Devil's Rejects, Zombies & Hellbillies Lobby The Capitol!

It was the "Call of the Zombie" which unfurled a night of "Living Dead Girls," Sinners, and Demon Speeding Iron Heads to our nation's capitol.  The first blanket of snow softly laid down on the streets of Washington DC only to be slammed upon by two thousand pairs of storm trooper Doc Martins and a few six inch stiletto heals.  The horde heated the winter chill like a pressure cooker of "Sinister Urge" only to be matched by the final exhale of the Hellbilly Deluxe 2 Tour that was sound checking inside the bowls of the renown 9:30 Club.  I continued to fester with the "Devil's Rejects" outside in a scene similar to the likes of the auto chop house streets of Queens, New York accept the meat heads were replaced by the metal heads.  From the sound check I witnessed outside of the venue I could tell tonight wasn't going to be your traditional Washington DC gala or ball.  Tonight, DC would experience a red alert signaling an outbreak of frenzy and there was no curfew set and no protection other then the highly pierced and mutilated bouncer at the front door.  Rob Zombie pulled into town with his Hellbilly constituents with an address to the Zombie Nation, "Get ready to hold onto something really tight because you're all in for one bump ride and Mama's not here to help you blow your nose."

My day began with a five hour drive form Brooklyn, New York where a few hours earlier Side Kick and I part took in our Nitzer Ebb experience.  The ride down to DC was met along the way with rain, Jersey drivers, and the wonderment of 2009's first winter blast.  Baltimore vanished completely behind the blizzard curtain except for the row of blazon lights ripping through the fog from Raven Stadium (M&T Bank Stadium).  My GPS Wife swept me under and around Baltimore Harbor and South towards DC.  Some thirty miles and five hours, that should have been four hours, I fishtailed into downtown Washington DC and parked.  The streets were quiet.  My welcoming party, a few students from Howard University and a few characters from the neighborhood.  I questioned my sanity as I came to the realization that I do what I do for the love of music and to share with you my life experiences as a fan first and professional second.  I mustered my energy, dragged my last drag and walked towards a small diner that filled my nose with aromas that tantalized my stomach to the front door of Torrie's Soulful Restaurant.  This was a diamond in the rough where you can get down home "low country" cooking."  If you need a visual of the soulful experience please revisit the diner scene from the Blue's Brother where Jake & Elwood Blues are sung out of the diner by a young vivacious Aretha Franklin.

After a home made meatloaf, corn niblets, grits and a fresh piece of corn bread I was off to the show with a half a pack of cigarettes and a cliff bar to keep me filled and awake for the show, but the food coma hit me hard and I found myself in my car passed out for two hours from exhaustion.  When I awoke I was concealed by the fogged windows and the tapping of a Metro Police officer who inquired as to my business.  I explained my situation, presented my ID's and after I proved to him that I was neither a threat to myself or society he bid me a fond farewell and a recommendation to a cheap motel.  I staggered out of the car and walked down the block to the 9:30 Club where a few fans had gathered for the pre-show meet-n-greet with Rob Zombie.  The price to meet the Superbeast of Channel X?  A cool one hundred and seventy-five dollars.  With the economy in turmoil and people scrapping to make a buck I found this a bit greedy for the times.  Mother, daughters, fathers, sons, friends, couples, the weary, and the downtrodden all made there way into the main room where they were greeted by Rob Zombie and legion of darkness while the rest of us huddled together in the deep freeze of the DC winter night.  I cornered myself next to the front door so that I could gather any and all heat the seeped through the door frame.

Ladies and gentlemen, kids of all ages, step up and gather around for the biggest show in town.  This show had men in make up then at a Kiss Army convention.  The furnace doors into the 9:30 club opened just as the hypothermia started to set into bone chilled crowd.  Up first on the bill, Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures. The band portrayed a band straight out of the mind of Tim Burton and the cast from Disney's Haunted Mansion.  The Night Creatures are completed by a very sexy Bettie Page looking vixen who humped her rump against the stand-up base.  The psychobillie's music filled the room and flavored the night with adverse black hearted comedy that ignited the imagination of the captivated audience.  Captain Clegg (Named after a 1960's thriller movie) & The Night Creatures strung up the DC crowd with morose lyrics enhanced by the music of this grim jubilee.  The relic grave digger costumes brought the necessary humor needed to separate the sane with the over obsessed.  Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures have tenacity and appetite to drive their music to success and with Rob Zombie billing across the country on his Hellbilly Deluxe 2 Tour, it's not a bad start.

