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Mercenary Notes Pt. 2 is the second EP from Derision Cult, released via Glitch Mode Recordings this past March. Produced by Sean Payne at Glitch Mode Studios, the EP features tracks written and recorded over the course of three years. Derision Cult, known for blending industrial, rock, and experimental sounds, continues to push sonic boundaries with this latest release, delivering an introspective yet aggressive body of work. Here’s what they had to say about each song from the record.
Track 1: Where Are You Now?
Heavy thrasher with heavy guitar riffs/solos and aggressive beats. Features vocals from both Dave McAnally and Sean Payne. This is the fastest track on the album.
The lyrics address the state of affairs humans are in the face of the rise of AI.
This was the last track written for Mercenary Notes Pt. 2 and serves as a lyrical sequel to “Year Hope Failed,” the opening track of Pt. 1. “Year Hope Failed” was based on quotes from a Microsoft engineer warning about the potential economic consequences of new AI technology. “Where Are You Now” flips the focus to humanity’s current state in the face of this potentially society-altering tech. The track’s anxious and aggressive tone reflects the dire ramifications of this looming shift.
Track 2: Joker’s Wild (Kings Are Dead)
This track actually features a Chicago blues-style call/response amped up to 11 with massive industrial beats. It features two guests, including Chicago cowpunk legend Pete Berwick delivering a gonzo-style beat rap for the chorus, and Brazilian organist Ronaldo Rodrigues, who lays down a Uriah Heep/Deep Purple-style organ solo harkening back to experimental sounds in the ’90s from industrial artists such as Sister Machine Gun.
The narrator is wrestling with the meaning of their existence, caught between rebellion and submission, clarity and confusion. It talks about revolutions in the sense that the narrative wants change or escape from these limitations. Phrases like “drowning in the doubt I sweat” and “pumps the blood right through my veins” reflect the struggle to maintain personal integrity in a world that constantly tries to define or misinterpret reality. In the context of Mercenary Notes, it’s sort of addressing the psychological impact all the overstimulation from social media and digital content has on a person. The narrator wants to confront illusions, false narratives, and internal contradictions.
This is a song that I originally demoed 10 years ago and it sat on a shelf. When I brought it to Sean, he immediately saw where bigger drums could flesh out the sound. It wasn’t intentional, but we recognized that the track sort of has the same call/response that blues legends like Buddy Guy and Albert King tended to write with. We’d already explored some outlaw country flavors on other tracks and decided to explore some traditional blues sounds, and rather than a guitar, we tracked down Ronaldo to lay down an organ solo. We met Pete Berwick last year when he starred in the video for “Slaves Rebuild.” Pete is a bit of a Chicago legend, pioneering a lot of the cowpunk sounds that labels like Bloodshot were known for. Pete is also a prolific author, having recently written sort of a gonzo-style biography of the ’70s Illinois band The Boyz. In the interest of pulling in outside influences, we had Pete come in and do sort of a beat poet rap that we incorporated into the track. His lyrics round out the overall feel of the track.
Track 3: Warning Signs
Industrial rockabilly-style track in the vein of “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” “Blackshine,” or Sister Machine Gun’s “White Lightning.” It features jackhammer guitars, heavy beats, and spoken word vocals. This track also features intense guitar leads from Reeves Gabrels reminiscent of his work with Tin Machine (early David Bowie collaboration). The track is accompanied by an animated video which serves as sort of a sequel to “Deaf Blood,” which was on Mercenary Notes Pt. 1.
Lyrically, the track reflects on our current cultural climate and suggests that warnings of what could be coming are all around us. The chorus line “Is it getting real enough yet?” was inspired by a true story from Dave McAnally’s brother, a Naval EOD officer deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a raid, a Hollywood director was allowed to observe the aftermath of a firefight. As a Navy SEAL carried the corpse of a Taliban member past the visibly shaken director, he remarked, “Oh, is it getting real enough yet?” This intense experience serves as the foundation for the track, emphasizing the peril of ignoring warnings until they become undeniable.
We knew we wanted to release this track first because it’d been so long since rockabilly and industrial had been intertwined (this was a common thing in the late ’80s/early ’90s with KMFDM, Ministry, White Zombie, Screw, etc.).
Track 4: Radiation Blues
Slow, almost Tom Waits-inspired beat poet track with heavy beats. This track is the spiritual sequel to the track “Slaves Rebuild,” which appears on Mercenary Notes Pt. 1 (it even weaves in some of the same samples—“What it is, what it shall be, what it was”). It expands and goes into places sonically that “Slaves” had not, however, adding more introspective lyrics. Once again, as with Slaves, Reeves is back to provide an unsettling bombast of guitar pyrotechnics.
