Released June 7, 2008
Written, produced and performed by Jay Gironimi
Liner Notes
This marks the end of an era for All Hallow’s Evil, as the last official All Hallow’s Evil live performance took place in support of this album. I mean, don’t let the language fool you there, the last show was mid-afternoon in a gazebo at the local park, but still. In a way, it also marks the end of All Hallow’s Evil as the most important thing in my life that did not have a heartbeat.
The first few years of adulthood where not kind to me and I did not handle them well, which was a rough combination. If you’re really curious about what that means, I wrote a book about it, so I won’t re-litigate that here. What I will say is that during the recording of this, I had dinner at Hometown Buffet to remind me that no matter how bad things get, at least I don’t have to eat at Hometown Buffet every day. In the process of this dinner, a man threatened to stab me with a sword because I was a “soulless creature”. That seemed like a good time to leave.
The actual thing that brought me up that way was a great deal on a used Pro Tools interface, a Digi 002. I had come into a light bit of cash due to the death of my maternal grandmother and rather than pay down the credit cards that were ensuring my net worth would always be negative, I bought that Digi 002. Anyway, the point of this story is that on the way home, my Pontiac shut off on the highway, meaning a 45 minute drive took an extra 30 minutes as I’d turn it back on, get up to speed, and then coast when it would randomly turn back off. Never did it again after that. Very possible that Van Helsing from the Hometown Buffet cursed me when he couldn’t stab me.
About a week later, my state medical insurance ran out and I had to pay $1,900 for a month’s worth of medication to turn it back on. I used to tell that like a supervillain origin story, but now that’s pretty close to my yearly deductible anyway. At least I’m expecting it now. And back then $1900 was like two months pay.
In any case, balancing on the razor’s edge of the poverty line that kept those sweet medications coming means I lost my apartment and this album was mostly recorded in my grandmother’s kitchen. As such, my grandfather deserves co-producer credit here, as he sat at the table, mostly saying that he couldn’t hear the vocals.
He unfortunately didn’t live to see the actual release. His death meant I had to quit my sweet gig at the laser tag arena and find a real job with insurance so me and my grandmother didn’t end up out on our asses. And thus, All Hallow’s Evil took a back seat to my new ticket out: third shift call centering.
Oh yeah, somewhere in there I started coughing up blood and lost a lot of weight. I assure you it’s all much funnier than it seems here and worked itself out in a couple of years.
As for the actual album, I somehow got it in my head that since I’d taken the epic progressive black metal sound as far as I was going to drive it on Faust…, it was time to switch things up with ProgPopMetal.
Terrorizer magazine had done a prog rock special around the time I was writing these songs, so I was listening to a lot of prog rock and liking maybe 50% of what I heard. I think that’s part of the reason I tried to keep the songs around 4 minutes here. I thought by looting some of the good ideas and forcing them into more conventional structures, I might have something. Of course, just about every prog band tried that in the 80s, but I thought I was a genius for adding heavier guitars to the mix. Also, this is the first All Hallow’s Evil album without any growls. It might have been looked at as selling out if anyone was buying.
The gap between the release of This Faustian Flesh and this album represents the largest time I had gone without putting any music out. A lot of that was due to the life changes listed above, but going an entire year without releasing an album gave me permission to work on this one until it was finished and not just fire something out because I felt like I had to. I really thought this one was going to hit while I was making it, though with a few years distance I can understand why it didn’t get me on Letterman.
Of course, part of me still thinks that a couple of live shows would have made “Crush Me in Your Wake” and “Myopic” international hits, but there might be a gas leak in here.
-Jay G, Feb 2024
Track by Track
“Crush Me in Your Wake” – I did not have a lot of good things going on at this point, so a big highlight of my life was driving 30 minutes to the closest Borders book store and picking up the new issue of Computer Music magazine. Every month it came with a cover mounted DVD of great new audio software and plugins, which is how I got the synth-y portions of this intro.