Now if you look over here and beyond the hazy smog of the satin curtain I will show you a new definition of an "American Hair Band."  We're not talking Dokken feathered hair longer than my sister's, we are talking about Johnny Bravo pompadours as tall as a seven layered wedding cake.  The Nekromatix entice your senses with high paced, bass slapping, guitar yielding thrash sets capped off by a effeminate of the muliebrous birthday girl named, Lux.  Nekromantix thrive on their element of surprise with each album cultivating on the progress of the band's success.  Their heightened perfection to polish their talents with the rawness of their appearance culminating to the rise of their crescendo as thrill band for the Hellbilly Deluxe Tour.  With a Coffin bass complete with a sodded skull Nekroman lead the music escapade with 360 degree bass spins, throaty road house lyrical delivery, and a hellbent force of centrifugal good forces.  Nekroman, Franc, and Lux brought the second exhilarating elation to the pumped up crowd ready to topple over in hysteria because coming up next was the nocturnal genius whose music chills us, whose movies thrill us, and outside the ticket prices that kill us was going let loose the sounds of hell absolving and releasing our frustrations terminated by his gargantuan performance.

ZOMBIE! ZOMBIE! ZOMBIE!  Yelled the fans as the lights darkened and the room illuminated by the beam from a projector.  On the enormous screen played a cartoon viewable by the desensitized.  Zombie Nazis trying to beat the super heros of the cartoon for the head of Hitler preserved in a jar of vinegar and kicked up into the air like a one point goal kick leaving the Zombie Nazis to disintegrate into a flume of a nuclear blast.  ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE replaced Tora, Tora Tora, and the stage blazed in white lights, dense fog, and the silhouette of shadows entering the stage.  Like apparitions of spirits moving across a cloudy lake the men took their spots along the stage with one last soul making its way to center stage.  In a split second the lights drank blood and the fog vanished leaving the red lit phantom faces to appear with their half skull shrouds covering their lower faces.  Frightful?  Yes!  Invigorating?  Beyond!  Stupendous?  Ugh, DUH!  Rob Zombie came to town to show the world who was top dog and to put the Zombie party on the ballot in DC.  With a opener like this how could you turn your back on such a cause?

The set was filled with Zombie classics including LIving Dead Girl, Dragula, More Human (Than Inhuman), and American Witch.  Rob Zombie is a work stallion with longevity on the reins.  His ability to play to his audience on the film front isn't nearly as advantageous as his career in music from my point of view, but his booming talents are victorious and noteworthy none-the-less making his resume and fame built upon shear aptitude of his genius gift.  It's anything by fortuitous.  Zombie's energy on stage is unmatched by any other music artist I have reviewed.  His mark may mimic the number of the beast, but the grip and determination that is Zombie's music grasps the fan through music tenacity and firm perseverance.  Zombie's show culminates the mad movies that flicker in our minds with the daily day dreams we skirt off to when we are ready to explode from anger.  His music is an outlet to venting in the wickedest ways and after my trek on I-95 I was ready to let out my driving frustrations.

Overall the performance seemed flawless and the climactic end to this tour being in Washington DC viewed appropriate as the US economy still continues its decline towards a bottomless pit of financial demise.  Tonight Rob Zombie made us all proud to be free, revitalized our energy, and sparked a fire under many of our rears with a holy wake up call from the depths of hallowed halls, or at least a really depleted green room from backstage.  If Rob Zombie isn't enough on the role call how about adding into the flavor Piggy D (Amen & Wednesday 13), John 5 (Marilyn Manson), and Tommy Clufetos (Alice Cooper) to round up the talent portion of the music and you have opened Pandora's Box to eternal vibrations that becomes an existential flash of seeing man and metal as one body.  The band raged on like a well greased turbine engine taking off for the sun and the heat that kick backed from the amps shook the floor, moved the still, and the deaf could hear the passing of the air punching into the bodies.  I only bring this up because in all the concerts I have ever covered, NONE have come with signers signing to the audience with such catch phrases as "Hey Scum of the Earth," Of an SS Whore," or my personal favorite, "Feast Upon the Cat."  The signers didn't miss a word from the songs or from the even louder banter that was colorfully expressed throughout the night by the bands.

