pushed over the brink

I stirred. I was not cer­tain what had awoken me. Even with aware­ness returning to me, I could feel some­thing sap­ping my energy and my strength. Sucking the very life out of me. With a cry of rage, I forced myself to my feet, shaking off the last of the feeling of lethargy.

I took in my sur­round­ings in a split second. I was in the Girl­pants office; in fact, at my desk, though I did not remember arriving there. I was sur­rounded by dark, face­less, half-transparent men, who were stum­bling back­wards, taken by sur­prise by my sudden activity. My col­leagues were each slumped over their desks, sur­rounded by more of the bizarre shadow men. Their incor­po­real hands were plunged into the skulls of my new friends, feeding off of their mental energy. I was imme­di­ately filled with an inde­scrib­able rage. I had never asked to be a blogger, but I was here now. And no shad­owmen were going to take that away from me.

I drew my katana.

The rest was a blur. I did not mark the number of min­utes that passed as I bat­tled, nor the number of strokes of my mighty blade. Aware­ness of my sur­round­ings returned to me grad­u­ally as I crouched, panting, the last smokey rem­nants of shadow just now fading away. My col­leagues were coming to all around me, their words slur­ring as they asked me what had hap­pened, why I had not brought them their morning coffee and cheese dan­ishes. I sheathed my sword, shook Joel’s weak­ened grasp from my sleeve, and sat down in front of my computer.

I had to find some­thing. I had to hear some­thing as pow­erful and relent­less as the rage that, even now that the danger had gone, still filled my spleen to the bursting point.

The Pack a.d. — “Deer”

Per­haps the demons might have seen my awful metaphor about how much I enjoy drum kicks and crashes and envi­sioned some place in Dante’s hell where I would be forced to listen to a song that con­sists of vir­tu­ally nothing else. If so, this would be that song. How­ever, it would not work, because this song has been my favorite from this album since the first time I played the whole thing through. That the lyrics would appeal quite readily to anyone in high school who likes to con­sider them­selves “weird” is only another part of its charm.

The Pack a.d. — “Crazy”

This track was released as a single for the album and it’s a little more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the band, which I would describe as a blue­sish band trying to sound more punkish, though I really hate trying to slot bands into spe­cific genres like that. It’s a fun little song with a catchy chorus that comes to a sat­is­fy­ingly noisy con­clu­sion which, as our more loyal readers may be aware, is about all I ask from any song.

We Kill Com­puters is The Pack a.d.‘s latest album, released last month and now avail­able through Mint Records. The com­bi­na­tion of bluesy vocals and noisy gui­tars and drums grew on me very quickly, and the album overall has a strong sense of, dare I say it, simple rock’n’roll fun. In par­tic­ular, “Big Anvil” has a classic rock scream near the end that I love lis­tening to. If you feel a strong dose of noise and energy is just what you need to defeat your own face­less soul-sucking demons, I heartily rec­om­mend this album!