Subhumans (Canada) (original) (raw)

On April 13, 2010, our new album, Same Thoughts, Different Day, will be released on Alernative Tentacles Records, in practically every format known to humanity: as a CD, as a two-disc 12″ vinyl LP/EP set with included digital download card, and as a digital download direct from all the usual locations.

This project is a bit unusual, so maybe we should explain. Way back in 1980 we released our first album, called Incorrect Thoughts, on an independent Vancouver record label called Friends Records. A few years later, after the original version of the band had broken up, and after some mysterious dealings that we were not party to, a version of that same record was released by a San Francisco record label. We were not pleased, considering that they re-mixed our songs without our involvement, re-ordered our album, added material we hadn’t included, slapped together one of ugliest covers ever seen, never contacted us for permission or input, and (of course) never payed us a single penny for the privilege. The label quickly swirled down the drainhole of history, however, so we thought that ugly little episode was over and done.

Shortly after we got back together in 2005 and recorded New Dark Age Parade, we started trying to organize some re-releases of our older recorded material. We released Death Was Too Kind, a collection of early single and EP material, and we were looking forward to being able to re-release Incorrect Thoughts. Then we found out that the person who ran that San Francisco label was attempting to claim that he owned the record. We didn’t agree; we don’t agree; but we decided in the end that we’d rather spend our time and money in a recording studio than a court room. Because fuck him. Because we own our songs and we own us.

So we recorded every song on the original album, plus two other songs that we’d laid down at the same sessions and which had only been released by us on an obscure compilation album (“Out of Line” and “Behind the Smile”), plus four others that we were playing back in the day that we’d never recorded in a studio (“Escalator to Hell,” “I Gotta Move,” “21st Century,” and “Out of Place”), and here they all are in a big slab of Subhumany goodness, just like the original album only more betterer. With Jesse Gander at the Hive Studios ably twisting the knobs and watching the dials, we think it ended up pretty good. We put everything we had into it, anyway. The original record just isn’t around anymore (it certainly isn’t present in any altered and manipulated version untouched by Subhuman hands, no matter what you’re told), so try this out. It’s what we think you should hear.

Thirty wonderful years later, you’ll have to tell us if this stuff holds up. Lot of water under the bridge, time waits for no one, and lots of other proverbs about the onrushing unrelenting passage of time, and it may be too much to expect that any of our rants and screeds and ravings resonate today. But then the mud in the river is different every day, plus ca change plus la same thing, and lots of other proverbs about the persistence of everything dreary, and maybe a few rays from some old fires can still cast a smidgen of light. Which brings us to the title: same shit, different day; same incorrect thoughts, different damn day.