If you missed the Hellbilly Deluxe 2 Tour, well, you missed something that was beyond the words I could express and the photos I captured two inches from Zombie.  It was a night that began with white snow and ended with deafness that comforted me on my five hour trek back to New York City.  What will Rob Zombie come up with next is beyond me and with new movies being remade by the master of darkness I am certain that whatever does come in the future will fit beautifully sinister and attract the fans who have shown more loyalty and dedication to one man's music then I have ever seen from any other music artist.  I hope Washington DC takes heed in the Zombie message.  We the people are ready for change and we have a lot to say.  God Bless You and God Bless America (Cue the Zombie Presidential March!)!

Nitzer Ebb, Closer To That Total Age

It's been over twenty years since I joined in the chant, and Nitzer Ebb just pulled into town to perform their first New York show in ten years, in a rented camper that they are now touring across in, mind you.  Douglas, Bon and Jason are getting "closer" and from what they said is hiatus that has been anything but "murderous."  Most fans remember Nitzer Ebb as a very heavy industrial group who brought a wall of sound to the forefront of the music industry along with similar artists as Front 242, Nine Inch Nails, Die Warsaw, and Front Line Assembly.  Their sound has aged to a golden stream of elemental tracks mixed with real percussion making their creation a unique and original foundation to the industrial music formation that would later influence Marilyn Manson, Bush, and other music artists under the Mute Records umbrella such as Depeche Mode, all were hooked to the gritty, metallic, and in your face sound that is Nitzer Ebb.  On December 3rd I was treated to a flashback to my younger days as a Goth where Nitzer Ebb, The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees highly influenced me to be who I am today.  I met with Douglas McCarthy and Vaughn "Bon" Harris in the downstairs bar of The Gramercy Theater in New York City just before the show began.  What was supposed to take only fifteen minutes to speak to the dynamic duo turned into an over thirty minute deep and energetic Q&A.  These are two childhood friends who have shown me that friendship and commonality binds two unrelated brothers through a family made up of one band and one message.  Enter at your own risk.

The scratchy voice of McCarthy brought chills to my body as I was blasted back to the days gone by.  The days where the lads from Essex molded me and unleashed me to see the world outside the box.  "We live in Los Angeles now in the belly of the dying beast." artistically describes McCarthy regarding the end all of end all to the former music industry.  An industry that has reluctantly sat back on its failure to keep pace with technology or current cultural desires for better music.  "The state of the music industry is such a disaster that if I have to struggle then I'd rather struggle in the sun."  he added, but Douglas and Bon aren't struggling.  They both have succeeded on levels that many music artists of their time and genre vanished without a trace.

"The reality is that the music industry were already pretty harsh and severe prior to the economic down turn.  Our music genre, rather, the Nitzer Ebb music has been fortunate with things being as F'ed in the industry because we decided not to approach a label and spoke to people we knew, like Jonathan Scott Miller (EMI), and we chose to remain on our own.  Even now, with Geffen, what we have is a partnership thing in the states with something called "Artists' Addiction."

Miller created Artists' Addiction formed in 2005 and encompasses a division dedicated to music placement called Stop ! Go Music and a publishing division.  Their goal to bring consumers and clients the best music selections for film, television and gaming takes a new approach to the all too familiar wall paper music by music source libraries.  Miller reached out to Nitzer Ebb about potential projects to have the new music placed into and the partnership was established with much success.

"We are delivering more then Geffen ever could to a kid's home and the Tony Hawk game is probably going to be the biggest selling game on a cross platform for this holiday season.  We are reaching millions and millions of people through this channel now." McCarthy bragged as he reinforced the idea to connect and spread your music vastly.

"No one listens to the radio anymore and we have redirected our music from radio to music placement such as in the newest Tony Hawk game.  The point of fact in video games, specifically lifestyle games (Role Play), represent a whole package is the dream they always wanted.  You've got this direct delivery system to twelve year olds and up where you are playing music to them, the games and consoles are always online, so if the kid is listening to the music that is on the game he likes he can access it directly.  We are selling to our audience in an unrestricted environment.  We don't even have a label and we are doing that."

The band seems very assured to continue seeing an increase in their music revenue.  Nitzer Ebb gave me a great insight to who I wanted to be in a world that tried to keep me in check.  Because of that freedom I made sure I experienced them live each time they toured.  Harris brought to light the band's outlook on the fans, like me who were effected by them who have gone through their own personal identity crisis'.  "Economic depression or not the economy has taken a toll on our productivity to tour as much as we'd like to and it does come with great financial repercussions to the music business.  I think the same fans on this tour will definitely attend the smaller city shows, and there are some fans our age who grew up with the music who don't go to that many shows, but this is where they found their identity which is special to us.  They might not fit the profile of your typical concert goer, but because we mean so much to them they will show up, buy the t-shirts, take home the album, anything to take home a part of us with them."

