Death and Taxes Discography
1 Violence Begats Violence (1989/1990) - Look folks, I'm not gonna kid you. This thing sounds bloody awful. Jamie and I had no idea how to record, and this is where we started learning. The band played to our ability at the time, which was also rather limited. The most interesting thing to me about this work (in hindsight) is that it was my emotions on my sleeve. As the years passed, that would change as I became more guarded about my emotions, and offered up my thoughts instead...
2 Bent Mental (1990/1991) - By the time this work was recorded, Jamie and I still hadn't figured out how to record drums, but it sounds a *little* better. The key things to note about this album is that our songwriting started to improve, and my lyrics were starting to get a little more 'out there'. Side A was a 'concept side', but I didn't really personally care as much about the topic as I should have, and this would be the last time I wrote lyrics that weren't about me or my surroundings. Song 4/5 are a mini-concept; as I was starting to figure out who I was in the world. Song 6... well, if you don't think that is some funny stuff, then there's something wrong with you...
3 Violence Begats Violence (version 2, 1991??) - At this point Mike (drums) is out of the band. I had spent the whole summer programming the drum machine for the songs we were working on at the time, so we just (re)recorded the new versions of what we had with a few extra goodied thrown in. Why a drum machine? What happened was Paul had written "The Will" and recorded it with a drum machine, and when I heard that, I thought, "We have to start using a drum machine as a band"... The recording process was SO much easier because the drums sounded better right off the start....
4 Mind Mine (late 1992-1993) - This is a really good body of work. Fast, aggressive, technical metal. Another concept album, this time about a man lying dying on the ground, nobody notices, while his life flashes before his eyes. I love this album... We lost alot of audience by switching to the drum machine, and we knew we needed a drummer in a bad way. We were pretty much finishing the album up when we met John (drums)...
5 Death And Taxes (Self-titled, a.k.a "Morph", 1993-94) - In my opinion, this was probably the height of D&T. Much of this material was either recorded in one or two takes, or the whole song was recorded live (as in the case of all 3 side b songs). This was more like what we sounded like live on stage. Thanks to Rob for capturing us in a way that we could never get ourselves. It's definitely my most -- and second -- favorite recording of us, depending on what aspect. These are some of the best lyrics I wrote, though the first time in 3 releases there was no 'concept'. Also notable, though all songs had always been a collaboration to some extent, this is the first time we did a song with lyrics completely not by me (Maturity; Scott) and music completely not by me (The Will by Paul, originally from Mind Mine)...
6 Creative Differences (1996) - Well, this was the end. We all poured quite a bit of our souls into this one, and spent a year with the wonderful human being that is Keith Stark. Keith put tons of effort and asked for almost nothing in return. How do you pay that back? You don't. Anyway, we split up days after completion of this recording, but this thing is purt'near perfect in my opinion. Except maybe the kick is too loud, and the vocals on Demigods suck. Other than that, I am proud of the lyrics, and we collaborated more than ever in the songwriting, and things were starting to look up for the band... until we neared the end of the recording process...