Monsters

> ""You're the monsters on the other side!"
> Monsters on the Other Side
>
>

Monsters album cover

## Synopsis

Monsters is the forty-first I Remember 2006 album. It is the eight and final album of Era Seven.

Monsters is a concept album where humans are portrayed as monsters, hence the name. It was inspired by a few bands, mainly Crywank, Electric President, American Football, and Duster. A couple songs were from abandoned projects; Sisters and Agreement. Hate was a song that was originally on Out of the Void, but was eventually replaced by Don't Leave Me in the Dark.

## Tracklist

If You Cared About Me, You Would Have Left A Long Time Ago

Concrete

Never Name Your Demons

Sisters

Hate

Sculptures

Finding Hope

Airwaves

Lagan

Agreement

Forward:

Monsters on the Other Side

Benches in the City

## Lore Notes

Monsters is the first album to introduce the serial killer The Sculptor, or Micah, who is a child kidnapper, and who makes concrete sculptures out of his victims, of which he then sells to art exhibits. He has kidnapped a known seven children, by the information given in the song, Sculptures. So far, three children are known to have died during their captivity, Quinton, Brandi, and Venessa. The other four, however, were rescued when a SWAT team raided the house and found them being held in. The four kids rescued were Natalie, Hayden, Mary, and Francis. Micah had fled the scene and managed to evade the officers. The surviving kids were picked up by their parents at the station. Francis saw a live report that stated the Micah was caught on CCTV footage, fleeing passed a convenience store. Figuring out he was restocking on supplies to make more sculptures, Francis tracked Micah down to an factory, where Micah was trying to siphon liquid concrete from a mixer. The two had a fight that ended with Francis knocking Micah into the cement mixer, killing Micah. Francis then ran home

Forward: continues the Flotsam and Stuxnet story, by acting as a "forward" to the song To Flotsam off the album No Man's Land. It has Stuxnet apologizing from the afterlife about taking his life. He continues begs for Flotsam to lead him to a "lighthouse", as well as wanting him to tell him if his daughter is alright. Knowing how depression swallowed Stuxnet's life, Never Name Your Demons could have been an unintentional foreshadow to this track, for the meaning of that song is to not personify [your] mental illness.

Monsters on the Other Side introduce Landon, Xariné and Devin into the lore. Xariné was fleeing from a friend-turned-monster, when he fell through a rift that opened inside of the office building Landon worked in. While Landon was caring about Xariné, attempting to calm him down, some employees were disgusted by the child, calling him a "monster". Landon fired back at the other employees, chastising them for attacking a "grieving kid." Xariné asked to have a cup of water. Landon retrieved a cup for him, only to return to see a few employees trying to throw the kid out of a six-story window. Another colleague, Devin, helped Landon get Xariné away from the employees, but got stabbed in the process. Landon declared that the employees were "the monsters on the other side," before the trio fled away from the building. Devin told Landon to hide somewhere, before walking off to call an ambulance. Landon and Xariné take refuge in an abandoned cabin in a patch of woods that is next to an inland lake. The last we hear about the two is that they were visiting a city, and a lady approached them and asked Landon if Xariné was his son.

## Important Characters

Micah "The Sculptor"

Francis

Mary

Hayden

Natalie

Quinton

Brandi

Venessa

Stuxnet

Flotsam

Amelia

Landon

Xariné

Devin

## Trivia

* Concrete foreshadows the story of Sculptures, for Micah makes concrete sculptures out of the victims. Also, Bullara purposefully plays the melody of "Mary Had a Little Lamb", foreshadowing one of the survivors of The Sculptor.
* Sisters originates from the same abandoned project that Your Cryptid was supposed to be on
* This album is mostly an acoustic album, except the ends of Sculptures and Monsters on the Other Side, because LaNore couldn't resist after he got a Telecaster.
* The album cover is of a corrupted image Rafe took while on a trip to Ludington years prior. It was taken on one of the pier walks. It was corrupted to make the album cover.
* Never Name Your Demons was not only the first song LaNore and Wilbur did together for IR06. There was also a third person on the song; Chase Bundt.

## Artists' Notes

Artist notes are taken straight from the Bandcamp page, and are credited to thus page. Monsters.

### Rafe's Note

So, this spawned from me noticing how much output we had this year. I saw we only needed thirteen more tracks to reach a one-hundred song benchmark, so we worked to do just that before the year ended. We ended up taking it down to the wire, as you can see the release date is the day we got this finished.

I was getting back into Crywank before this album spawned, which you can see the lyrical inspiration in the first track, "If You Cared About Me, You Would Have Left A Long Time Ago". We wanted to go back to that acoustic rock style we started out with. Under the decision Wilbur made, we tried to not use any electronic instruments on this album, which we did for the most part. Then I got a telecaster, and I slipped electric guitar into two of the songs, but I still kept it to a minimum by only using them in the last parts of "Sculptures" and "Monsters on the Other Side" which is where the album gets its name from.

I was also getting back into Electric President, which is one of Wilbur's favorite bands, which he showed me early in our friendship. "Monsters", "Nightmare No.5 of 6", and "All the Distant Ships" inspired the story behind "Monsters on the Other Side". When I was outside, listening to those songs for the first time in over a year, I imagined a story about a kid fleeing from the Cronenberg apocalypse, when he ends up in a different world. The first person he meets cares about him, but a majority of the people around end up being really antagonistic to him because he is completely different from them

The reason we called this album Monsters is because I think it fits this album perfectly. A lot of these songs here tell stories about people being monsters. "If You Cared" shows someone turning on another person. "Concrete" tells the tale of someone tearing their world apart and being abandoned at the end. It also foreshadows a later song. "Never Name Your Demons" is a cautionary message of not characterizing mental illness. "Sisters" is the only song here that is fully biographical, because my aunt Lisa was going through an awful relationship, and was being stalked by a bastard named "Tom". "Hate" is a hold-over from the Out of the Void sessions, and it's about not wanting to hold a grudge on someone anymore. "Lagan" is about someone being fed up from being used as property, and it ends with a full-on breakdown. Then there's "Sculptures", which is our darkest song yet. Sculptures is about a child getting revenge on a kidnapper who would make sculptures out of their victims.

"Agreement" is from a weird abandoned project. It's about communication, and how there's so many nuances in speech. "Forward:" continues the Flotsam and Stuxnet story, resuming from the song "To Flotsam". "Finding Hope" is one of only two songs that are positive on the album, and it is exactly about what the title entails. And the album ends with "Benches in the City". It's a sweet song about Xariné, who is the kid in "Monsters on the Other Side" and Landen, who is the narrator for both tracks, sitting on a bench in a nearby city to the cabin, as the sunsets. For such a disturbing album, ending it with something positive was really needed. It shows that there is still good around amongst all the terrible things.

### Will's Note

We kind of threw this together at the last second. Without meaning to, we're pulling a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and that's mostly my fault, I think. I'd been in a creative rut until maybe yesterday (the 30th of December, 2022) as I was also in a bit of a depression. This album has a lot of influence from two specific artists/bands on both of our parts, Ben Cooper and Crywank. There were also some other inspirations on my part, like the bands American Football and Duster. A lot of these stories are apocalyptic in nature, and sinister. We wanted to go for an anti-folk sound, and I think we encapsulated that pretty well.

1. ↑ https://iremember2006.bandcamp.com/album/monsters
2. ↑ https://iremember2006.bandcamp.com/album/monsters