Cleveland area Industrial/metal/punk type shit Joe Knotts(Captian Sobriety) - Bass Nick Briggs(Player2) - Programming/Vocals Matt Basham(basham) - Drums Joe Hope(Mr. Hope) - Guitars/Vocals Chapter 1 It all started as any great and epic tale starts. With a sammich. Way back in 1991, I was walking along water street in good ole Chardon ohio. I had my trusty skateboard under my arm, and somehow I had gotten twisted sisters "i wanna rock" stuck in my head. So I'm just walkin' along humming under my breath, when I hear from behind me "could you help a brotha' get a sammich?" I turned around and there was an old homeless looking black man standing behind me. I, as you could imagine, was truly stunned! A BLACK MAN??? In CHARDON??? Still in a state of complete complete and utter shock, reached into my pocket and came out with a dollar and 57 cents. I handed it to him and turned to keep going, when a humungous shadow fell over me. When I turned around the hobo-ninja, as I later came to call him, had turned into a two headed wicked awesome demon!! He said, in a deep and powerful voice, "YOU HAVE RENDERED A GREAT SERVICE TO A MINION OF THE LORD SATAN, HOW CAN I REPAY THIS GREAT DEBT?" I was flabbergasted!!! Of course then my ****ty little mind chose to remind me that I had a song stuck in my head, and in a weak and trembly voice I said "i wanna rock" He produced a hondo guitar out of thin air, and proceeded to show me how to hold a barre chord. Then he said "OKAY THAT'S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW" and disappeared in the direction of the chardon burger king. I went home and never told that story till this day, because while satans minions may be commonplace in these parts, noone would ever believe I saw a black guy in chardon. Chapter 2 Fast forward through several years, 5 bands, and a lotsa booze and nacotics. I ended up meeting Briggs, who had also been duped by a minion of satan, this time disguised as one of the Dimarco brothers. He had also been taught the barre chord. So we sat in my basement in maple hts. and played bad 80's songs for a while. But satans minions were not done with us yet. They led Briggs astray, and made him buy electronic equipment. I always knew lentines music store was evil. Then we wrote songs for several years and never played a show. Somewhere satan was giggling his ass off Chapter 3 Ahhh! Duped by satan again!!! This time he possesed my wife and convinced me to move back to chardon! Well anyway we decided we needed a drummer, and Briggs just happened to run into Basham, a drummer he had played with in a band called "****nose and the donkeys" He wasnt duped by satan or his minions, but he was plagued by money laudering strippers so we figured that was close enough. He got himself a house and we turned it into the Chemical Marriage compound, complete with machine gun turrets and a killer hound who goes by the name of "DEADLY FRED". And then we decided to get a bass player. So along comes Gadget, the king of the tools. Gadget loves tools. Gaqdget loves metal (both kinds). Gadget was eventually lured away from the band to worship THUNDER****, GOD OF THE TOOLS. Now he simply didn't have time for the band anymore, cus thunder**** required him to worship at sears hardware 24/7. Chapter 4: arent singers wunnerful I sing like ****. Unfortunately it took me damn near 15 years to realize this fact. We needed a singer, and being male, we decided that our vocalis should be female and , if at all possible, SMOKIN HOT!!! Ever tried to find that in cleveland? Good luck. The first one, whose name I can't remembertold us, and I quote, "I sing great" Then we heard her sing. Dear lord have you ever hear a woodchuck in a wood chipper? She mangled it worse than I did. Take britney spears, tie her down, and take a blowtorch and burn her feet off. That's kinda what she sounded like. NEXT. Jan. Jan was only 15. Jan thought she was awesome. Jan told me that she dressed like a prep, but she had a GOTH MIND!! NEXT!!! Another one whose name I can't remember. She was a good singer. She was SMOKIN HOT! She came over twice and moved to new orleans. ****! so we decided to stick briggs with the vocals. Only problem being his complete tone deafness. So it was time to ask SATAN for yet another bit of help. He gave me a recipe for "THE CURE FOR TONE DEAFNESS!!!!" It's not for the faint at heart, but here goes. It's a mixture of one part brahma bull semen, and one part Mickeys malt liquor. It worked like a charm, but as a side effect it made Briggs completely allergic to pussy. But can we make an omelet without breaking a few eggs? F**K NO!!! Chapter 5 So now, with Briggs newly non-tonedeaf, We set off to conquer the world. We called Eddie VanHalen to play guitar, but Briggs made some joke along the lines of "hey eddie, go get me a beer... And try not to get any cancer on it" He immediately quit the band and so we found this guy named "fro". Fro could fu*ckin shred. One day fro decided he was too good for this band. We bought a tour bus, strapped him to the top, and rolled it 37 times. Fro aint here no mo. So we still needed a bass player. And it just so happened a good friend of ours was a really good bass player! So we asked him to join and everything was hunky-dory! But this was not in satans master plan, so he took control of a car that our good buddy Joe was driving and took him on a 60mph drunken trailer park rampage. Joe, however, thwarted satans evil plan by becoming his alter-ego CAPTAIN SOBRIETY and flying off to safety. How could you go