That elusive LP4 Sound…

soundThere was some article in the Houston Press today about Pink Floyd and Kiss’ dance with disco where the basic thesis was that Kiss experiment failed because they didn’t sound like themselves while Pink Floyd still sounded like Pink Floyd.  That’s neither here nor there but it reminds me of a constant question we get as a band – this idea of a band’s “sound.”

If you ask  any one of us, we’ll likely just shrug at the idea of what our “sound” is.  We really have no clue.  We just kind of do it.  Our albums seem to have a feel to them sure but that feel can vary from album to album.  Put “Ashes in the Bong of God,” “Horns of Ammon”, and “Bag of Hammers”  side by side and they are quite different in tone.  People who may enjoy the lighter fare of HOA may find the heaviness of BOH off putting and the stoned out jams of ABG may just confuse both of the other two fans.

Lately though, because of BOH, we’ve found ourselves in the Stoner Rock category in many people’s minds.  I love Stoner Rock, so that’s totally cool but it also puts us in an odd place when we veer from that.  Take the upcoming summer release.  That’s gonna be as far away from Stoner Rock as you can get then, only a few months later, we’re gonna release a brain crushing heavy track about C’thulhu in drop C.  Will the Stoner Rock crowd abandon us in the summer?  And then, when we return to the heavy stuff in October, will it come off as calculated and/or be referred by this same group of fans as a “return to form?”  Will the folks who may like the summer release be off put by the fall release?  Etc.

In the end, it’s a moot point because we just kind of do stuff and see where the chips fall.  We don’t tour, we lack a cohesive easily marketable sound, and we sure as hell don’t have any plan to conquer the world (with the exception of Clinton’s obsession with Alien Arena). Locally speaking, we’ve been in Houston for 20 years now and everyone has seen us so many times that it’s no surprise that we hardly draw these days.  So, in the end, it’s kind of simple curiosity to wonder how people react to our amorphous nature because it’s not like we have people pounding on our door waiting for the new material.

Who we are is reflected in what the band is and what are we?  Just a bunch of dorky dudes from Houston with day jobs and that’s what we’ve always been – dorks.  That’s a point of pride.   We’re not rock stars, just dorks.    And even if we were total calculating business obsessed douchebags in the Gene Simmons mold, we’re frankly too stupid and stubborn to do things any other way but to follow our whims and be what we are.

So to get to the original question of what is our sound? The answer is it’s the sound of dudes getting together once a week, occasionally with friends, drinking beer and other mind influencing substances, and playing music together for fun.

 

 

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