Released March 12, 2006
Written, produced and performed by Jay Gironimi
Liner Notes
Also available in an updated mix
This is my favorite All Hallow’s Evil album and has what is possibly my favorite All Hallow’s Evil song.
I love Edge of Sanity’s Crimson album, so after the safer approach of No One is Forgiven, I wanted to take a big swing and see if I too could write an album that was just one song. My attention span being what it was, I decided to write it in 7 pieces that would lock together to form the whole work.
This is the first All Hallow’s Evil that was fully demoed before it was recorded. My previous method was to build tracks out of what I recorded while I was writing, so I never really took a moment to consider the full piece before finalizing anything. Since I had big dreams of orchestral flourishes and what not, I thought it might be smart to have a map for this one.
To do this, every afternoon when I woke up—I was and am a later sleeper—I would sit in front of the computer and record parts on my acoustic guitar until I ran out of stuff to record. Kind of like the song was an exquisite corpse, but I was the only one working on it. I liked to write on acoustic guitar because I thought it helped my writing to not hide behind distortion, but it also meant I wrote with some different chord voicings that didn’t necessarily sing once I ran them through the ol’ Behringer V-Amp 2. As such, I added acoustic guitar on top of much of the final recording too.
I played the demo for a lot of people, which may or may not have been a mistake, because by the time I finished the final version at least one of them told me they liked the demo better. I tried to make up for it by including a small Faust suite on later versions of the All Hallow’s Evil acoustic album, “Calm down and tell me again.”, but that’s getting ahead of things.
Production wise, things took a big leap forward because I finally figured out how the hell midi instruments worked in Pro Tools and I took out my credit card and bought Miroslav Philharmonik string samples and the BFD drum sample library. I also commandeered a bass from my friend Bentley, who learned a valuable lesson about leaving instruments at my place for too long.
I really took my time with this one and did a lot of mixes before calling it “final”. I loved this album so much that I actually had 100 CDs printed up professionally, many of which you can find at various Southeastern Connecticut Goodwills today. Once again, I did not expect this to top the Billboard charts, but I did kind of think word of mouth would give it some legs. This was right around the height of MySpace which was probably the best music discovery website I ever used. There are of course a lot of reasons that word of mouth on this didn’t spread like verbal wildfire, but it maybe didn’t help that I kept describing it as “Porcupine Tree meets Darkthrone”. Not a huge target audience there.
I had big plans for the live presentation of this as well, which sputtered out before they really started. Before the first show of the This Faustian “Tour” (which was going to be a solid 5 shows in 3 local places over four months), live guitarist Andy managed to perforate his spleen. I, of course, thought our performance was the heart and soul of GazeboFest, the free festival my friend Bentley had organized at the local park. I called him to apologize that we might not be able to make it, as if our absence would have actually caused a problem rather than solve one. Andy actually did play the show, but our drummer—a portable CD player—called in sick and his replacement—a different portable CD player I bought for $20 that day at Wal-Mart—accidentally shuffled the songs after the first track. It was not the triumphant moment I saw in my head.
A month or two later, we actually did a very good show at a local club, for an audience of about 7 people. I was able to get a great deal on a conductor’s jacket like the one Bugs Bunny wore in “Long-Haired Hare”, so even if the rest of the atmosphere wasn’t perfect, I was very happy with my greasepainted, devil horned conductor look. I actually know where there’s video tape of that show, but I’ll be damned if I have anything to play it on.
I remixed this back in 2020 while I had some time on my hands. I honestly really like the raw sound of the original, but the remix is all the same performances, though with updated instrument samples where appropriate, so you’re not missing anything if you go there instead.
-Jay G, Feb 2024
Track by Track
“By the Grace of God” – Most of these songs were not only written in order, but the actual riffs to them were written in order, give or take some light rearrangement. So the first thing you hear is actually the first thing I wrote.
This song is written from the perspective of the devil trying to tempt Faust into a deal. One of the first things I bought after being suckered in by Amazon Prime was a box of books that all had Faust somewhere in the title. I always like to say I did a ton of research then used absolutely none of it, but looking back now, I think reading a bunch of literature before I wrote the lyrics helped keep me away from the tough talk bullshit I was dipping into on Cold Taste… and We’re Going to Die….
“Completely Fucking Lost” – This is probably my favorite All Hallow’s Evil song. Technically the track starts with the acoustic guitar, but I really like the little drum fill used at the very end of “By the Grace of God” to change the tempo. However, my favorite part of this song—and possibly any song I’ve written—is the octave doubled chords after each verse. I was big on the idea of inaccurately mimicking a 12 string guitar by doubling a part an octave up.
This song also has the first lead bass part in an All Hallow’s Evil song, though I flew in a monophonic synth when we played shows without a bassist.
And it’s a lot of fun to scream “I’m Completely Fucking Lost!” Try it out.
“All Angels Fall” – This one came the closest to actually using some of the research I did, as the original title was “Secret Engine of the World”, which I had pulled from David Mamet’s Faustus. But it was not to be, as I decided that lyrics would trump narrative and it felt better to write another song about the devil tempting Faust than to put a button on what Faust actually wanted.
The instrumental bit at the end was inspired by a Peter and the Wolf filmstrip I saw in second grade. It explained how music could tell a story, so I decided to tell Faust’s deal and downfall with just music. Music that was a real pain in the ass to play live.
“Something More” – Most of this album is in G minor, but I switched over to D minor for this one, mostly to accommodate that little tapping bit at the beginning. The breakdown also has one of my favorite tricks that I ripped off from “Rope Ends” by Pain of Salvation: guitars that repeat each other, kind of like a manual delay. I’d love to tell you that I nailed it the first time through, but I struggled a lot with that, to the point that I actually just muted the other guitar while recording each part.
I also think this has the first synth lead in an All Hallow’s Evil song.
“Veneer” – After some truly disastrous attempts, I finally got a ballad right. I can assure you that I thought I was real fuckin’ clever for bringing back that riff from “Completely Fucking Lost” too.
The lyrics are about how sometimes we make bad decisions—like sell your soul—or end up in places we didn’t expect—Hell!—and it is okay to acknowledge that for a moment, even if the rest of the time you have to pretend you have it under control. Compare the lyrics from this to something like “A Broken Figure” from We’re Going to Die… and you can see I took a big step forward.
“Broken but Learning” – I accidentally stole this title from Drowning But Learning by When, but didn’t realize it until after everything was recorded, so I just left it as a tribute. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the strongest song on here. It’s supposed to be a bit of brightness before the darkness of the upcoming “Post-Script”, but I think it’s a little too bright. It’s really the outro bit that bothers me, mostly because it has too many words and it makes my delivery a little odd.
“Post-Script” – The piano samples aren’t great on this and I wasn’t quite up to the task of singing along with such sparse accompaniment, but despite whatever alleged growth I experience prior to making this, I did and do like the idea of ending on a real downer.
We never really did this part live, but occasionally I’d sing these lyrics at the end of the The Zombie EP (you can hear an example of that on the 2009 re-recording of The Zombie EP). Somehow that turned into my singing the lyrics for “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits at the end of The Zombie EP (you can hear an example of that on the All Hallow’s Evil Halloween Spooktacular). I don’t think the “Money for Nothing” lyrics would fit here, but if for some reason I ever get a chance to do Faust live again, I may try it just to make myself laugh.
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