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These are miscellaneous recordings and pieces of demos I've collected over the years. Most are very early versions of songs or pieces of music that would later become songs. There are also unreleased songs and alternate versions of "official" material along with radio interviews and rare rehearsal tapes. The sound-quality varies from file to file, but each played an important part in the development of the band over the years. |
| Right-click on the titles below to download an individual song. If you'd like to download all of the clips, right-click and save the 5 zip files below. | ||
| Part 1 Pre-ANACRUSIS through Suffering Hour Part 2 Reason-era Part 3 Manic Impressions-era Part 4 Screams and Whispers-era Part 5 Post-ANACRUSIS |
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| Part 1 Pre-ANACRUSIS through Suffering Hour |
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The Twisted Cross (Heaven's Flame 1986 Demo) These songs come from the last HEAVEN'S FLAME demo and were recorded only a couple months before I began playing in ANACRUSIS. This was a very informal demo to see how some of the newer songs sounded so we didn't even use a 4-track for this one. The music was all tracked "live" to a cassette deck. I then ran the music through our practice mixer and we just did the vocals straight through karaoke-style. "The Twisted Cross" and "Fighting Evil" were both recorded for ANACRUSIS' debut album and "Before the Storm" was later re-worked as "Quick to Doubt" for the REASON album. HEAVEN'S FLAME was a band I formed in High School with my older brother Sam on bass. In 1985 we replaced our 3rd member with future-ANACRUSIS drummer Chad Smith who would later join ANACRUSIS in 1990 for the MANIC IMPRESSIONS album. My brother and I shared vocal duties in the band and though the song "Fighting Evil" was written by me, Sam sang it in HEAVEN'S FLAME and on this version. We played several shows around the St. Louis area in 1985 and 1986. A highlight was opening for my then-favorite band METAL CHURCH as they toured for their 1st album in November of 1985. I even got my LP order-form autographed by singer David Wayne (R.I.P.) during soundcheck. Butcher's Block (Heaven's Flame-Nashville, TN 1986) These songs come from HEAVEN'S FLAME's only out-of-town gig. We traveled to Nashville in March of 1986 along with another St. Louis band for one show. "Vulture's Prey" was recorded for the ANNIHILATION COMPLETE demos and later became the foundation for the song "Brotherhood?" on our last album. "The Twisted Cross"" and Butcher's Block" were both recorded for the SUFFERING HOUR album. "In the Wild" was a very early HEAVEN'S FLAME song that was later re-worked to become "Child Inside" on the REASON album.
Apocalypse (Heaven's Flame-St. Louis, MO 1986) This recording comes from a live video of the band head-lining a local show in March of 1986. It was one of the last shows before the band broke up. Kevin and John were in the crowd that night along with other friends who would later go on to form the band TRIBES WITH KNIVES. "Apocalypse" appeared on both versions of the ANNIHILATION COMPLETE demo and was performed at a few early ANACRUSIS shows.
Without a Second Chance (Heaven's Flame 1986 demo) Most of this song would later be re-worked as the song "Silent Crime" on the REASON album. This comes from one of the last demos the band recorded before splitting up.
Motorbreath-Metallica cover (1986 rehearsal) When I joined the band in 1986, the guys only had 2 songs written; “Pendulum” and “Frigid Bitch”. We hadn't’t yet tuned our guitars down to B, which made playing any HEAVEN’S FLAME material out of the question, so in order to have songs to play together we learned “Am I Evil” and “Motorbreath” and would play both repeatedly at practices. We even played “Motorbreath” live at the end of our 1st full show. This 1986 recording comes from an early rehearsal around the time we recorded our very 1st 2-song demo.
Apocalypse (1986 rehearsal) This is a board recording of an old HEAVEN'S FLAME song recorded through our mixing-board at rehearsal shortly after I joined the band.
Powerhouse (1987 rehearsal) More early rehearsal recordings from 1987. The 1st three are all HEAVEN'S FLAME songs. This is one of the only recordings (with vocals) of the song "No More Voices". This was recorded during an early rehearsal, probably for our 1st show. "Vulture's Prey" features some friendly heckling from future TRIBES WITH KNIVES guitarist/vocalist Adam Marfisi and bassist Michael Dorlac.
