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Event
Prince Daddy and the Hyena at DRKMTTR
Prince Daddy and the Hyena
Retirement Party
The Obsessives
Drkmttr Collective
1111 Dickerson Pike
$12 ADV / $14 DOS
7pm Doors
Cosmic Thrill Seekers, the new record from Albany punk rock band Prince Daddy & the Hyena, is many
things. It is an odyssey of epic, The Monitor
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esque proportions, a great, galloping sonic roadtrip across
space and time and Albany, boomeranging around a
horn of punk, pop, indie, garage rock, and
orchestral, Queen
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style arrangements and theatrics; it is an exploration of the fall
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out after an acid trip,
manic self
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destruction, bottoming
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out and recovering, and then slipping again; it is a candid, acute
doc
umentation of frontperson Kory Gregorys cyclical mental health states as told through three acts
and 14 songs/chapters; it is an existential presentation of eternal return theory, a victory via surrender
to impermanence; and perhaps most of all, it is abo
ut Dorothy Gale and The Wizard Of Oz.
Dorothy was the OG cosmic thrill seeker, Gregory says. Dorothy kind of encompasses everything I
was trying to get at.
There are three acts in Cosmic Thrill Seekers. Gregory explains, Act One is The Heart, which
is the Tin
Man. Act Two is The Brain, which is the Scarecrow, and Act Three is The Roar, which is the Lion. Each
act explores a stage in Gregorys mental health. I remember watching the Wizard of Oz one time, and
noticing some weird kind of parallels bet
ween the cyclical nature of my mental health and that movie,
he says. My mental health rotates and jumps from one stage to the next, and then repeats itself. The
closing moments of Cosmic Thrill Seekers reflect this, as the outro to the last track, The
Wacky
Misadventures of the Passenger, morphs into the first muted notes of opener I Lost My Life.
Gregorys assessment of his mental health is a process thats coded into CTS DNA. Observing my
mental health for four years kind of gave me enough to w
ork with to write this album, Gregory
continues. He wrote the entire record
music and lyrics
in solitude over a four year period in a closet
in his bedroom. No one heard any of it until it was finished and ready to record
not even bandmates
Cam, Zak, and
Daniel. When you have OCD like me, you want it to be perfect, Gregory says of the
process. During recording at PonderRosa Studios in Lafayette, New Jersey with producer Nick Dardaris
(AKA beloved pal and Albany scene comrade Scoops), Gregory would ask hi
s bandmates to leave before
his vocal takes. Even pre
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studio practices were held without a PA system, meaning no one else knew any
of the words or melodies.
The process and finished product are tributes to the sort of friendship and community supports tha
t
define Prince Daddy. Gregorys bandmates are his best friends, and they encouraged him to pursue the
record he needed to make. Its very, very, very much a selfish record, he says. It wasnt just the
record I wanted to write, but this is for me, this
is to help me, and hopefully to look back on when Im in
the more destructive phases of the cycle and realize that its not permanent, and that Ive confronted it
before. Ive put some math to it.
But the calculus of reckoning with mental illness isnt l
inear, and neither is Cosmic Thrill Seekers. I Lost
My Life opens the record with muted acoustic guitar and plinking keys as Gregory wrestles with the
catalyzing acid trip. I hit it one too many times and I lost my life, he sings before a crescendo tha
t
crashes into Lauren, a triumphant pop punk gem with scorching leads. Im trying to move past this
but no such luck/But you drag me the furthest from giving up! Gregory shouts. Fuckin A follows suit,
a similarly bright, guitar
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forward headbanger th
at sees him in a state of recovery. There are many
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LocationDrkmttr Collective (View)
1111 Dickerson Pike
Nashville, TN 37207
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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