Singled Out: Curse Mackey's After You, Destruction

05-02-2019

Curse Mackey (Evil Mothers, Pigface, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult) is releasing his new solo album "Instant Exorcism" on May 10th and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the song "After You, Destruction." Here is the story:

"After You, Destruction" was the second song developed for my album INSTANT EXORCISM. It began as a late-night, synth recording session at Scary American Studio in Austin, TX with engineer Charles Godfrey and I just raging on our synths for a couple of hours. I then reviewed that improvisational session and created some loops that would become the foundation of the song. I knew the overall mood would be of a dystopian, science fiction nature. One in which relationships become more difficult, personal identity and privacy are even more challenged, and all is not what it seems...man, woman, machine converging in provocative ways.

At this time, I also re-watched the movie "Nineteen Eighty-Four" which struck me as more relevant than ever. I sampled some dialog from the movie to spark my creativity and to give the song's narrative a starting-point. To flesh out the lyrics I envisioned myself within this "1984" dystopian atmosphere struggling to maintain sanity, critical relationships and a grip on my version of reality. All the protagonist wants is to find "peace, love and understanding", while society's overwhelming social-media power and influence persecutes individualism and individual thinking on both a political and personal level leaving one in a volatile, vulnerable state.

My album has tons of synth work on it and this song has some of my best work. Once I brought the fleshed out composition back to Charles Godfrey to record vocals and additional synths we decided to really go next level. Our friends in Austin, Texas have a company called Worshiper Cabinets. These are hands down the most doom-centric, bowel-shaking bass and guitar cabinets I have ever heard. They weigh a ton! Worshiper make custom cabinets for some of the best doom, sludge acts on the planet and they were super game to help. So we routed my Korg Minilogue synth through an Ampeg SVT4 Pro amp into a Worshiper 8 x 10" bass cab and a 2 x 15" cabinet using a Sennheiser 421 mic and it just sounds brutal and beautiful. When I listen back to this song, I am so happy with the sound of the synths and how much grit and teeth they have. Sonically, this song is all about destroying the dance floor and pushing speakers to their maximum capacity. My co-producer Chase Dobson really hit the mark on the final mix creating a very modern sounding, post-industrial, dystopian dance-floor masterpiece. It's a shredder and a definite key foundation piece within the INSTANT EXORCISM album.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself right here!