wrong with a guy like that?. So of course he's doing well. Everything goes well. Oh yeah, and "jan" showed up in the story again and Basham forgot all about the goth mind and hit it monkey style, but other than that, I'm done for now. Chapter 6 So now we've got everything in place for world domination right? So we do the next logical thing a band would do after almost 7 years and no album of any note so far. We started a production company! In Tense City productions!! Snazzy huh? So we came up with our very best attempts at a product line. First a TV series named "Dirk Briggler mall detective". We ,as consumers, thought this f*ckin' thing rocked. For some reason this didn't get picked up by ANY of the major networks!!! Time for our next great idea!! Sh*t. We didn't have any more. Someone at a show mentioned that if we're looking to rule the world an' sh*t, we should probably RECORD AN ALBUM and get our music out to the people. I personally was flabberghasted by this cutting edge idea. So Basham went out and spent thousands of dollars on recording equipment. F*ckin show off! And in a poof of smoke SATAN Descended apon in tense city studios and pronounced Basham guilty of both pride and gluttony! Two deadly sins in one f*ckin day man!!! As pennance satan said we had to put him on the album as a backing vocalist. Don't worry we turned him down in the mix. But, if you listen to track 3 backwards, you can hear satan babbling incoherently about gouda cheese. Don't ask. Chapter 6 (addendum) So I'm at work, makin the ole livin', and thinkin about the wicked awesome time I'm gonna have witnessing the mastering of our forthcoming album. About 11 or so I started to get really hungry! So I go to whip out the trusty ole wallet and see what kinda scratch I got for some serious grubbin. But alas!!! The wallet in question is sitting at home, and there is to be no grubbin' for me. Suddenly Satan appears in my work truck (in his usual puff of smoke) and started talking to me in a very un-satan-like way. He was being MR. CHARMING! he was worried about me! He wanted to know about the wife and kids! He wanted to know about my problems! Satan was a sympathetic ear! So I told him about the lunch dilemma, in a rare moment of weakness for ole Mr. Hope. So he pulls out his powerpuff girls lunchbox (no ****) and says "man I had a huge breakfst, I'm not that hungry. If you want, you can have my jalepeno cheesy beefy log. I know what your thinking. There's no way Mr. Hope will fall for the old beefy log trick! In my defense, I WAS REALLY HUNGRY. This is some sort of sausage, stuffed with some sort of cheesy Jalepeno stuff, and wrapped in bagel dough baked a deep, delicious looking brown... So I'm in beefy log heaven right? I finished the beefy log and I hafta say it was beefy AND delicious. Then I felt a shaking in the truck seat. I looked over at Satan and he was laughing. And then he disappeared. I had been had! So it was about a half an hour later when a 9 foot flame shot out of my ass. And it was shortly followed by a liquid fire pile of **** the likes of which you, no doubt have never seen. This continued for several hours. So I called Basham and said "uh, hey man I uh...PLTTTTPLBTBTBTBTOHGOD!!!pltttltltpltttt. I don't think I'm gonna PLLLLPLPLPTTTTTYPLTPLT!!! make it to the uhplttttpltpltpltptlptlptlp. And that my friends is why I missed the mastering. Chapter 7 And still we have no album ready. Of course we do have a valid excuse,as usual. So I'm tyring to build this house right. If you've given any thought to trying to build a house, DON'T! Anywho, I'm trying to stack some 2x6's And Satan came walking up and cupped my left buttock. So naturally I freak and drop **** and break my fn finger. As if that wasn't enough he then traveled back in time and erased the day that Basham learned the number 4. Rockin is tough sometimes. Chapter 8 And so the Quest for the bestest album ever contiues. After A long recording process, a failed mastering attempt (of course due to satanic intervention), we finally decided that we were gonna have to find a way to rid ourselves of all this pesky satanic nonsense. A call to GOD was now in order. So I Dropped god an e-mail describing our problem and eagerly awaited a response. And waited. And waited. And waited... Time to take a more direct route. Calling heaven isn't easy. First you have to talk to Jimmy Swaggart for 6 hours, and send him $213,000.00 as a token of your faith. Then he puts you on hold for another 3 hours or so, during which you're sujected to listening to a MUZAK version of "onward christian soldiers". Finally GOD himself picked up and the conversation went something like this. GOD:Hello my son Joe:um, yeah, hey did you get my e-mail? GOD:get your e-mail....uuuum. well ya know very busy lately uuuh. Well you know isreal and all that middle east thing, very taxing. what was your name again? I can't seem to find....ummm. This was about the time that I realized that GOD, much like myself, deletes his e-mail without reading them. So I called hell instead. Again I was put on hold, This time to A MUZAK version of some Morissey tune. And thus I had my second realization. Satan is a raging homosexual. So finally finishing our recording process without Satans intervention turned out to be as easy as dressing Briggs in a pair of ass-less chaps, and we were free to do our thing. We get the album recorded, satan gets to chase a terrified Briggs in ass-less chaps, and Briggs gets all the exercise he needs to look good in said attire. Everybody wins!