Singled Out: Society 1's As I Die

Keavin Wiggins | 05-19-2022

Album cover art

Society 1 recently released a video for their new single "As I Die" and to celebrate we asked frontman Matt Zane to tell us about the track, which comes from their new album, "Black Level Six," and co-written by Zane and late bassist DV Karloff. Here is the story:

"As I Die" was actually a left over song from the "Black Level Six" sessions. When we originally recorded the track DV "Dirt" Karloff (former bassist) really wasn't that into it. It was decided to be left off the album at the time.

After DV's passing when I was putting all the necessary elements into place for the albums release I didn't hear a radio friendly track throughout the 13 songs. I remembered that I really liked the chorus on one of the songs that didn't make it to the mixing phase. I dove into the pro tools session one night and went through the tracks until coming across As I Die and gave it another listen. I remember that I really liked it despite DV's opinion which is kind of amusing because he actually wrote the music on that one.

Black Level Six is an experimental album. The idea was to ask the question, "What would a Society 1 album sound like if we recorded it in 1994 in a similar way that Nirvana recorded In Utero?" We heard they recorded the album in 6 days with Steve Albini and of course this was before Pro Tools. So some rules were set up for us such as "no vocal tune" and "no copying and pasting vocals." We actually recorded the album in about a week.
We kept to our rules for the initial mixes done by Greg Hetson of the Circle Jerks but for As I Die I broke them to get more of that polished sound. I figured DV get's 13 tracks the way he wanted so I can get 1 a bit more "produced". Besides it was so cool going into the studio to work on the track hearing his bass lines come into the vocal booth. It was like we were working on one more song together.

Shortly after I had a dream that DV received a weekend pass from death. He came back to the land of the living and we hit the road for the weekend to play a few shows. It was a blast, just like old times. I figured he wouldn't have come back to play a few dream shows if he didn't like what I did with 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 album here