From Your Mouth— God Lives Underwater
#365Songs: January 8
It’s fucking 1990s Week on No Wrong Notes. Because I said so.
If I were you, I’d be fucking pissed — because I say I hate the 1990s. And yet here we are. Quite the conundrum.
So I claim to hate 90s music even though the majority of my most listened albums hail from said decade.
I turned 12 in 1990, which means my teenage years were entirely contained within the decade’s walls — Zubaz pants on one end, Y2K hysteria and the Backstreet Boys at the other. Quite the fucking time to be a teenager in America.
I started my first movie review website. It was shit, but because we were an anomaly (teenagers with intelligent words about movies?!?) we got syndicated by MTV’s Adam Curry. Adam Curry! Remember that guy?
I played laggy Virtual Pool online with my friend Andre, who lived 6 minutes way by car. Via the regular old phone line. And quickly learned that we were making long-distance phone calls for hours every night. 6 minutes. THE FUCKING NINETIES! THIS WAS THE FUTURE.
The intersection of the 1950s telecom industry and the beginning of the Internet culture. The last generation untethered to smart phones at any point during their teenage years.
I went to Blockbuster Music after work so I could listen to music I didn’t own at a listening booth. They’d open any CD you wanted and pop it in a player for your ears only. THE FUCKING NINETIES!
But I was one of those banal, disaffected-by-pop-culture youths that claimed to hate anything popular even though I probably didn’t. Except the parts I really did hate. Like Smashmouth and Dave Matthews. The truth was that I loved a lot of wildy varied 90s music. The explosion of hip-hop, world, electronic music crossing over into other genres. The independent music movement emerging from the neon shadows.
But something else is on my mind today — probably because it feels the most 90s, surviving only in the tarnished, foggy temporal lobes of youths who experienced things like Laser Nine Inch Nails at your local planet arium.
I stumbled into electronic and industrial music and didn’t bother to come out for a few years. Nine Inch Nails was fine and good, but I needed my own thing. Like most little music assholes, I needed to say things like, “Oh, you listen to Nine Inch Nails — that’s cute — but do you know… God Lives Underwater or Front Line Assembly?” They didn’t, of course, so the music asshole wins the point.
In honor of the little music asshole inside all of us, let’s revisit God Lives Underwater.
God Lives Underwater probably failed to find a larger audience because the band — from a most certainly fictional place called Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania — never committed to what it did really well.
Heavy guitar. Blazing synth. Hip-hop-inspired beats and production quality.
On the self-produced, self-titled EP, David Reilly’s vocals mimicked the Trent Reznor pitch and cadence. Sometimes the grunge guitar. Sometimes the standard industrial wall of cacophony. They struggled against the industry’s centripetal forces pulling towards familiar genre traps. Especially early in their lifespan, Jeff Turzo’s electronic production felt innovative and fresh, just ahead of its time. Like it wasn’t to be trusted as a viable commercial hook. On their EP, the duo sounded too much like their influences — but the slick, homespun production got the attention of mega-producer Rick Rubin. The band added a drummer (Adam Kary) and a second guitarist (Andrew McGee) to find a bigger, radio-tempting sound.
“No More Love,” a song carried over from the LP and re-recorded for Empty, stood out among those early songs and predicted their future innovation. Featured in the end-credit crawl of the film Johnny Mnemonic (1995), the song put the band on industrial fans’ radar. That’s where I first heard them.
And then they tried something else on their 1998 album Life in the So-Called Space Age and it’s almost like they succeeded and failed miserably at the same time.
“From Your Mouth” totally eschews the guitar-laden groundwork upon which God Lives Underwater had built its brand. It turns into an electronic playground, opening with synth and sly percussion. (Scott Garrett, formerly of The Cult, replaced Kary before recording began.) The downbeat vocals and lazy emoting sets the scene for electronic turntabalism and waves of synthetic sound. Turzo showcases restraint and patience with his production style, embracing the band’s new balance.
The prior track on the album, “Rearrange” feels like a 1st cousin to “No More Love” — only less vibrant, less raw, less tied into the growing industrial scene onto which, I can only assume, Rick Rubin intended them to burst. (But “fuck that guy” is all I’ll say about that.) The two sides of the band sandwiched together, the perfect micro-study of an act searching for its special purpose.
And no “No Wrong Notes” post of mine would be complete without a tragic end. I swear I didn’t know this story when I picked the song.
It won’t surprise you to learn that Life in the So-Called Space Age didn’t cement the band’s status as rock music superstars. Critics compared it (less favorably) to Depeche Mode and Radiohead and Camouflage and even fucking Ween. (Whatever you say, Marc Weingarten of Entertainment Weekly. And don’t ever compare a band I like to Ween ever again.) Some thought Space Age was an attempt at parody. Some thought it merely aloof and listless. They all called it derivative, but derivative of disparate and unrelated acts.
Still… the album sold well. God Lives Underwater lived a moment of fame in the wake of “From Your Mouth” success. Roman Coppola directed the video. They went on a big U.S. tour alongside Stabbing Westward and Econoline Crush.
And then it all fell apart.
Their label, 1500, couldn’t promise money to promote their upcoming third record. 1500's owner eventually sold to the Riffage website. Reilly’s fiancee died crossing train tracks on foot with headphones on, leading the frontman down a path of substance abuse. They continued to record material, including a cover of David Bowie’s “Fame” for the 15 Minutes soundtrack. Riffage, not surprisingly, went bankrupt and dropped the band before the album’s release. The members went their separate ways until a Spanish label, Locomotive Music, purchased the rights to God Lives Underwater’s album and finally released it in 2004. Up Off the Floor was met with total indifference. Locomotive hadn’t sourced the pressing from the band’s original tapes and proved themself inept at promotion and radio placement. Nobody knew the thing even existed. I didn’t know the record had been released until many years later.
Beyond the guitar-driven “White Noise,” it’s just not a very interesting record. Even that feels like an outtake from the Empty years.
The following year David Reilly died suddenly at the age of 34. He slipped into a coma and died as a result of an untreated tooth infection — in the middle of preparing a solo record called How Humans R(x) featuring material inspired by his struggle to overcome the death of his fiancee.
So, to recap…
Don’t cross train tracks with your headphones on.
Go to the dentist.
The FUCKING NINETIES kinda sucked, but they also gave us some of the last innovative mainstream hard rock music.
Music assholes never grow up.
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