Life In The Hive pt 1

Around the time of recording the band's demo in 1991, I was a bit of a mess.  I had effectively dropped out of school so I could 'party' with pals all day (I ultimately got my shit together and graduated), get high on whatever was available to get high on and create music and art.  This was a creative high point for me - I was putting together comics, making psychedelic line drawings that were getting some attention in the community and the band had a rented out practice room (that smelled more than a bit of piss, but was a good place to get drunk and jam all night) and a few shows under our belts.

Anyone who's seen my Youtube or Vimeo page knows I'm no stranger to the ways of The Pink Floyd and those epic, bloated conceptual double albums of the 1960s and 70s.  So my stroke of genius (heh) was of course to write a hardcore punk theme album, with a story that could be told both musically and visually but would not compromise on the down and dirty simple and loose structures of punk and the violent rage and 'moshability' of thrashcore.

The concept was called 'Bees' (as you will see, I had a thing in my head for always titling albums with a four letter word - my har-har inside joke) and the story is as follows:

Our hero has isolated himself in a small apartment type room (the cave) refusing to exit into the outside world, surviving only on food and drink and smoke and whatever he can order by phone and get delivered to his door.  His only entertainment and joy comes from drawing images on his walls with graphite pencil.  From his window all he sees is a large bee hive hanging from a tree limb and a steady stream of bees entering and exiting and doing their mindless thing.  Eventually he becomes paranoid of them and believes society as a whole have become giant thought-controlled bees who have been programmed to capture him and make him into one of their mindless drones.  For some reason the authorities (it is not revealed, but one can assume it is neighbors or family or his landlord or someone) kick in his door and he kills the first person to enter his room.  During the grand finale of the story our hero has been placed in some sort of  facility where he can be contained and perpetually drugged - which he perceives as having been brought into the hive for removal of his free thought.


A lofty concept, with obvious nods to other such concept albums - dealing with madness, isolation, violence and rebellion.  A string of songs were written by 18 year old FM, and were presented to the band with some positive reaction.  The opening track is actually what I considered a rather hard edged yet epic acoustic song which sort of sets the scene and the general feelings of our hero towards those bees out there beyond his window.  Here's the original solo acoustic demo of the track as recorded within hours of writing in 1991:



This song was a huge departure from the Too Baked To Skate punk we were playing previously, and the band (although sympathetic to the project) didn't really see it as something they could get behind.  There does exist a practice tape with a full band version of the track, but it was never formally recorded.

From here, the album was to take an unwavering hardcore stance with what I considered fairly brutal lyrics.  Each song was bridged with a hard spoken word segment that sort of led from one part to the next - a la Henry Rollins or Jello Biafra or Kurt Brecht.  Only one song - titled 'Society' was ever put together as a true hardcore song before the band fizzled out.  Only one recording exists of a band practice in late '91/early '92 where the 'Society' lyrics are completely illegible and the sound quality almost unlistenable.  If I can lay my hands on it, I may post it so you can at least hear what it was to sound like and the truth behind the intent that this was to be a true hardcore punk project.  That song had a level of complexity we had not achieved previously with lots of rhythm changes and catchy mosh riffs and all of us were really proud of it as I recall.  But it was not to be.

The Bees concept would stay with me for a few years and even today (at age 38) I am considering revisiting it.  The next couple of posts, we'll discuss what became of Bees and it's ultimate recorded structure and expansion.