Brightest Young Things

Since the last listening party we did with these bros, they've toured like crazy and recorded a whole new records, but more importantly, the world got a whole hell of a lot gloomier. This decade is going to be all about negative feelings, and Vita Ruins balances depressive crooning a la Muse with early 00s garage pomp and spooky keyboard sounds. Their new record comes out literally tomorrow on Bandcamp and they're headlining their release party show for it on Friday at the Cat. They sent us a special annotated sneak preview of their record below, but before you read and listen be warned, there are lots of giant rats under your bed.

Seven Suns

Seven Suns was a song that was initially not going to be on the album.  It was written right as the tracking for the album began and so we weren’t quite sure what to do with it.  It wasn’t necessarily a last minute decision, but we ultimately decided it would be a great fit on the album and would help give it that different dynamic.  The song is aggressive, and actually ended up being the first “single” we wanted to promote off of it.

Coffin Dodgers

Coffin Dodgers is dedicated to someone like Kim Jong Ill; a person that continually screws their own people over, and just won’t die.  The lyric “With blood stained hands, you can’t be wrong” refers to anyone who is in a position with great power.  In many cases this person has a great deal of blood on their hands, and anything they say or do can’t be questioned unless you want to risk your life.  Such as the one about Kim Jong Ill shooting a 38 under par in his first-ever round of golf.  That one always makes me laugh.  So according to the North Korean history books, Tiger’s got nothing on Kim Jong Ill, but at least Tiger probably has more mistresses.

For the recording of this song I recall doing the vocals repeatedly.  At first, I tried them aggressively, but it didn’t seem to work and ended up singing rather softly and putting them through an amp simulator to give it a lo-fi effect.

Rabid Men

Rabid Men was definitely not going to be on this album originally, which unlike Seven Suns ended up being somewhat of a last minute decision.  The rest of the album had been tracked at least six months before and mixing was already underway, and so we went back and recorded this song at the end.  We felt it was going to tie the album together much better than the song it replaced.

The lyrics for the song are intended to be a story of someone escaping in the middle of the night to go along with the dark feel of the music.  A couple of things were added last minute to this song because it felt like it needed something.  There is a three part harmony at the end, and our friend Brendan Lane provided the scary talking at the beginning of the song.  Also, we want to give a shout out to our friend and old band mate Ian Wright for writing an awesome bass line at the end of the song that really brought it to the next level.

The Purpose of Life

This is a song that we might have been a little worried about because we never recorded a proper demo before recording the album version, and a lot of times what sounds good live ends up sounding like doo doo in the studio.  As it turns out we ended up being quite pleased when it was finished.  The title of the song is sarcastic.  It has to do with wasting your time on booze, drugs, meaningless sex, and really anything that can be a waste of time.  Knowing that this may be your only chance at life, is this really how you want to spend your time when you could contributing much more to the world?

Griggs’ Diagnosis

Probably my favorite song lyrically.  The verse lyrics are about the feeling of being judged incorrectly about your mistakes and general bad behavior, and this causes accumulated negative baggage continually being piled on your back that you must live with.  However, when the chorus comes it assures you that love can take all of that away, or at least it tries to assure you.  The title “Griggs’ Diagnosis” refers to Dr. William Griggs who was the physician in the Salem witch trials, and he of course inaccurately diagnosed the girls as being possessed by an evil force.

For the recording of the song, we initially recorded it with real drums, only to realize that it wasn’t quite translating how we played it live.  After sitting down with it for a few days the real drums were thrown out in favor of a programmed electronic beat that ended up fitting much better.

All The Kids Must Be Sleeping

A more straight forward rock song about how kids are extremely impatient and don’t allow the time for great things to develop, and it shows in the music they listen, movies they watch, etc. This is generally speaking though of course. There was some worry whether this one would fit in, but once we sandwiched it between The Purpose of Life and Griggs’ Diagnosis, and actually connected it to Griggs’ Diagnosis it ended up really working and offering up a different taste for the album.