Choke on 'em/Disemboweled (movie sample for 1987 demos) John and I came up with a couple riffs one day at band practice. The style and tempo were similar to the opening section of Kevin's "Annihilation Complete", so I decided to just use it as an intro to that song. Since there were no words, we needed a title and I joking suggested "What else? "Disemboweled". The title stuck and we recorded it on both versions of the ANNIHILATION COMPLETE demos. I decided this intro would sound better if I added some sound-effects. We used to watch a lot of horror/splatter films at the time and I decided to take the scene from "Day of the Dead" where one of the main characters is finally torn to pieces by zombies. They proceed to eat his innards as he tauntingly instructs them to "choke on 'em". For the 1st demo, I put the audio before the song, but on the second version it over-lays the music and provides some add a creepy atmosphere when the background music happens to line-up with the riffs. This was purely accidental and the result of back-timing the clip so that his final "choke on 'em" would come just before the break. When we record the SUFFERING HOUR album, "Annihilation" was moved to the closing song and we tagged "Disemboweled" onto the end as an "outro". Not wanting to get into any legal trouble we omitted the movie clip from the recording and I instead screamed the "choke on 'em, choke on 'em". So, for anyone not familiar with the movie, I have included the original clip along with portions of all 3 versions of the song.
A World to Gain (unfinished Annihilation Complete demo) These 4 songs are unfinished demos from the 2nd version of the ANNIHILATION COMPLETE demo recorded in 1987. After tracking the drums and basic guitar parts we decided to trim the number of songs to 9 and these were never finished. "Powerhouse" was another HEAVEN'S FLAME as was “The Twisted Cross” which, along with "A World to Gain", would later appear on our debut album SUFFERING HOUR. "No More Voices" was performed at several early gigs, but was never included on any demo or album.
N.I.B. (1988 rehearsal) This recording was made at a band rehearsal in ate 1987. We performed this BACK SABBATH cover several early gigs during 1987 & 1988.
Acoustic Riffs (1987) This recording has me piecing together several bits of music on an acoustic guitar, some of which were not used until several years later. You can hear parts of "Present Tense", "Silent Crime" and even "Brotherhood?".
Present Tense (album rehearsal) This is from a tape of drummer Mike Owen and me running through the SUFFERING HOUR songs just before heading into the studio. We were having fun and goofing off quite a bit as tried covering all the guitar parts. This is the way we had tracked the demos; with only me playing along as we recorded the drums. This tape was recorded on a jam-box in Kevin's basement and you can hear me goofing around and singing parts of "Fighting Evil" right into the tape-recorder. Mike said it was easier to keep his place in the song if I played the solo rather than the rhythm part during the middle section, so I sloppily obliged. When we actually did go into the studio, the rhythm tracks were all recorded with the 4 of us playing "live" together.
N.I.B.-Black Sabbath cover (Suffering Hour out-take) These are two songs we recorded during the SUFFERING HOUR sessions, but never released. “N.I.B.” is a BLACK SABBATH song from their debut album. We played this song live at many early shows and decided to run through it quickly for possible inclusion on the album. The music was recorded in one take with the solos and vocals recorded quickly thereafter. "The Munsters Theme" was basically a rough copy-cat of a version done by a band called THE WHITE PIGS and was something drummer Mike Owen and I jokingly messed around with at rehearsals. We would occasionally play it during sound check so people waiting for the show to begin wouldn’t hear us playing anything from the show. The whole album was tracked and mixed in less than a week, so we didn’t have much time to spend on these songs. "The Munsters Theme" was basically recorded just for fun and we never intended to include it on SUFFERING HOUR. Since we were unsure of how to go about getting permission to use the BLACK SABBATH song (and since the idea of a metal band lumping a cover-tune onto the end of their album was becoming a cliché) we ultimately decided not to include it.
Suffering Hour Radio Interview (KSHE-95 1988) This is an interview Kevin did for the metal show which aired on one of St. Louis' biggest radio stations throughout the 1980s. Kevin discusses the first album and how ended up being signed to a British label. |
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| Part 2 REASON-era |
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Wrong (original acoustic demo) I came up with the music for "Wrong" from the REASON album at home one day with a head-cold. Since my guitar and amp were Kevin's house where we rehearsed, I wrote the song on a cheap acoustic guitar. Not wanting to forget it, I worked out the basic arrangement and tracked it on a jam-box to listen back to later. This is the very rough (and sloppy) original demo of the song, coughing and sniffles included. After showing the guys the riffs and a very basic arrangement, we tracked this rough demo in Kevin's basement. I then took the tape and "spliced" it together using the pause button of my dual cassette deck to re-arrange the parts. This is what I would later listen to in order to come up with lyrics and the vocal arrangement. After showing the guys the riffs and a very basic arrangement, we tracked this rough demo in Kevin's basement. I then took the tape and "spliced" it together using the pause button of my dual cassette deck to re-arrange the parts. This is what I would later listen to in order to come up with lyrics and the vocal arrangement.
