Singled Out: Speedfreak's Doomsday Devices

Keavin Wiggins | 05-11-2023

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Speedfreak recently released their latest single and video called "Doomsday Devices". We asked Kevin Kelly to tell us about the song to celebrate. Here is the story:

"Doomsday Devices" was one of the last songs to be written when we were putting together the Fast Lane Livin' record, and it came together pretty quickly from what I remember. When we were writing that album, the band was living and rehearsing in a house that we affectionately dubbed 'The Garbaj-Mahal'. It was next to a brewery and at the end of a block that dead-ended into the highway, so we could be as loud as we wanted and never worry about the neighbors calling the cops. The place was a dump, but we really had a blast there. It was pretty much two years of non-stop rehearsing and partying. On any given day, you could show up to the Garbaj-Mahal and come in (we usually left the doors unlocked since our friends would just climb in through the windows if we tried to lock them out) to find us jamming in the dining room, or hanging out at the bar that we installed in the kitchen.

Tom, our singer, used to say moving into that house was "the best bad decision we ever made", and he'd been kicking around the lyric "quarter-life crisis" for a while to describe our mindset when we decided to move in. Steve had been noodling around with what would become the main riff in "Doomsday Devices", and we had a different verse riff initially, but it still didn't feel right. Eventually, we stripped it down to those chords, and I started picking them with an upstroke because I liked that it sounded that much grittier and nastier. Once we got into that groove, Tom was able to come up with the rest of the lyrics right away, and we were able to jam out the rest of the song.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here