I think this is maybe one of the best choruses I’ve written and this is one of my favorite All Hallow’s Evil songs. We played it live one time at our very last show. Rather than do the intro off a tape, we actually opened with the first verse and chorus of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” and then went right into the first chugging chord of this. Seemed real funny at the time (here’s a rough demo if you’re interested in what that sounded like)
“Among the Ghosts” – The intro riff to this is a lot of fun to play and I was having a great time with the delay pedal on this one, but I think the lyrics/delivery don’t quite hit. But I’ve had at least two people tell me they really like this one, which is a pretty good percentage when you consider the small number of people who have actually heard it.
“Myopic” – Maybe my second favorite All Hallow’s Evil song. I had the idea for a dissonant intro that would build to a big chorus harmony and somehow came up with this. The lead on this was meticulously planned, because I felt like harmony guitars were going to make a big comeback and I was going to ride that wave, baby!
I actually wrote this to test out the POD XT I had bought right after I made Faust, so there’s a demo of this kicking around somewhere that at least 1 person has said is better than the album version. In any case, that poor POD XT didn’t even make it to an album as I replaced it with a POD X3 Live as soon as I could. The Line6 stuff gets a lot of shit now but I loved it back then. I wasn’t really in a position to mic a screaming amp in my grandmother’s kitchen at 2am.
I re-recorded this in 2023 to try some other stuff out, but I still think this is the best version.
“Dead All Along” – I like to write songs by playing riffs into the computer, which means I often write a thing that I can’t quite play yet or doesn’t fit under my fingers in the right way. The main melody line for this is one of those things, but when I went back to play it better, it didn’t have the same punch as the sloppy version. So what you hear here is my first attempt at the lead lines, slop and all.
“Watching a Car Crash” – I had big ideas on how to build this one and wanted to hold off on using distorted guitars for as long as possible, so that they’d hit hard when they came in. It was a good idea and I like the first couple of minutes, but I just don’t think I had a great idea for when it was time to bring it to the next level. Still it’s always nice to listen back and hear myself trying something different.
I don’t remember exactly what show was on the tv when I was writing the lyrics—maybe The Simple Life—but watching some quintessential 2000s reality show was what made me think of the line “it’s not like watching a car crash, it’s like watching someone crash just to make sure you look”
“Hand of God” – This is kind of an odd song, one that I barely remembered before hearing again. The verse almost kind of works for me, but just misses the mark. I think the pre-chorus is really good though and the chorus isn’t too bad either.
I feel like I’m being really hard on these songs. I promise this album is better than I’m making it sound.
“As Long as it Hurts” – For whatever weird algorithmic reason, this song often ends up as the most popular All Hallow’s Evil song for a week or two. The prechorus is a good idea of me trying to use metal ideas in a non-metal context. I always thought it was fun to hear double bass or trem chords in an unexpected place. I’m not a huge fan of the solo here, but I think the song is pretty good.
“Ephemera” – This 100% comes from me listening to a lot of Mr. Bungle and thinking I had the talent to cover a lot of stylistic space. And honestly, I’ve done worse!
This is technically the first part of a two song sequence with…
“Goodnight My Love” – This one 100% comes from me falling in love with Manes’ Vilosophe album and view ep. I (usually) love it when bands change their sound, so nothing gets my attention quite like bands having an album in their discography that’s a big departure. It doesn’t always hit—never much cared for the In Flames albums past Clayman—but the latter Manes discography, My Dying Bride’s 34.788%…Complete, and Kreator’s Endorama were all big for me. And, of course, the absolute champions, Ulver.
Anyway, I wanted to tell a two part story of obsession that ends in murder, because I was always bad at story songs and I wanted to spread my wings a bit. That’s a tough line to walk because it’s easy to tip over to misogyny, so I made sure to never specify a gender.
“Echoes and Silence” – This was pretty much written so I could figure out how to use delay properly. But even though it started as an exercise in effects wrangling, Turns out I love this song. I had no idea what I was doing back then, which means I also had no idea what I should’t do. I made some duds in that process, but I also came up with some stuff that I only could have written at that age and time. This is one of the latter.
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