Early in 1989 we recorded the "Quick To Doubt" demo. Before entering the studio to record the REASON album, we had written a few more songs which were never fully demoed. These recordings are from a basement rehearsal a few weeks before entering the studio and are rough versions of the basic tracks. "Killing My Mind" is only the new sections that were added the song "Pendulum". "Stop Me" was pieced together from 2 separate run-throughs of the song. "Afraid To Feel" and "Misshapen Intent" are very rough early arrangements with vocals done later on a 4-track. Some of the lyrics are different and both songs contain only a single verse repeated throughout. These rough recordings were thrown together for my use in finishing the final songs for the album and were never heard by the other members of the band.
Child Inside (early demo) Sometimes I had to be creative while writing new material. At the time "Child Inside" was written, I did not have access to a drum-machine or 4-track, so in order to hear how the song would sound, I would sometimes splice together pieces of existing drum tracks having similar patterns to what I imagined for the new song. In this case, I took the drums tracks from "Fighting Evil" and "No More Voices" from the ANNIHILATION COMPLETE demo and (using the pause button on a dual cassette recorder) pieced together the basic arrangement of the song. I then recorded the guitar parts over it bouncing back and forth in dubbing mode and playing each part over the existing tracks.
Stop Me (original album mix) This is the original version of the album mixed by our engineer. We were not happy at all with the final results and we later returned to the studio where I re-mixed the whole album in one all-night session. One thing to note is that "Stop Me" and "Terrified" contain the musical "noises" and sound-effects that we intended to tie the first 2 songs together with on the album. Due to the lack of time when the songs were re-mixed, this was all left off of the final version. I have applied EQ and quite a bit of compression to these tracks in an attempt to bring out the guitars and to restrain the drums which were very loud in the mix.
This is an interview Kevin did for the "Monday Night Metal" show around the time of our 2nd album REASON.
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| Part 3 MANIC IMPRESSIONS-era |
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| Part 4 SCREAMS and WHISPERS-era |
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This is the original demo for the song and has a couple notable differences. Instead of the phase-shifter guitar notes over the main riff, I had originally intended to have these "metallic" tones which were created by plucking the string very close to the bridge. Also, the guitar solo section was to be a bass "solo" section similar to the 3rd verse in the song "Imprisoned".
This instrumental demo is the first recording I made of the song and contains an extra riff that I removed before finalizing the arrangement.
When I originally recorded this version, the idea was to possibly use is as a foundation for a drum "solo", where rather than simply bashing away alone, Chad could play along to pre-recorded orchestral accompaniment while improvising different variations of the basic drum patterns. After Chad left the band, I decided to join this music with the structure from "Vulture's Prey" to create the song "Brotherhood?".
Most of the material for our last album was written with Chad Smith while he was still in the band. These songs were recorded early in 1992 while working on new material for the SCREAMS AND WHISPERS album. You can hear how we would often work through new songs a piece at a time.
This was the 1st version I recorded of this "Screams and Whispers" song. The "clean" guitars in the verse were later changed as were some of the drum patterns.
This is the untitled song written for the SCREAMS AND WHISPERS album, but abandoned during the recording sessions. The 1st clip is the music-only demo recorded by me using a drum-machine. The 2nd clip was recorded with drummer Chad Smith during rehearsal while writing material for the album. It is the only other recording that exists of this SCREAMS AND WHISPERS-era song.
These rough mixes were done in the St. Louis recording studio where the album was tracked. I had just finished laying vocals down of a few songs and we were rushing to have a couple mixes to play for an up-coming radio segment we were scheduled to do. I believe the vocals for "Driven", "Sound the Alarm" and possible "Release" were all re-recorded and are slightly different than the album versions of the songs.
Monday Night Metal In-Studio Interview (KSHE-95 Dec 1, 1992) This was a special edition of the "Monday Night Metal" program where 2 of the K-SHE DJs did a live broadcast of the show from the recording studio where we were working on the SCREAMS and WHISPERS album. The show was recorded near the end of the recording sessions and featured several interview segments with band members and even our engineer on the air. The show also featured rough mixes of "Sound the Alarm" and "Driven".
