Notes:

After the Bad Crazy touring was over, the band took a break from rehearsing, gigging and writing new material.

I worked on side projects and wrote five new songs, Someday Soon, Stay, Bad Day, Don’t Say Goodnight and Sonora.

The band returned to the studio to record these and we started playing gigs again, but metal was on the way out by now. We made the decision to change the entire format to playing hard rock/heavy metal cover tunes and playing locally.

Someday Soon, Bad Day and Don’t Say Goodnight were the only tunes from this CD project to be played live during this last phase of Vengeance. After a two years of this and little writing or recording getting done by the band as a whole, Curt announced he was sick of it all and was leaving.

I think Bad Crazy had just exhausted everyone, and with the limited returns from all that work, we never did get the steam up in the same way again. We auditioned dozens of guitarists, but it was obvious we were not going to be able to add a guitarist with the talent and style Curt had.

It was such an integral part of the band it was just impossible to replace. Besides, times were changing and if local venues were getting harder to find, touring outside the area was impossible- getting a major label contract playing power metal was just not realistic anymore. There was really no reason to go on, and it seemed like a good time to shut it down.

It was also satisfying to go out with the same 4 members after being together so long, Mike had even contributed to the original recording, before he had officially rejoined the band, so it just seemed right to end it when one of the four guys left, beside all the other factors.

During all this time I had continued writing and recording my own stuff, coming up with Just One Night, That’s Not How It Feels, The Light and Only One, which were decidedly not metal, even by Vengeance’s wide stylistic range. I worked with Mike on them in the studio and Chuck added drums because they were there and I enjoyed working with those guys, but they were never really meant to be Vengeance tunes.

With the band falling apart, to come up with an entire LP of music, I added these four to the five we had already recorded, and worked out two songs based on Mike’s ideas, Brother Brother and Terminal Man.We recorded these without Curt, along with a demo version of a tune I had written for my friends Gardy Loo (Thunder Rat).

An old blues tune I had kicking around (Don’t Wait Too Long), an angry screamer with a drum machine (Phone) and a half-assed rocker I had been messing with (S&S&S) were added to more fully fill it out. The Bay, a traditional song for which I had done an arrangement, was tacked on at the last minute for balance and pacing.

The album was admittedly cobbled together, with Curt’s only contributions being finished solos on Stay, Someday Soon and Don’t Say Goodnight, with rhythm work on Someday Soon, Bad Day and Sonora, as well as unpolished ‘jam’ version solos on a few other songs. Mike had done backing vocals and played minimally on the stuff he hadn’t actually written (Brother and Terminal were the exceptions).

I still think I did my best writing to date on this album, even without, or perhaps because of, the lack of participation of the band, but I don’t mean this in a negative way. Freed of the constraints of having to write “metal” songs, I was able to really stretch out.

I would have to say, this was not really a “band” album as the first 3 were, but more of a personal album, lyrically and musically. Its hard to say what it might have been if Curt had remained and continued contributing creatively. Certainly very different. He and Chuck would never have let me get away with tunes like Just One Night!

I enjoy the music, but a lot of bad vibes and unhealthy shit was going on during this time, for the band and for me personally, and I don’t have a lot of happy memories of the time. I do think there’s some solid songs here, done in a professional and entertaining manner, so the time was not a total loss.

UPDATE 2015: On further reflection, including these weak songs hurts the overall project. Therefore, I’ve removed Just One Night, Thunderrat, S&S&S, The Bay and Brother Brother. These songs were either never finished, or personal projects I did myself that I included. Big mistake. I’ll work on fixing the graphics in the future. This is a much tighter, better lineup of songs.