HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR010- ACHILLES/ ENGINEER , split 2xCD

This is kind of where the second wave of Hex bands became established.  Ed Gein and Minor Times sort of started it off.  But here were these new kids coming around the bend, looking to do some stuff of their own.  Building On Fire had broken up and Rob got some new stuff started with one of my favorite people around, and a hell of a frontman, Rory Van Grol.  Right off the bat they hit me up to do a record for them but I was feeling a little hesitant since Building On Fire sort of split with all these unfinished ideas and a loose plan for a second full length.  I wanted to see if this new project- Achilles- would be able to keep it together.  They self-released a demo and began touring around with little hesitation.  They had a lineup that worked and got along really well, and had ideas that they would see through.  So, not much later I was agreeable to doing whatever it is they wanted to do.

 Engineer house show

At the same time I had been noticing things brewing just north of Syracuse, in that strange, rural North Country area.  A cast of characters up that way had their own scene going on- a totally vibrant, young, and completely independent scene full of weirdos who played huge shows in little, middle-of-nowhere towns like Fulton, and further north in Oswego.  They were all bound by their rural restraints, and inability to get down to the big city of Syracuse (it’s not big), so they just went and made their own noise.  And it wasn’t like crappy little punk bands.  All these bands had their own sound, their own thing, happening that only emerges when you have a lot of time and your own brain to come up with whatever your imagination sets forth.  One such band that really caught my attention was Forever Yours, primarily consisting of brothers who wrote chunky and metallic post-hardcore.  I really started liking what they were doing, but unfortunately, I caught them as they were thinking of calling it a day and moving on to other things.  Well, that other thing quickly emerged as Engineer, and it was sonically more devastating than whatever they all had going previously.  Once again, they moved quick.  They wrote and recorded a bunch of stuff fast and released it on some label from who knows where, and that was the “Suffocation Of the Artisan” EP.  I immediately roped them into doing something for Hex, even before the EP came out, and they seemed agreeable (honestly, I’ve known the Gorham brothers for over 15 years now and they continue to have the most poker-faced affect of nearly anyone I know.  I can almost never tell if they’re excited, pissed off, happy, or just so laser-focused on whatever it is they’re doing that anything else becomes background noise).

 Both bands together showing some bias towards a certain band they all liked.

Both bands had some material ready to go, but what to do with it?  I wanted to give both bands an introduction before setting forth with a full length, so the idea was hatched to do a split.  Both bands got along immediately, having played some shows together.  They would go on to tour together and play together frequently in one of the better bonding experiences of bands I had the good fortune of releasing material for.  Additionally, both bands were artistically-minded and they came up with a design scheme for the package that I added my two cents to- recently, Breather Resist and Suicide Note (bands that both Engineer and Achilles looked up to) released a split that was a CD for each band in one package and I thought that was such a cool idea because it gave each band their own side, so to speak.  I thought of doing a similar concept for this split, but with a different kind of package.  Bob from Engineer came up with this design idea, based off of a stencil of people in suits with different colored beams of light coming up from their necks instead of heads and Rob from Achilles created it.  Rob also created these stencils of band members faces and used them for the CD faces.  He did this one of Rory that he ended up making a few actual canvasses for.  I ended up buying one from him and I think it’s the first time I actually ever bought art to hang on my wall.  I still have the piece and it has remained on a wall in whatever living space I have occupied since.  We used these dual pocket CD wallets and everything was printed and reproduced at different places.  Once it was all printed up everything had to be put together, all 2000 copies.  So, once that was ready I got a few friends together and had a little work party at my apartment to put together both CDs in the separate pockets of the wallet, along with a small insert for each band.  We did this all assembly line style.  The final piece was getting them shrinkwrapped.

                           The infamous Rory painting/stencil

At the time I was employed at a sheltered workshop as a vocational counselor.  What does that all mean? So, for years, I have worked in one capacity or another in helping people with disabilities.  One common route for many people living with disabilities is to have supports with helping them find and maintain employment once they become adults.  Some people are just ready to go out there and get a job, whatever.  Others need to form some skills in an environment where they are with other people in the same situation before they are ready to go out and look for community-based employment.  So these places where people with disabilities work together have been called sheltered workshops (they’re starting to become less common these days).  They generally work on simple contract jobs on tasks a lot of places just don’t feel like doing themselves- washing parts, putting together small packages, small assembly line work.  And I was a counselor there overseeing people’s work and helping them learn skills so that eventually they could leave and find something in the community that paid better.  In this workshop we had a shrinkwrapping machine.  So I subcontracted my workshop for a job to shrinkwrap all these CDs once they were all put together so I could ship them out.  So this release was partially packaged by a bunch of people with disabilities in a sheltered workshop, which is sort of unique I suppose.

This is also around when my relationship with Lumberjack Distribution officially began.  They had been buying hundreds of copies of the Ed Gein stuff and Minor Times EPs from me and they had decided to take me on full time, which was a really interesting spot to be.  I had deadlines of production, shipping, making one sheets, and all that stuff that I wasn’t used to.  Honestly, it kept me a little more disciplined and taught me quite a bit about how the distribution business works.  They were also, at the time, kind of the high water mark for independent punk distributors and exclusively carried most all of the record labels I really liked.  I signed a contract and I was pretty excited to be a part of it.

         Achilles at Westcott Community Center

Some notes regarding the recording of this double EP- Achilles were, to my knowledge, the last band to record at the short-lived Hopewell Studios in Canandaigua (just outside of Rochester) where a bevy of groups were quick to record since their prices were cheap and the owners were punk dudes who also played in bands from the area.  My band at the time, The Funeral, also recorded our last album here several months prior to Achilles.  On Engineer’s side, they were one of the first bands to record at a brand new space that Syracuse recording guru Jason “Jocko” Randall had just gotten the lease to.  This is where Moresound Studio would end up being and where it remains today- an old two story brick building right next to the Highway 690 overpass.  I don’t think Jocko had even moved all his stuff in at this point, and he was going to gut most of the insides and remodel it to his studio specifications.  For their track “Decades”, as well as the intro and outro of their side off this split, they went up to the roof of the building, which was right next to the highway and recorded the sounds of cars passing by for background sounds in the song. 



This split also has my, by a longshot, favorite Engineer song “The Great Mistake”- one of the heaviest and meanest sounding songs to ever occupy space on a plastic disc.  

I think this is one of the more creative and interesting endeavors to come out on the label, as I am always down for an interesting art/packaging concept for a record.  It was a very collaborative effort between two incredible bands, a few friends, buddies who did recording, and one sheltered workshop.  And I think it laid the groundwork for two bands that would help define the direction of Hex Records and represent that sort of second wave of bands on the label.

And now, you can get that wonderful split and it's really cool package for only $4 through the webstore HERE for the whole week.  Or, you can get the digital tracks via the bandcamp page for a scant $3. This deal is good for the entire next week, so get to it!