Sometimes we need the shock of war,
to shake us out of our complacencies.
The crack of fear to strike at our spinal cord,
and the yowling yawp,
of barking mad freedom.
...............
Some more heavy therapy?
some glorious guitars and fuzz.
This reminds me of rush hour in London (I was born in Essex,not far from there) - the sensory overload of the city has its own music - so my sounds must reflect this
Give that dog a bone!
: this carnival has guard dogs!
The carnival of evil is in town!
Epiphone Flying V doing bright wails!
A dark wailing, but fitting.
Epiphone Les Paul neck pickup, darkly wailing
If Electric Ladyland Studios had more headroom on the board, this could have been Jimi for a moment.
That comment shows I have achieved something with this one - searching for the holy grail of heavy
One must always seek for that!
This is almost in my catalog of ugly, good show, sir!
almost - it has an ugly beauty, if I might say so myself! Thanks!
Oh. The dogs!
As Crowley has it - 'is god a dog' - there's an expansive and yet unwanted symbolism around dogs - and the dogs of war is another name for warriors - not so noble warriors - do we insult men by calling them dogs or do we insult dogs so!?! There was some skin scrape noise near the end on the bass which reminded me of a bark, and so I put these dog sounds on it - barks have a rhythm, the howls are like lead guitars and the growls are like mid range riffing - those growls are good
Given how some dogs are treated, the gods would be so fortunate. :)
These keening squeals (and squeals is to weak a word) I just don't have them. Maybe it's the lack of the whammy bar.
No whammy bar on this one - the guitar is whammy equiped but the bar wasn't on it - it's actually slide - it is something I just feel at the moment - completely unplanned - I just had a slide nearby [a ceramic one] and got it on to the Flying V - going up close to the back pick up - the beauty of playing up there is that the increments between the notes is very small so it doesn't take much movement of the slide to get squeals - also these Iron Gear Metal Machine pickups are unearthly powerful. It's an Epi V that the previous owner had equiped with these pickups and sold the guitar because he found them too powerful! ... 'too' powerful ... can you have too much power!?!
Cry havoc!
That is an interesting word: the word, like the action it describes, came from the Normans. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 was a great tragedy for the English. Tolkien used to weep upon thinking of it. While Anglo-Saxon re-emerged later, it was never the same. "Late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French havok, alteration of Old French havot, of unknown origin. The word was originally used in the phrase cry havoc ( Old French crier havot) ‘to give an army the order havoc’, which was the signal for plundering.
The Bard knew it all. And it just keeps happening.
He had great insight - and it suggests that the thing we call 'human nature' hasn't changed for hundreds - nay, for hundreds of thousands of years. Those who seek to 'improve' humanity are on a hiding to nothing!
I feel a groove coming on.
There's a subdued bit of polyrhythmia going on there - the bass settles into a riff for a while - I then put a drum beat which cuts across it so making two different beats, but as the advance they meat and briefly lock in together creating that semblance of a groove - I love that sort of thing because, however brief and subdued, that groove is very wicked in the evil sense, and this piece feeds upon evil and havoc like a vampyre
"Barking mad freedom" ... the freedom of beasts. Our only true freedom? I ask you.
We are beasts; we are apes - killer apes. Yes, we feel at our most free in war - when killing, raping and looting. So many accounts of war reflect this. When people are at their most desperate, where they expect to die every minute, they feel strangely free. And killers too, must experience the most pure freedom. That's why I referenced GG Allin elsewhere - relating this view to music, he was probably one of the most free performers in rock. Civilised man is unfree by definition. It is the dog man, the wolf man, the bear man, who is free - the criminal .... the man we most hate - we hate him because we envy his freedom. These sounds try to capture all that
And the shock of war... you know what? I think we're going to get it. And this is as good a soundtrack as any. Maybe better.
These sounds make you want war - being careless for what you wish for - I like to explore that psychology - in a symbolic way hopefully, not too overtly - overt in sound, but with that built in ambivalence - this is not 'black metal', but it deals with those themes without being too literalist - of course, I value peace and solitude, but I also recognise that war and violence are part of the economy of life and must be explored if we are to really ... live ... Yes, the world is itching for war now - the dogs of war are clamouring - so much carnage ... 'politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war. Why should they go out to fight? They leave that all to the poor'.
that whole segment is just wicked!
The high flying guitar is the blue Epiphone Les Paul - it's doubled with a reverbt duplicate, but I peel the double away gradually as the guitar part nears its downward climax. The other guitar which pokes through is J&D Strat copy with Wilkinson pick ups [I love those pick ups] put through the Fuzz Face [I have a red one - is that silicon or germanium? I forget]. That guitar acts as a counterpoint to Les Paul before they are both subsumed in the torrent of TBird bass fuzz
Yeah the red ones are usually germs, unless it is the Band of Gypsies version with the white knobs.... I do believe those are Si.... ;) Either way... nice of the tool! :)
Love that distortion on the low end!!!!
I have the TBird through the Fuzz Face as already mentioned, but just importantly I have an Epiphone V with heavy strings and Iron Gear Metal Machine pickups put through an Octave divider/Fuzz with the octave below - going through a bass amp too.
chaos, terror, excitement, fear
.. even on a debauched Tinsel Teethed noise fest like this
I should have X Rated these sounds
what a super scream!
s: slide just in front of the bridge pick up of an Epiphone Flying V with Iron Gear Metal Machine pickups - this axe is the perfect counterpart to the TBird, like Shencker and Way in UFO, but with GG Allin fronting rather than Phil Mogg - lots of blood and fecal matter on the thrashing [sic] floor
Oh my God! Just looked him up..him singing with those two would have been something to behold
That howling...so right.
a nervous calm here
: The victim licks its wounds in a vain attempt to recover ... to recover breath and dignity ... to staunch wounds .... but like a captive in a torture chamber, knows full well that its tormenter will return shortly .... with bamboo and dogz
: Your mind is a vespiary, Sir! :)
that bass must have looked at you the wrong way to deserve a spanking like that!
- this TBird is a tough ole bird and something of masochist bruiser - she likes to knocked about and abused - she ain't pretty either, with iron cross tattoos
a real snarl fest, Bill..dangerous, unpredictable
: There are no really pretty notes on this one - the few sweet notes are unreliable and treacherous - cutpurse hoes
"...slip the dogs of war" indeed
- I put down the bass and guitar through the fuzz face first, then listened back and felt it needed some dogs on there! Why dogs? I wasn't sure at first, then I realised - they were the dogs of war - of course!
crazy
a long scale Thunderbird bass put through a Fuzz Face is never gonna do 'sane' - thank the dogs!
lyrics
Cry ‘Havoc’!
... and let slip the dogs of war ...”
[The Bard, 1601]
credits
from Thigh Scar Stain,
released May 11, 2020
Basically a Fuzz Face Fest, with bass and guitars through a Fuzz Face – mayhem.
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