Welcome to my blog to anybody who was directed here from chunk.style.

If you weren’t able to attend the listening party for Bandwagon (courtesy of the Dwelling of Duels Twitch channel), you can check out the archive on YouTube:

In addition to being the debut of our new album, it was also a debut of James’ first published game, Pixeo Mazeo, which we customized per our theme.

Our 4th album, Bandwagon, was released on 9/26/2020, and you can pick it up on our bandcamp page.

I keep forgetting to link this. Grant gives this nonsense some context and history.

Oh yeah, the album is done, go get it.

It’s been four years, so no need to keep waiting.

https://yesmayhem.bandcamp.com/album/molly

Usually, one day I post a thing that says, “Oh yeah, the album is done, go get it.” Today is not that day, but I’m ready to share some details of what will happen on that day.

The new album, Yes Mayhem 3, is called “Molly.” The running length is around 50 minutes, and there are 13 tracks. I’m in the process of converting the bandcamp page over, so it’ll be weird looking in the short term. I’m working on it. There are also 7 bonus tracks if you download the entire album from Bandcamp. 4 of those are some of the tracks we’ve done (VGM and Soundtrack covers) since HH2, 1 is the original demo of one of the album songs, and 2 are things too silly to have been included on the album proper.

Here’s the cover:

Of course, in addition to the regulars, there are guests. There are new challengers in with some returning champions. I will list them now.

Jason Cox: noise composition
Chris Dlugosz: keys
Nate Horsfall: guitar
George Nowik: keys
Erik Peabody: guitar
Mike Willard: guitar

It’ll be “name your price” on Bandcamp again for the digital download. I’m going to do another short run of CDs, and those will be $10.

Barring some outrageous unforeseen demand requiring a reissue, HH2 is now out of print for physical copies. If you have one, it’s probably super valuable now. Rip it and put it on eBay to send your kids to college.

I started work on material for a new album before HH2 was even completed. Depending on your outlook and disposition, you might say it’s been “maturing,” or “developing.” Other equally descriptive terms might be “languishing,” “festering,” or “never gonna happen.”

The truth is, we’ve been busy. Sure, day to day nonsense has a way of creeping in (and oh boy, does it), but we’ve all been legitimately busy with music stuff not specifically Mayhem – related. I tried to compile a list of all the things we’ve released individually since HH2 came out, but it’s unwieldy. I’ll hit a few high points:

James has released 3 solo albums:
Don’t Forget
Certified Organic
A Monotonous Work of Mind-Numbing Repetition

Grant has been a machine. I’m not going to even list all his stuff, just go look at his discography page on his website:
http://www.stemagemusic.com/discography/
Notable works:
Narrowband
PRIORITY ONE: The Music of TRON
Where Good Marbles Go to Die

Viking Guitar Live: Legion
Metroid Metal: Other Album (Kevin and I are all up in, of course)
Lonely Rolling Stars: Carnivortex

We all did lots of work on the huge Spectrum of Mana album and the even huger Chronicles of Time album. We actually have two tracks credited as Yes, Mayhem on Chronicles of Time:
Chro-NO, You Di’int and Where the Monsters Hide

We had a Yes, Mayhem track on the Super VG Christmas Party album:
Northwall (Slight Return)

We also showed up on Danse Macabre 2:
Troll: Cantos Profane

Kevin and I have been hired gun rhythm section on a number of releases, including (but not limited to) Kevin’s first arrangement on the Sound Waves: A Tribute to Ecco the Dolphin album:
Squints of Medusa

This is a very incomplete list. There’s been a LOT.

Of course, as always, there were a number of high profile gigs that took up our music time as well. Metroid Metal went to Mexico and played a show entirely in Spanish. Kevin has an actual recurring house band gig. Somehow, though, the stars aligned, and we’ve had an opportunity to make some progress on a new Yes, Mayhem album. It’s happening.

Stay tuned…

A big part of the appeal for projects of this nature is the ability to experiment. We’re not paying studio time, and we’re not beholden to some record company wanting us to push out product. That means we can do try things that may be dumb, but there’s really no penalty for failure.

Our process on the last two albums (and most of the non-album stuff we’ve done) has been as such: I write music, recording as many instruments as I feel necessary to flesh out my ideas, then James shoehorns his ideas into my framework. He can usually be credited with giving structure to my meanderings. More to the point, he makes my music into songs.

In the grander scheme, I’ll start with a rough demo, Kevin will record drums, I’ll record bass, Grant will record guitar, then James will add vocals. There have been many times we’ll listen to a song and Kevin will say, “If I’d known the guitar was doing that, I could have changed my part to match,” or, “I didn’t know there were going to be vocals in that part, I should have laid back,” etc. This time, the big experiment was to do full-band demos then reevaluate. Basically, we were going to record the entire album (at least) twice. That would allow everyone in the pipeline to add feedback on what needed to be changed to accommodate each others ideas. Better collaboration was the goal. A quagmire is what we got. Somehow, recording an album twice takes 10 times as long. Some of the songs are better off for it, absolutely, but we ended up abandoning the process a little over halfway through.

Here’s one of the songs that got the do and redo treatment. It’s called Stun Gun. I’ve cut together some of the demos this song went through on its way to its final version. If you’re interested in the sausage factory, give this a listen:

Stun Gun demo smorgasbord (yum).

The first cut is from the original demo I did which clocked in at just over 4 minutes. That’s just me on bass and drums, sketchpadding (if that’s a word).
Second cut is a live demo Kevin and I did where I overdubbed a guitar part to see what it sounded like. That demo was still 3:40.
Third cut is another live demo, a little faster.
Fourth cut is from James’ vocal demo over one of the bass/drum live demos Kevin and I had done. He suggested edits to the arrangement to accommodate his vocals, which really helped tighten up the song.
Fifth cut is Grant’s guitar demo over James’ vocal demo.

That’s not even all the versions I recorded over time. There are about 6 songs we wound up doing this way, and while it does give room for more collaborative input, it’s kind of unsustainable, especially given our schedules.

In this case, I think it worked out pretty well. We discovered through the process that there were redundant parts of the song, it worked better at a faster tempo, and the vocals drove the arrangement rather than leaving James to make do with whatever I gave him. What started out as a 4 minute draft turned into a song that clocks in at a lean and mean 2:47.

If you’re not sick of that loop of 3 on 4 self-indulgence, here’s a rough unmastered mix of the final version:

Stun Gun (rough mix)