Our Stupidly Class Ideas Part II

'Jetzt mit mehr Scheißegespräch! Und Philly!'

We Respect You

Joe: It's funny: you'd think we would have got Ronny Cox out of our systems after OCP, but no. His coolness is too great.

Lyrically this was kind of an opportunity to talk about people we totally respect and love who aren't necessarily your usual GB subject matter.

Steve Gutenberg or Michael J Fox, for example. Can't really write a song about Police Academy, can we?

By the way Domo's amazing line of vocals is: "Peter Falk can walk the walk, he talks it like it is."
Musically, this came form more of a Slayer vein I think. The stabs at the start and post solo are very "So Far, So Good, So What?"-ish, with the winding lead lick running up the neck.
PS. Singing about Michael Biehn is cool.

Apocalypse 1997

Philly:
I’m a huge fan of George Orwell, and of course that comes with Nineteen Eighty-Four, which inspired this track. 

I’m actually in such awe of that book that I think we’re not worthy to directly write a song about it (and besides, other thrash bands have tried and made a pig’s ear of it), so I took half the ideas from it and shoveled it into an alternate reality of our own.
It’s a retro-futurist story, set in 1997, which is a year that often cropped up in science fiction (Terminator, Escape from New York et al) as a year of cataclysmic importance. So it’s in our past, but it’s also the future. It’s about mind control, behaviour control and how humans have forgotten how to interact normally. Then of course you’ve got the ‘breaking away’ vibe going too.
The chorus references I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. Escape from New York, Tim Burton’s Batman (Shoot to kill / you know what I mean?) and even Mr. Burns’ ‘Unleash the hounds’ are in there, too.
Joe:
Scott kept asking us where all the break down/ mosh riffs were on the album, as he felt we were kinda short on them. I personally think we have loads, and am always wary of adding things to the songs for the sake of it. Scott is a great producer, but when you start changing your songs for anyone, be it labels or producers, then you're admitting that your ideas aren't good enough.

Return To Blood Castle

Philly:
The title came to Paul on the toilet one day, and the idea behind it was to make a sequel song to Steel Teeth (The Metal Jaw) off our first album.
It’s about a gang of peasants doing the classic ‘let’s go get the monster’ scenario on Steel Teeth, a posh cannibal who terrorises their presumably Romanian-looking village. It’s quite a gory little penny dreadful, this one. 

They shave his head and burn him to death, which is nice.
We normally hate the idea of sequel songs because they’re generally so flimsy, and it’s because we hate them and laugh at them that we wrote and recorded one. The irony is getting out of hand over here.
Joe:
Like Philly said, this song is a sequel of sorts to a song from Survival of the Fastest, and musically I think it sounds like it. A bit slower than usual and more hooky. The chorus originally had a cool lead lick on top of it that got ditched in the mix. It's kind of weird, when we play songs from SOTF or similar sounding stuff it live, the crowd takes a break from the moshing.

I don't know if it's because they're tired or if they are addicted to speed. Probably the latter.



Polterghost

Joe:
This ended up being a very fitting tribute to Zelda Rubinstein (who played the medium in the film) as she died around the same date as the album was released.
I think we really flexed our riffing muscles on this one, it's speedy as fuck but also quite technical.

One of Domo's requests for this LP was for a more varied approach to solo backing, so I really went to town here trying to expand it out as much as you can in a 2 minute song.

There's quite a different feel to the lead guitar work on Tales. I think Domo was consciously trying to slow things down a tad, and you can really hear the Gary Moore in there, which you don't hear to often in new thrash.

Skeletron

Philly: I woke up one morning and swung my legs out of bed, and as my feet touched the floor the word ‘Skele-tron’ popped ready-made into my head. It was just such a cool name for a song. I did a bit of googling and saw that, of course, it had already been used as the name for a Marvel Comics side-character from their Secret Wars storyline. As if we cared.
Basically, it’s a song about the future repercussions of our societies’ internet addiction. We talk crap all day, inflate ourselves to heroic proportions, fight petty imaginary battles and make invisible friends, but in the real world we’ve achieved nothing. 

It’s about all that stuff. This song really came together at the last minute, as we were pretty worried it was over-long and ungainly, but the outro with the robot voice actually saved it in the end, at least for me. It’s great fun.
Joe: The end of this song is the second B.O.C reference on tales. Check out the end of their song black blade to see what I mean.


Mummy Invasion

Joe:
Man, 'Drop your Choc Dip as you look outside' is my favorite line on the album. A Choc Dip, as you may know, is a shitty snack treat here in the UK. The idea of eating one in the morning is hilarious.

During the vocal recordings, Scott kept saying "Outside is amazing!" every time Philly went over that verse.
Much scoffing about being homeless ensued.
Another totally collaborative songwriting effort, kind of pinpoints where we are creatively at the moment as it was the last song written for the album.

Old school riffing, a real punky chorus and a feeling of total urgency. I don't think the intro riff makes it live though, it seems too laborious compared to the rest of the song. It's kinda like the start of atomizer.