So I Had To Shoot Him-Alpha Males and Popular Girls; Crucial Blast Records, 2006

 

Here's a record that is so hyperactive, so tightly wound in its over the top energy, it's no wonder that it's t he only one that this group put out. So I Had To Shoot Him emerged from the very fertile Metal scene of Maryland and put out Alpha Males and Popular Girls on that state's great Crucial Blast label in 2006. Disaster Amnesiac is just getting around to listening to it in 2023. Somehow I'm willing to bet that the members of the group are still fatigued from putting Alpha Males together and then (presumably) touring it. Over the course of ten precision-tooled songs, the twin guitar team locks into these incredibly tight atonal riff barrages. The bass player gets spooky surreal and then percussive while keeping pace with the insane drum workouts. So I Had To Shoot Him were an ensemble of almost unbearable togetherness, in that each member of this rhythm section was so absolutely locked in with what their fellows were doing......the mind boggles. It's as if they were giving lectures on some advanced form of calculus. To have done that enough for a full length record is impressive and astounding. Add to all of that the fact that the tunes have held up so well, that they sound so fresh and great all of these years later? Damn, nicely done So I Had To Shoot Him! Atop the fractalized mayhem coming from the guitars and drums, Alpha Males and Popular Girls features the the crazed singing, Opera stylings, howling, and all purpose freak outs from Libby Schaub. This singer even delivers her lyrics in German at one point (sounds like German, anyway, but hard to tell from underneath all of that shiny guitar string abuse). Disaster Amnesiac has imagined Libby having to spend some serious time healing after all of the spent energy in delivering this record. I hope her vocal chords are alright, and I wonder what kind of groups she's joined in the wake of So I Had To Shoot Him. Her performance on Alpha Males is exhausting for the listener, it must have been a kind of hell scape at times for her as the performer. Alpha Males and Popular Girls will most likely leave the listener in a daze, fatigued and sweating in its aftermath. If any of the members of So I Had To Shoot Him ended up institutionalized after this production, or living on some quiet ashram in Arkansas or Humboldt County, well that would not be a surprise. Still, their ordeal can be enjoyed with far less volatile results by an attentive appreciator of crazy Metal sounds. This record destroys like unexploded ordinance can.