Wednesday, April 29, 2009

My New Gun

What am I up to now? 5? 6?

My brand new Pietta historical reproduction of Josie Wale's Navy .36
caliber blackpowder revolver. Among many, many other reasons, this
gift shows the awesomeness of my lovely woman.

This thing uses blackpowder, a steel ball as the bullet (it does actually hold six shots), and primer charges to make the whole thing esplode. I can't wait to try this thing out. Additional style points: It looks great on my bookshelf, next to the Holy Bible and Mein Kampf.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Blabbering At An Unknown Fan

Just decided to answer a random question from a fan on AHC's Myspace page. I know, I know...Myspace is a ridiculous fucking site. Trust me, if I didn't have a band that wasn't doing anything and was just barely holding it together, I'd never let that piece of interweb bloatware near my neocortex. Ahem...

The Question:

"I'm guessing this is Chad I'm speaking at. I am excited about hearing some new Head Charge tracks, still blasting The War of Art every couple of days, actually listened to The Feeding today for the first time in a while. It's got to be hard to put a record together when all of you guys live apart and have other shit going on. I've been trying to put something together with a long time musician friend of mine for 4+ years and still have squat. Maybe one track that's finished out of maybe 15 scraps. Jobs, girlfriends, drugs, any excuse possible.

Are you tracking all of the demo shit in your house? Do you wait for everyone else to work on songs, or are you writing most of the stuff solo?

I've just been curious.

- Jeremiah (last name withheld)

The Answer:

Indeed. It is difficult with 2 guys in the band living 2000 miles away from the rest of us. It took a year alone to get our respective heads on straight after coming out of treatment (which was 2 years ago for me).

On my end, I've got almost 20 completed demo songs; and I mean complete. About 1/3 of them I did with Justin Fowler, and the other 2/3 I did myself. I was actually just about to finish up the guitars (which are the last things I record) on a brand new one before I let myself get sidetracked with this reply. The AHC demos are just waiting for vocals to be added to actually consider them "finished" demos. Cameron has been having kind of a tough time creatively since getting sober last year (I was a year ahead of him in getting clean), and it makes it harder that he and I are separated by such a huge physical gap. We got together this past September in L.A. for a week and got a song out of it, and he's coming back out here to Minneapolis soon to do some work at my house, which is great news.

I've also been increasingly disappointed with "metal" as a whole, and wouldn't really care if any of the bands we've ever toured with dropped into a gaping chasm. If I never toured with another 93X type metal band, I believe I'd be a better person for it. So while the music I'm recording is indeed heavy, it's not like anything I've been hearing on the radio necessarily. It's sometimes easy for me to fall into comfortable writing styles, and I'm challenging myself (and succeeding greatly, I might add) to not be a lazy fuckhead that writes a million interchangeable riffs in drop C#, ya know? [EDIT:] As a matter of fact, when I started recording these AHC demos a little over a year ago, I stopped tuning down a half-step and have recorded everything in standard tuning (E and B), save for one or two parts of songs that actually needed a drop-tuning. I think it actually affects your brain differently to hear things a half-step back up, after years of hearing things put together a half-step down...or I'm just a nutbag with too much time on my hands. Either or.

Anyway, you caught me in a rare chatty moment. Good luck with your music, sir. And don't do too many drugs, if at all. They can really, really slow your process down.


Chad Hanks/AHC

Thursday, April 9, 2009

My Process...

...involves pink, overstuffed slippers. I can't recall the source, but
remember the line (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat) "You know what all
the great thinkers had in common? Comfortable footwear."

Friday, April 3, 2009

I Am Ashamed...

...to call myself a musician after seeing this bunch of FUCKING
RETARDS on the cover of a magazine I've been in a few times. I don't
know if it's possible to be any more gay without the commitment to
sucking cock.