"We do like touring, we enjoy connecting with the people in a short amount of time throughout many different cities.  It rein firms what you knew all along.  As we were writing this new album we know what we like and our assumption is that there are people out there that go with what we like.  To have that affirmation is the whole point to being in a band.

When a band disappears from the front it is merely impossible to resurrect a reconnection to the fans.  Some fans feel abandoned and some just grow older and appreciate new styles of music.  It's a very big risk that Harris and McCarthy took, but unknowingly didn't see the benefits of.  Harris went on to produce Marilyn Manson, Depeche Mode and Bush while MCCarthy went back to finish schooling at the age of thirty.  To come back as they did with the new album "Industrial Complex" is a true testament to the fire that burns in Harris and McCarthy as it did when they were creating sparks with their first album release "Power of Voice Communications."

"We don't feel a need to reinvent ourselves.  We evolved and challenged ourselves on every record and sometimes suffered for it.  When we first toured in Europe with "Showtime" there was an initial wave of electronic bands and then there was a second wave and people expected a certain thing from us.  We didn't necessarily deliver it we had a lot of the elements, but there was also blues, swing, jazz and other influences in our music that we new to our fans."  spoke McCarthy.

McCarthy cleared his voice and buried his head deep in thought.  The room became stagnant.  He clarified his thought and said, "Ironically, we stood the course, the things that made us less at the time or less successful helped us to live on unlike our contemporaries, like Front 242 and now we see it was our differences that made people uneasy or unsure about what Nitzer Ebb was doing.  Those differences are all now the things that people love about the band today.  When you listen to our back catalog you don't hear anything that sounds the same as any other band's back catalog.  It may have been advisory on points but ultimately we stayed the course towards our master plan."

I brought the question back to the theory that Nitzer Ebb challenged us, the fans, to approach our lives differently through inspiring words and passionate sounds.  "What we tried to do musically was not to instruct people, we relayed our listening habits and expressed ourselves how we felt we needed to do so.  The last thing we thought when we first started a band was that we would be in our mid forties slugging it out on the road.  Mid forties was so far away at that time and now everything seems to make complete sense as far as who we are and where we come from in order to complete this circle of what Nitzer Ebb has always been about."

With the new album available less then a month sales and interest are predicted to raise the awareness of Nitzer Ebb to new levels thanks primarily to the accessibility and placement of the Nitzer Ebb music.  Harris chimed in on a business stand point, "The initial approach to this new album, because we like to compress and push things, got a little far from some of the core fans to really relate to as far as the early stuff.  We made it a point to go right back to basics and not complicate things.  We had a minimal amount of instruments and we went into recording in an instinctive and reactive kind of way just like we did when we were around sixteen years old.  We went in with our emotions and instincts, put that straight into the music and view what you all now have."  Harris affirmed and the he advised, "Don't get all precious about your music, it should be this or it should be that.  Just keep it very simple and very direct.  That was the idea going into this sixth album release.  We've got some songs that are very much like the original basic material with relevance to now in a contemporary feel and I didn't feel like an old man trying play music we played when we were teens."

The music has all the essence of that energy irrelevant to how Nitzer Ebb are now or the world we are living in.  So once they got five or six tracks like that they started to experiment with slightly more sophisticated sounds, with layered stuff, and the freedom to do just what they wanted artistically.  Harris said, "The music just ended up being really creative where we captured a lot of the things that needed to be captured.  As we experimented more, we had the confidence and the relaxation to record without issue.  We managed to fit everything in so it felt related to the whole package and we did this as the team."

I was just excited to be sitting with McCarthy and Harris for my own personal awe, but different time and different place has made meeting, interviewing, and shooting the people who made this possible to me less intimidating to talk to.  I was more curious to learn about what would be brought to the stage and would the show be in the fashion and sense we, the fans, have come to love?  Harris answered, "Our show is stripped down because of the logistics and the current situation dictate that things have to be pretty stripped down.  As always, if we agree to do the show, it's one hundred percent commitment.  We're pretty easy in our personal lives, but when it is time we get on stage it's off.  So they will see traditional Nitzer Ebb."

