Evil Sword - Basket Fever

There used to be a whole bunch of them, some playing music and more doing I don’t even know what. Banging pots and pans around, climbing up and down ladders, throwing garbage out of a sack, reciting their lines and performing strange dances. Now it’s down to just two, but they’re still throwing things and flashing lights in your eyes, so it’s not all that different than before. The thing is, there’s hardly any instruments in this group, but they make such a racket you’d never know it. The bass and the percussion sound like they’re having a great time, telling each other jokes. Then the words come in and it all locks together in these strange, hypnotic rhythms. I just listen to the stories and laugh and cry and get scared and wonder what they were ever thinking.

It took them a long time to make this record, with all the tracks and the special effects or whathaveyou. Electrocuted bells, backwards parts, rusty horns; I’m pretty sure I even heard a clarinet in there somewhere. There’s this one part where it all seems to come back around, where they took some gang vocals from the very first demo they ever recorded and slowed it way down. I remember when they first started; I thought they were some goofy kids making music about the end of the world, back when that seemed a little further away, like it was going to be fun. They were all laughing and making these funny ghost sounds, but now everyone’s older and the ghosts are real, a great whoosh of bygone spirits and cold air. It’s bone chilling.

The last one is a drinking song, a goodbye to a lost time. It reminds me of a place we used to call the Great Wild, a big open field full of flowers and weeds and thorns and animals. Me and my friend Criminy Yickett would sit on the porch all day, watching the vegetation bob in the wind with all those squirrels and weasels prancing around until it got dark and the fireflies came out. It’s gone now; when I look out there I just see a kind of hazy gray emptiness instead. I don’t know why. It could just be me going blind, and sometimes I hope that’s what it is. Criminy keeps telling me I should be angry about it, maybe do something unsavory I'd later regret, but I just tell him no like always, and stare out into the void and whistle a song to myself. Because that’s the power of music, it can dispel the bitterness. There’s plenty to be upset about, but it’s not really an Evil Sword song until that grimace has been twisted up into a smile.

- Old Man Yumble

I wish I went to MCA with people like this.

         -Cole

This sounds like AAAGH! Real Monsters music. 

          -Cole's Coworker