in my head one day, fully formed. Incredible experience.
There’s actually a secret track if you purchase the album on Bandcamp (since it’s set at “name your price”, I don’t think you have to pay any money, just click “Buy Digital Album”). It’s a cover of Siouxise and the Banshees’ “Face to Face”, a song I’ve loved ever since the beautiful summer day back in 1992 when I saw Batman Returns for the first time. I also made a video for the song that was heavily inspired by the video for “Mother” by Danzig. Spring 2020 was a weird time.
-Jay G, March 2024
Track by Track
“The Grifted Age” – I know I said this was a death ’n roll album, but for some reason, I always think of the chorus of this as Soilwork-like, probably because playing it feels similar to playing “The Chainheart Machine” though they don’t sound all that much alike.
I ended up making a video for this one where I played a cable news anchor. I probably should have saved that concept for the next song, which is actually about cable news, but again, it was a wild time.
“A Trick of the Light” – I’m like 80% sure this song—particularly the chorus—is a ripoff of some other song, but I can’t identify the original, so this made it onto the EP. Sounding like some other song I love but forgot is probably why I like it so much.
I wrote this one after catching some cable news in the break room. I can’t remember the exact context, but there was a brief swirling of some military tensions somewhere and every station broke out the big WAR graphics with every anchor presenting every slight scrap of information with a feeling I can only classify as “arousal”. These motherfuckers were dying for war. I imagine they were legitimately depressed the next day when it turned out to be nothing.
This also has one of my favorite solos. I always wanted to do that Carcass thing where they name the solos and I totally meant to do that here and then just forgot. I probably would have gone with “Call This Number to Find Out How to Add Money to Your Social Security Check” or something like that.
“Waiting for the Killing Blow” – At some point a family member said they were willing to die for the economy, which I found equal parts sad, fascinating, and scary. Couple that feeling with a few videos of crowds that are cheering for people and platforms that are absolutely going to fuck them and you get this song.
“Without You, I Am Nothing” – Look, I hate to get all college freshman on you here, but there’s no drug more dangerous than profit. People will ruin entire lives, families and societies just to get another fix. It’s only a cliche because it’s true.
Musically, I wanted this one to rumble a bit. Maybe because I’m getting old, I’ve grown a real appreciation for slow music. It makes every hit count. I purposefully kept this one a few bpm slower than I would normally play it, so that it would feel a little bit like it was pulling on it’s chain and threatening to break out. Not sure if any of that comes out in the recording, but I really like this one.
The Official All Hallow's Evil Archive 