Nitzer Ebb defied the rules of the music industry by making the most of their success on their own and without restrictive contracts to suffocate them artistically or to break them emotionally from their passion to create music.  Harris exclaimed, "The great thing about this tour is that it feels like it is wrapped up by us directly to the fans that were around all these years and to the new fans who are becoming involved.  We managed to captivate the entire back catalog with one album which is kind of what we wanted to do with the last album some ten years ago.  We going to play the songs we are known for as well as some new tracks to introduce to our fans.  Instinctively we have chosen tracks from Belief, That Total Age and so on up until the Big Hit album.  It's mainly because we've got five albums plus all the pre album releases to consider and now we've added a sixth album.  There is a lot of music to fit in on each show and as things continue to build to the future we will be on a full tour next year.  These next few shows will definitely push us into direction, then we will be reintroducing more and more great songs people haven't heard in a long time like "Warsaw Ghetto" but our view is as always to try an to deliver the most energized show that we can do."

The interview ended with a few memories from my NItzer Ebb experience as well as some from my side kick, Rachel, who relished in my history as a Goth.  Both of us had an inkling that tonight was going to be a raw night to release ourselves to the mercy of Harris and McCarthy's Nitzer Ebb phenomenon.  As we walked away and shook hands with our new friends I had no doubt Nitzer Ebb was going to blaze the frenzy of fans awaiting outside in garb that must have been stored away in mothball casing for twenty years.  Old Nitzer Ebb concert shirts, French Berates, cargo pants tucked into black steel tipped combat boots and me in a Custo shirt with an Ed Hardy zipper hood.  Yes, I conformed and betrayed my blood sucking Goth brothers and sisters this night.  Harris turned away and once again McCarthy would have the last word.  With his sinister smile and grave digger voice he said, "We've got a damn good one.  Probably the best we ever had."

NItzer Ebb took stage and delivered on their promise.  Their was no sacrifice to the sound and age proved true to be just a number.  Twenty years may have gone by, but it forgot Nitzer Ebb.  The metal slams, the below the belt thumps, the ravaging lyrical strikes all combined to remind the room that Nitzer Ebb has more to say.  The simplicity of the stage set up was affective compared to bands who come back after a decade and hide behind smoking mirrors or large scale props and stage theatrics.  That was not the case on this night and I have to admit that I went in with some doubt.  I'm thrilled to be proven wrong and to be put in my place.  As a fan, and a professional that was inspired by the two lads from Essex, I am telling you to be prepared.  Nitzer Ebb haven't reunited.  They reignited.  Much like a fire with a faint amber, it takes one piece of wood, a little breath of air, and the belief that if you want to rekindle your spirits you can.  Nitzer Ebb has a few days left on their tour in the US and will be back strong next year as promised.

Staley Requiem In Chains

"When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." - Layne Staley, Alice In Chains

There are two certainties in life that you can not change.  Your date of birth and your date of death.  It's the dash in between that defines your book of life and where you can either stand tall in success or bow out in defeat.  This thought haunted me for weeks as day in and day out my life was stagnant with the hustle and bustle of my New York City life.  Each day heading into a stale office leaving me feeling unappreciated and overlooked by the self-absorption of superficial glares from the department heads whose empty words meant nothing more than shut up and do as I say or you will fade.  Looking back I guess nothing could be thought less or expected of this deceiver and his big bottom puppet hiding behind the fabricated walls of this Mickey Mouse company.  This false witness wasn't aware, but his egocentric actions set me free to explore and burrow myself deeper into the traverse world of music that lives in me.  It was this act of weakness that lead to my biggest epiphany and discovery of my own self-contained power as a music business professional, and which would lead to me writing this story.

As people in a free country we are able to make choices and act on the ideals and dreams that amaze not only those who doubted us, but to ourselves as an inner implosion that reignites our souls and once again gives rebirth to our inner child.  It was in this termination, this seemingly dark chapter in my life, which seemed to be the end of my music career.   Well as you experience this article I am able to reveal to you that my firing was only the calm before my own transformational storm.  A metamorphosis state of being have you, and the start of that dash between my date of birth and, what I hope, my distant date of death.

Action reaction, action reaction.  What doesn't kill me will only make me stronger.  It's true.  All of the cliches we hear.  All of the words of wisdom that have been bestowed upon us by the wise.  I got my strength to pursue my dreams of making it in this volatile business, that now is redefining itself and catching up on the inevitable path of the digital music revolution, a revolution that has grounded many bands and sealed the fate to many labels world-wide to close their doors while leaving bands to fend for their own.   To reinvent their own wheels so that they may have just one more taste of success.  For me, I found peace and motivation in a song.  What song?  "River of Deceit" by Mad Season.

