Black Sheep Riot, "I Wanna Kill Your Father"
Some kind of "coincidence" has gathered very close in my production line two songs that are very unlike each other, but somehow both very similar to Dead Kennedys' "California Über Alles".
This one was written 2 years before "Zombie Barf", and in a very different frame of mind; one of the "moods" I get into when I try to write a little linear punk song is a persona I would call "the moron with a stick". Such moron was within me this time when I grabbed the guitar. All I knew was that it had to sound stupid, frontal, obtuse, as unequivocal as a stone hitting in the face ("Oh, a stone in my face... I wonder what is he implying...") All of this while keeping things humorous and far fetched, of course; humor is one of the most subversive tools I know.
So the guitar was played almost as a percussion instrument I intended to break (therefore the retarded, semitone-after-semitone, monotone riff, the first thing that came up, no time for complexity, too busy being aggressive), and the "seed" for the lyrics came pretty fast too: I wanna kill your father, I wanna kill your mother... And why would that be? Well, obvious conclusion: because they shouldn't have had an asshole like you. Such message, in the song, was crammed and poorly expressed, but of course you wouldn't try to point that out to a moron with a stick, would you? :P
Then there came other some more bits about mocking the randomness and futility of violence (who hasn't wanted to kill someone else's chiropractor in a fit of rage?).
I'm sorry for the production, which is very crude. I'm not a mixer, and I think I reached in the mix a state of "house of cards", afraid of tweaking anything else. Production-wise, however, I'm quite proud of what I have learned about flanger and that stuff; I knew I wanted that characteristic "plane taking off" sound in the guitars, but, alas: given that a flanger, precisely, is an effect based in sweeping the whole frequency range, I ran into all kind of problems, and tried all kind of solutions (using phaser instead, putting the flanger in the vocal harmonies instead -don't ask-...) Luckily, in those days I started to listen to Morbid Angel's "Covenant", an album that uses flanger profusely, to great effect. And what they do is just panning the flanger to one side only, to avoid the smearing, I guess. I figured if that was good enough for Morbid Angel it had to be for my song too...
As for the composition, a few musical influences I can think of:
The break where the voice stays on its own probably has its origins in The Misfits ("Mother, can I go out... AND KILL TONIGHT?")
The final accentuation in the guitar parts probably has to do with this Butthole Surfers' song:
Another reference, difficult to track for the non-Spanish reader, would be in the choral sections, clearly inspired by this song by Siniestro Total; a Spanish band who, in my view, launched two first genius, totally deranged punk albums, but whose later production, it saddens me to say it, does not wake up a single of my cells...
(Boy, nobody will ever accuse me of hiding my influences, even when it itches a little... But it's something I feel obliged to do, as some kind of homage due, and also for the pure pleasure of mentioning those guys who are "my crowd"... Even in cases when my ego is screaming all the way: "don't... don't..." :) )
