Download: Year Long Disaster “Show Me Your Teeth”

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(from Black Magic; All Secrets Revealed out Tue., Mar. 9, on Volcom Entertainment)

Year Long Disaster’s new album—as hinted by the giant black cat hanging out on its cover—is heavily influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master And Margarita, in which a sympathetic devil reveals a tiny bit of reality to the people of Moscow. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

How did you get two songs for the album about ‘turning over a car and riddling it with bullet holes while screaming random obscenities at the top of my lungs to every passing motorist?’ Most people would probably be satisfied with just one.
Daniel Davies (guitar/vocals): That was more of a joke. Maybe we think it could be boring when we talk about what stuff really means. It’s more fun to have a laugh.
What was the last thing you actually riddled with bullets?
Daniel Davies: It was a big can. We were recording with Scott Reeder—he has a ranch out in the desert, so we shot some cans. Someone had given him a couple guns to try out. Good thing I had an answer for that. It was a great farm—peacocks and all these dogs.
How much of Master and Margarita is in the album? Is ‘Show Me Your Teeth’ about Azazello, the hitman with fangs?
Daniel Davies: It’s funny because that song has nothing to do with anything in the book! The thing that I hate is now the song doesn’t have that meaning to you. If we explained too much what it’s about, the listener loses what it’s about to them. That song was actually constructed before a lot of the ideas came about. People have been asking if it’s about vampires. At least you put that together.
What is the most terrifying book you ever read?
Daniel Davies: Hostage To The Devil—by Father Malachi Martin. It’s based on a lot of stuff when he was a priest. It’s a book of all his exorcisms. He’s a great writer. He recorded everything, so he has great records. But that book is terrifying. It’s scarier than The Exorcist. Like you mentioned that part in the movie where they’re trying to intellectualize spirits and demons—it’s impossible! That’s pretty scary in itself. That’s what I like all this sort of stuff. It’s more exciting to believe in things that are supernatural.
If you’re using the devil in fiction, you’re probably talking about ‘temptation’ or making bargains. How much of that is in the album?
Daniel Davies: Slightly there is—I don’t know if I’m understanding it right, but in that book, there’s a bunch of things where evil is not so much coming from the devil as it is from whoever or whatever is disciplining … ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ and ‘emotion’ and ‘spiritual’—these are manmade categories to help us organize our experience of reality, not define it. In the book, there is a deal with the devil—Margarita is granted peace but I guess she’s denied her salvation, in a way. But when the devil comes, he’s trying to help the skeptics of the human spirit—to shake things up and help realign that idea, and that’s what I think is really cool. Like in the magic show where it’s satirizing vanity and greed in people to try and help evolution along—I really like that idea. I’m going through that, too. It’s a big idea—a lot of information. Some songs talk about it, and some titles have to do with tarot cards and that ties in, too. I just like that sort of thing.
In the book, the big revelations of the magic show come as part of a public performance—it’s not far from the ‘30s version of a rock ‘n’ roll show.
Daniel Davies: And rock ‘n’ roll is rebellion. It’s the same thing that a band does—rebel against the confines of society. That’s just my understanding of it. I don’t think because it says ‘black magic’ it’s the devil. We’re not doing anything evil. We’re just trying to find… to be able to tap into this divine light.
‘Do what thou wilt’ seems decadent, but it could also be about breaking past fear and confusion and other things that confine people.
Daniel Davies: Exactly! Yeah, I really like that idea! On the surface level, it seems evil. But when you think about it, it’s not—it’s liberating! This is what inspires us. These songs should have some meaning! It seems most pop music is so surface-driven and art-phobic.
Is it true that you’d drive to the shows alone while the rest of the band would fly?
Daniel Davies: A few of the tours started on the East Coast—they flew out and I said, ‘I’ll just drive.’ I like that—being on the road by myself and driving across the country. I did it at the end of the tour, too. I just took the ten. I like that extreme isolation. That feel. I’ve had some really nice times in the middle of the night in complete darkness in the middle of nowhere. It’s a nice feeling.
What do you listen to then?
Daniel Davies: Sometimes I don’t have any stuff. Sometimes it could be Beethoven or it could be AC/DC. I start getting impatient and switch songs trying to find the right ones. Recently or maybe last year, I got into a lot of World War II stuff. Like Vera Lynn—because it had this sense of longing for home. ‘The boys are gone off to war, but one day they’re gonna come back—and even some of them won’t…’ But there’s the idea that still you’ll get home. I really like that feeling the songs had. Like Edith Piaf’s stuff. I like that. Some of those songs were borderline propaganda, but when you’re gone for a long time, you start having those same feelings. When I’m isolated in a van by myself in the middle of nowhere, I start connecting to those things. I have time to think. When I’m on the road for a while, ideas build up. And when I get home, they spew out.
What’s in the backmasked part of ‘Sparrow Hill’?
Daniel Davies: It’s some of the lyrics from the song. Reiterating it backwards.
If you’re making an album that talks about the devil, do you have to have backmasking on it?
Daniel Davies: Yeah, you gotta have something. And we’re big fans of ELO and he had tons of great backwards stuff. Maybe younger bands don’t know the history, but we’re into that—learning what other bands have done. Backmasking or any other techniques.
Is autotune destined to be the backmasking of the future?
Daniel Davies: I hate autotune! It sounds like robots! And the more robotic it sounds, the more out of tune you have to sing. I wanna hear a person’s voice!

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