The Recording of "Let's Break Their Arms" (DEMOS)

The day I went to Logan Huber’s Antioch, Illinois home to record our debut album  (EDIT: the album was RE recorded in January of 2013), I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Things like “is it going to sound better than the scratch recordings?” “are we going to fail miserably?” were all things going through my head at the time. I was greeted at the corner of the street where the house was situated, and we went into the house. I briefly said hello to his dad, and we went into the basement. All of his parts (drums & guitars) with the exception of a few guitar licks were already recorded so there was plenty of time to jam before I recording the bass parts.



During “The Big Cheese” (at least I think it was), my left thumb was pointing up the neck of the bass for what ever reason, so when I slid my hand down to get to the first fret, I split the tip of my thumb open on the “E” tuning machine. It bled quite a bit but nothing was going to stop us from seizing this day that we had waited for for so long. A MAMMOTH TASK doesn’t even describe what we went through to get this far so when the opportunity presented itself to get this album done, we were on it like flies on dog shit. I began to track bass at around 1:00 PM starting with the heavily bass oriented “Overnight Headaches” and then going back to the first track “The Big Cheese” and onward through each song one after the next much like playing a live set. Every now and again I would f*** up so we’d have to track over a part of a song several times until I got it right. But there’s nothing special about that. What was funny that I’ll always remember is Logan saying “hold it, holdd itttt” after I’d hit the last note of a song. I think I stood up from the computer chair I was in probably once the whole time we were tracking bass (Just to put that into perspective – we started at 1:00 PM and didn’t have the first CD completed until after 1:00 AM).



When we played it back, we thought the bass sounded a little boomy, but figured it was just the shitty desktop speakers we were using. We left the “Mom’s Basement Studio” and crashed in the little living room thingy next door while watching something shitty on MTV. Fun fact: I slept on a 3 and a half foot long love seat and Logan slept on an air mattress that wouldn’t hold air. By morning my back and legs didn’t work anymore and Logan’s ass was on the linoleum. Worst nights sleep ever. When we finally staggered to his room, we decided to listen to the recording we created the previous day. When we put the CD into the CD player, we immediately noticed the bass was UNGODFULLY LOUD. OI. Besides that, it was the greatest thing ever. Because it was us. Our first review came from Logan’s brother. As we listened, a slight grin came over his face from the corner of the room where he was seated, and then 2 words that will always stick with me. 2 words that will always apply to this band.



“This Sucks.”


Those 2 words still haven’t left me. I got home that afternoon, played a couple of the songs on the stereo, picked up a bass and played through a few of them, then swore I never wanted to hear any of them again as long as I lived. And now, at the present day, I love the album dearly for all the sentiment it holds. The look on other people’s faces when they listen to it may be one of horror and dismay, but the look on ours is usually a grin as we proudly exclaim:



“It sucks, doesn’t it!”

WHAT'S UP WITH US?

Well, besides trying to find musicians in our area willing to put on skinny jeans play songs about being angry, Logan thinks his ankles are sexy and he just finished an intense 709 page coloring book, and I yelled at some weird middle aged woman today because her kids are evil. What interesting lives us punk rockers live. 

The hunt to find friends is still not working out too well though...

-Chris 

UPDATE

So as some might know, Anything we've ever recorded features Logan playing the guitar and the drums because we've never had a drummer (2 years as a "band" without a drummer seems crazy but as a studio band with a guitar player/drummer it works, right?). Well that might change soon. Logan did a little bit of searching and found a drummer that everyone says is pretty good (and he liked what he heard off the album). We have yet to audition him and hear him play, but we're hoping he's awesome and fits right in.

Keeping our fingers crossed.