This is the original version of the SCREAMS AND WHISPERS album done in the studio we recorded the songs in. We were very unhappy with the overall sound, mainly due to the equipment we had to mix with. A few weeks after finishing the album we booked a couple weeks at Royal Recorders in Lake Geneva, WI. This is the studio we recorded MANIC in and the facility had top-notch gear and a fully-automated mixing console, which was needed particularly for some of the more complicated songs which featured keyboard orchestration. Legendary Metal Blade producer Bill Metoyer also came in to help with the re-mix.
Brotherhood?-edit (unreleased edited version) This was a shortened version of the song that we edited for possible inclusion on the SCREAMS and WHISPERS album. For this arrangement, most of the keyboard sections were edited out, leaving only the intro and verses. This is the version that we intended to play live, though it was only performed once as the opening song at our CD release show. There is no copy of the original studio edit which was done by literally cutting and splicing a mixed-down recording of the song, I have re-created it here from the album version. |
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| Part 5 Post-ANACRUSIS |
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This demo was recorded on a 4-track with me playing everything on a cheap Casio keyboard. I re-arranged the song for guitars only and recorded it for the 1994 TRIBES WITH KNIVES demo, but later recorded my own version closer to the style of this original version.
These two recording were done in early 1994 while I was experimenting with arranging some of the old ANACRUSIS material for "orchestral" keyboard accompaniment. These are drums & keyboard only.
This was the 1st new song I wrote after the break-up of ANACRUSIS. It was written on acoustic guitar and this original version was recorded with standard tuning. Later when I re-recorded it along with some other new songs I used a drop-B tuning like we had used in ANACRUSIS.
This is the original keyboard version of the song recorded on a 4-track cassette multi-track recorder.
This was always one of my favorite TRIBES WITH KNIVES SONGS and appeared on their 1st demo in 1990 and also on their 1994 debut album YOU MAY SAFELY GRAZE. When I joined the band for several shows after the break-up of ANACRUSIS, this was one of the songs I sang live. This recording was done during the recording of the 1994 TRIBES WITH KNIVES demos which I played and sang on, but was not intended to be included with those songs. I programmed the drums and had Michael and Adam quickly record their bass and guitar parts. I later tracked the other guitar and vocals at home.
This was another song recorded for the 1994 TRIBES WITH KNIVES demo. Lyrics and bass lines were never written and this song went unfinished.
By the time I had begun playing in TRIBES WITH KNIVES and we began to put together material for a 2nd TWK album, I had already written and recorded a few new songs. Among the songs we tracked were 3 of my new songs; “Anew”, “The Telling Skies” and “Kingdom of Spring”. We felt that only "Kingdom of Spring" fit with the band's style, so the other two songs were never completed. Later, after TWK split up, I recorded my own versions of these songs for my 1994-1995 demos.
This in another old ANACRUSIS song that I re-arranged and recorded for my 1994-1995 demos, but never tracked vocals on.
Another early version of this song recorded using a drum-machine and keyboards.
Another new song recorded for my 1994-1994 demos. I never finished writing lyrics for this one and it was never completed.
Sometime in the late 90s, a fan-compilation CD was being organized through NMA's message board. I recorded these 2 songs on my PC and submitted them for possible inclusion. I don't know if the CD was ever completed or released and at the time of this writing, I was unable to find any information online. "No Greater Love" was a song I had considered covering in ANACRUSIS, but instead decided to do "I Love the World". This song comes from their 2nd album NO REST FOR THE WICKED and "Living in the Rose" comes from the bands 1993 album THE LOVE OF HOPELESS CAUSES.
Drinking a Drown (Cruel April alternate mix) These are stripped-down alternate versions of a few of the songs from the CRUEL APRIL CD recorded in 2006. These songs were all recorded on my PC at home during 2005 and 2006. Originally I had hoped to form anew band with ANACRUSIS-bassist John Emery called CRUEL APRIL. We had planned to try out some of my new material live by doing a few local shows, but after the band was assembled, outside distractions and personal responsibilities derailed the idea. The full CD of songs can be downloaded in the "Albums" section of this website.
Submerged (Cruel April-2007) I continued to write and record new material throughout 2006 and 2007. After tracking another 10 or 12 new songs, I decided to assemble another collection of music entitled "Creve Coeur". Though I did complete all of the music for these songs, only about half of them were ever completed with vocal tracks. These 3 are among that 2nd group of songs.
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