Track By Tracks: Elektrikill - Propaganarchy! (2024)

1. Wrong Again:

Wrong Again was originally going to be on Monsters but I left it off because I didn’t feel like it was 100% “there”. Lyrically it’s the counterpart to the Monsters track Witness To A Murder with Wrong Again sung from the point of view of the victim. I put it on first because the vibe of the new album is very noisy and experimental so first was the only place where it wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

2. Propaganarchy!:

The first thing I did for this album was design the cover, even before I had a title for the album. Once I hit on the album title, the album had a theme and this song sprung from that. It’s about how none of the media is impartial anymore and everything we’re fed by the media is the result of what some corporation wants us to know. Musically, I wanted it to be a real EDM club stomper along the lines of KMFDM.

3. Down:

Well, this one shocked the hell out of me when it went viral. 11,000+ views and counting on the video for a song about someone who completely loses their shit and goes postal with video footage of someone jumping off a building. It was another one that I specifically wrote to play live in clubs. When I play live, I really want it to be exciting for the audience. I want them to be able to move.

4. Earth To John:

This song is about my friend John who ended his own life but did it in a really strange way. One day he just got in his car and started driving across the country. The police and his parents were tracking him by his ATM withdrawals but could never catch up with him. He got to Las Vegas before he ran out of money then he simply drove down some remote back road and shot himself. No one really knows why. He was in a punk band so I gave this song an electro-punk vibe. It’s so noisy that it sounds like there are guitars in it but it’s all synths.

5. Coitus Interruptus:

I’ve had the idea for a song that just builds and builds like sex but when it gets to the “orgasm” it just stops. So that’s what this is. My sex song. It’s completely intentional that you can’t understand the lyrics.

6. Moral Combat:

Another political song, this time about the evangelicals trying to push their agenda on people who don’t want it. Musically, it’s an homage to Pig’s Never For Fun. I love how it’s funky and industrial. Pig sounds more like Prince than I do though.

7. Execration:

This was the first song I wrote and recorded for the album. I really wanted to experiment more on this album and use more sampling. The bassline is reversed and there are samples of a pig squealing mixed with samples of four different Aztec Death Whistles. I was on the phone with my friend Danny one day and he went through some squeaky metal gate that sounded absolutely awesome so I had him hang up and sample it for me really quick. Lyrically it’s a response to the religious right constantly accusing transgender people and drag queens of being “groomers”. Just me pointing out who, historically, the real groomers have always been.

8. Mask:

I actually wrote this song as a teenager, when I was first getting into songwriting and everything I wrote was amateurish and terrible. Somehow, in the spirit of “even a broken clock is right twice a day”, this song was actually pretty good. I really like the electro-middle Eastern feel that it has. It’s probably my favorite song on the album.

9. Hidden Drives:

This was the last song I wrote and recorded for the album. I used to drive through an area filled with McMansions and would see signs that said, “Hidden Drives” to indicate that there were driveways you couldn’t really see from the road. I liked the double meaning of the phrase and wrote it about the nouveau riche. I wanted the music to be really unsettling so there are lots of weird sounds in it and a detuned bassline.

10. The Moment Before:

This song is about how everyone has that one pivotal moment in their life that changes everything for them forever but they don’t know it’s going to happen. It’s my “slow song” for the album.

11. Hellhole:

This was another experiment. I took little bits from all the songs on the album and time-corrected them to the same tempo then layered them to create a new song. The main synth riff is the chorus of Down backwards. The sample is from a climate change panel. My friend Danny sent me the sample - “humanity has opened the gates of hell” - saying it would be a good sample to use in something. So I ran it through some filters and put it into the song. I feel like it’s the perfect ending to the album because it IS the album, all condensed down to one song!