“Slaves Rebuild” was deliberately abstract in its lyrics. Where “Warning Signs” suggests that ignoring warning signs in our social fabric until it’s too late is a hazard, the narrator ponders on this track how much of those warning signs are deliberate (at one point actually saying “The warning signs are by design and that’s gnawing on my mind”). It addresses living in a culture where everything is communicated in soundbites and short-form, eliminating nuance and context. The narrator in this track is older and more road-weary, telling the listener, “If you’re no one will tell ya, gonna be the miles that kill ya.” (I took some time away from music in the 00’s to compete in endurance sports and Ironmans and whenever we did races in particularly steep terrain, I had a coach that’d say “the climbs are tough, but it’s the miles that’ll kill ya” (the implication was to ride in such a way that you weren’t burning all your energy climbing the hills because Ironmans have 112-mile bike legs in them!). That analogy seemed to fit this track as well!)
We wrestled with what to call this track, and it was actually the art designer Jim Marcus who suggested a blues theme. “Radiation Blues” is a line from an old Chemlab song and it definitely fit the vibe!
Track 5: Influence
Hypnotic bass line only interrupted by a hard rock Rob Zombie-style chorus. The track has a psychedelic vibe. Once again Pete Berwick lays down some beat poet lines on the false life we present on social media. The track, similar to “Joker’s Wild,” was an old demo and one of the earliest tracks Sean and I worked on (alongside all the Mercenary Notes Pt. 1 material).
The lyrics tackle the false narratives created on social media. As a parent of two children growing up in a world dominated by social media, they have no concept of life before the internet. The song was heavily inspired by a story about a private jet company in LA that rents out planes by the minute for social media influencers to stage photos, portraying a lifestyle that isn’t real. With my 10-year-old daughter, I worry about the impact of filters and unrealistic body expectations on her self-image. This track calls out the rise of phony influencers and the harmful effect they have on younger generations coming of age in this era.
This track has gone through many iterations before this version. We experimented with numerous beats and feels before honing in on this more psychedelic feel. Its groove makes it a great track to play mid-set!
Track 6: Abdication Day
Frenetic rocker with almost a Judas Priest-style guitar riff, with heavy live drum beats and multiple vocal styles from almost robotic Skinny Puppy to hard metal to high octaves. Heavy guitars are pervasive throughout.
The lyrics are about not going quietly into that good night and the challenges of staying true to yourself amid everyday pressures as well as all the overstimulation and media manipulation we’re faced with. The lyrics actually stemmed from a conversation I had with my stepson flying back from Ireland many years ago. He was 15 at the time, and we got into talking about how tough it gets to follow your passions when things like car payments, mortgages, and careers get in the way. I distinctly remember saying to him that “It’s up to you to define how people see you, so own it,” and that became a central theme of the lyrics.
This was another demo from maybe 8 years ago. Of all the tracks on both Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 of Mercenary Notes, it’s probably the one that is truest to the original demo. I do some solo acoustic shows here in the Chicago area, and this track is one that I play acoustic, and it translates very much like an old Kris Kristofferson tune on a guitar.
Conclusion
Mercenary Notes Pt. 2 is a fitting companion to Pt. 1. We set out working on 10 tracks and realized pretty quickly it would make more sense to split these up with a couple of remixes added on (Mercenary Notes Pt. 2 features a remix of “Warning Signs” by Justin Broadrick/Godflesh and “Radiation Blues” by Cyanotic). When we did that, it became important that these tracks had continuity. Some of the tracks literally function as sequels like “Radiation Blues” or “Where Are You Now,” while others such as “Influence” and “Abdication Day” expand on the ideas we explored in Pt. 1.
We set out to make an album that celebrated our influences, regardless if they are overtly industrial. I feel this was taken a step further on Pt. 2 than Pt. 1 … particularly on tracks like “Joker’s Wild” (and “Kings Are Dead”) where we’ve brought in full-on blues organ solos. We flirted with thrash metal on “Year Hope Failed,” but with “Where Are You Now,” we went whole-heartedly into that genre. The tracks all address certain themes and concerns, but it caps off with “Abdication Day,” which is essentially the “Well, here’s what you do to survive” manual. It all ends on a positive note, which was our intention all along.
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