Viva Death

The third Viva Death album, Curse the Darkness, is now available worldwide on Functional Equivalent Recordings. Listen below.

Our recommended download provider is bandcamp which offers digital files in your choice of high resolution formats, and includes the digital booklet with artwork and lyrics when you purchase the full album.

Digital downloads are also available from:
iTunes (digital booklet also included with album)
Amazon
eMusic
Napster

A compact disc version is also available from Amazon.

Viva Death also has a completely revamped website, with streaming audio from all three albums (including unreleased tracks from the first two) and an official Facebook page.

Recording notes: I co-produced (along with Scott), recorded and mixed, serving my usual Viva Death role of noises and effects. This album deviates from Viva Death precedent in two important ways. First, we set aside the “baritone guitars only” rule of the first two albums. Bass and standard guitars feature prominently (along with some baritones). Second, Scott (Shiflett) played everything — the usual Viva Death lineup was unavailable, so apart a few special guest appearances, all the drums, bass, guitars and vocals were rendered by Scott. Despite these significant differences, the sound is unmistakably Viva Death: dark, strange, angular, sometimes ferociously aggressive, sometimes spacey and psychedelic.

We tracked drums to tape (analog 24 track, 15 ips, no noise reduction) in Studio A at Kingsize Soundlabs. We moved to Studio B to overdub bass and guitars, with the invaluable aid of Trever Keith in providing gear and setting up guitar sounds (see pics on the photos page). From there, the project went to The Eye Socket where we recorded vocals, more guitars, the occasional keyboard, samples and other weirdness with copious amounts of tape echo. Satnam Singh Ramgotra lent his formidable tabla skills to one track (Love Lust Trust), and our dear friend Monica Richards (of Faith and the Muse) added backing vocals to another (Talking Backwards). We mixed the tracks at The Eye Socket, recording the masters to 1/2″ analog (an Ampex ATR-102 machine) at 15 ips. Joe Gastwirt mastered the album at his studio.