It is my professional and personal opinion that Mad Season is arguably so the most alluring representation of a collaboration band whose life was not only short lived and cut by drug induced tragedy, but whose cult like historical mark left my generation in awe.  The impact of their only album took on a life of its own and to this day still moves me the same as it did the first day I pressed play.  It's the kind of collaboration that so few dream of and so many music legends will only hear about.  In 1995 Layne Staley (Alice In Chains) joined forces with Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), and John Baker Saunders (Freelance Bassist) came together for the band's one album.  An album that flew into rock 'n' roll history much like Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and JP Richardson (The Big Bopper) in 1959.

Four boys created ten tracks that made a generation dig deep with in themselves to do true soul searching and to change the course of their own history by sharing with the fans a very deep insight of each band member's own personal life.  The band's formation sparked when Saunders and McCready met in a rehabilitation center in 1994.  The meeting was nothing short of synchronicity and reminded me of the basis behind the book "The Celestine Prophecy."  Simply written, "Life events are not random but predetermined and planned by a higher calling."  Whether that theory is true or not isn't important to me, what is important is Mad Season brought an album into existence unlike anything I ever witnessed and with that album came revelation and peace for me as I am am sure it did for the members.  Temporary of otherwise.

I was driving home one night last year alone and trying to make sense of my life.  I was listening to Ralph Vaughn William's "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis," a inspirational music composition from English Renaissance and thought to myself that every great classical composer has a requiem.  The most popular being Mozart's Requiem, a hired piece of composition requested of by a Count in memory of his beloved wife.  Other requiems that have historical impact can still be heard today years after the deaths of such composers as Faure and Vivaldi, but this wouldn't just be Mozart's greatest composition, it would be his last and how fitting is it that he should write his own requiem.  Mozart would pass away from illness at the young age of thirty-five and it made me think how such artistry and passion could fade away with the classics.

I switched the CD out and tossed in Mad Season.  "My pain is self chosen...."  Those lyrics hit me like a ton of bricks.  What does Layne Staley mean?  "I could either drown or pull off my skin and swim to shore..."  Line after line hit me hard.  So much I pulled over on the side of the highway and started to tear.  Everybody has their own way of interpreting music and hidden messages in lyrics, but unless the writer expresses his view of his own lyrics no one understands the meaning.  It's no secret that Layne and other members had continuous battles to stay clean, but the battle knowingly caught up to Layne and he couldn't find the words to express his self anger.  I never had a history or a connection to Layne other than through his music, and I am only speculating as a fan that the formation of Mad Season along with Layne's increasing relapse to his addictions reopened his mind to view himself and his decisions in such a way that left his heart flooded with rejuvenated passions as a songwriter and his mind at peace with the words which poured out onto the sheets he inscribed these lyrics on.

In my mind "River of Deceit" was Layne's way of self analyzing his choice to take the path he chose for himself.  It was his way to reconcile with himself so that he could put his mind at peace and to tell the world he knows he did made bad decisions and there is no going back.  He had the opportunities to take a different path and this was the path that was right for him.  Fair or unfair it was self chosen as he sings in the lyrics.  Mad Season would lose both Layne and John to drug overdoses eerily similar, but the legacy that is Mad Season would live on and does live on today.  Whether or not this was the band's vision and plan the album has changed the course of many a young man's life.  It's a life testimony of four real boys who have confronted their pasts in their own personal ways and in death have left fans, young and old with, a clear message.  Our pain is self chosen and the river of deceit, be it drugs, a relationship gone bad, or being fired from a job, will pull us down unless we decide to pull off our skins and swim to shore.  In other words get rid of your self pity and live to see another day.

It is this story I have written, be it fact or my own fiction which positions Mad Season my personal pick of best collaboration band to date.  Much like a daisy chain linked fence.  Each link is needed for the fence to exists and function without error.  The same idea works with Mad Season's only album.  The lyrics, the members, the music.  It all has a purpose and reason as to why the notes, the tempo, and the elements occur.  Never have I ever listened to an album that is so absolute.  The band did what so many bands have never done and never will be able to do.  Mad Season accomplished and finished an impeccable album that to this day will remain peerless and beyond comparison to any other album created by a collaboration band.

"We write about ourselves because we know about ourselves." - Layne Staley, Alice In Chains