Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 7: From the End of the World

You were never noticed in life
It was the wrong time
It was the wrong place
Now that you're gone, you live in my dreams

"Black.Sun.Rise"
Salo

Photo courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Anodyne were probably the best band you never heard of around the turn of the century. Though they grew up alongside some of the most popular bands of the Boston boom of the late '90s and shared labels with a who's who of noise rock contemporaries, Anodyne were a band that just never seemed to find its niche with the music-buying masses.
    "We've never really had an audience the way other bands had an audience so kids who like Blood for Blood will like us," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "We've always been sort of like a square peg in a round hole in whatever scenario we were in. The Level Plane kids were open minded. They weren't really exposed to extreme music like we were doing. We were never a major band. We were never able to draw more than 50 people anyway."
    If Anodyne were never able to connect with a wider audience, it certainly wasn't from a lack of trying. The road dogs would play just about anywhere with just about any band.
    "We would play with all sorts of bands on tour, black metal, crust, grindcore, that weird electronic spastic shit that was popular then, tough guy shit, all kinds of bands," bassist Joshua Scott said. "We were less concerned about the bands we played with than we were with just being gone and playing shows. There would usually be one or two kids who were into it."
    Critical darlings like Isis championed Anodyne, taking them on the road several times, but it never translated into the same level of material success.   
    "That connection with them helped us a little bit. Aaron and those guys would always try to help us when they could," Hill said.

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 6: Into the Outer Dark

Too far I want
Too much I fell
From grace disappear
I wish I knew why it
Felt like ice picks

"Lucky Sky Diamond"
The Outer Dark

    After eight years and three full lengths, the members of Anodyne went their separate ways after they failed to find an audience for their idiosyncratic take on hardcore and noise rock. Nearly every record label the band worked with has since gone out of business, leaving the bulk of the band's material out of print and minimizing their shot at posthumous underground glory.
    "Anodyne was an obscure band," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. There was only really a few people who remember the band. We weren't like Coalesce who were selling out huge places and selling huge records. Re-releasing things by them makes sense. Us, you'd get my mom and two friends, maybe. I wouldn't even sell a copy to my mom. I'd give it to her."
    But Anodyne's legacy lives as its DNA filtered down through the various musicians' new projects. Anodyne alumni have taken stabs at grindcore, shoegaze, sludge, indie rock and electronic music in the years since they crawled out from under a Lifetime of Gray Skies.

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 5: Infernal Machine

I read your diary
In the top drawer
Next to your bed
You lie awake at night
I know what's on your mind

"Carnot Engine"
Lifetime of Gray Skies

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    For their third and final full length, 2004's Lifetime of Gray Skies, Anodyne, like peers Lickgoldensky, made the leap from Escape Artist to Level Plane Records looking for a change of musical scenery. Level Plane owner Greg Drudy was looking to expand his label's niche beyond screamo to include other offshoots of the punk family tree.
    "Around that time Greg was working with bands like Coliseum as well. Coliseum is further away from being a screamo band than we were," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "I feel like at the time Greg was trying to expand away from emo and that kind of trip. His musical interests were expanding."
    Though Anodyne had leaped to a new label, the songwriting process remained consistent. Riffs and songs were intensely workshopped and improved through intensive and laborious rehearsals.
    "We approached writing the same as the previous two records, just trying to create something we were into, always attempting to build something more expansive," drummer Joel Stallings said. "By this point we had been touring like crazy, so I think that lifestyle fed into the writing, and our strengths as players."
    Lifetime of Gray Skies was recorded at Telefunken Studios in Connecticut in 2004 as Anodyne were gearing up for their first European tour.
    "It was a fairly intense time," bassist Joshua Scott said. "My job was winding down. We were trying to find the best place to record, playing shows, screening record covers, and getting ready for Europe. I think we left for the European tour a week or less after we finished recording and mixing the record. I also was called for jury duty somewhere in there. As usual, the studio situation was fucked up. We had chosen a studio in Connecticut on the advice of our friend and because of their tape machine. The studio manager didn’t even have it set up when we got there. We wasted a day straightening that shit out, and then were told we had a 10 pm curfew on noise, not what we had been told when we were scheduling shit. Joel and I finished our takes the next day and took the bus back to [New York] to finish out our jobs. When we returned later in the week, Mike and the other engineer had pretty much mixed it, and we just listened to the finals, which is fine with me. It’s a process I have little tolerance for."

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 4: Finest Craftsman

I'll create you
Erase the parts I don't like
I'll destroy you
Like everyone you've ever known

"Like Water in Water"
The Outer Dark

Photo courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    With powerhouse drummer Joel Stallings in the fold, Anodyne entered their most intense and productive phase of the band. The trio's stability allowed them to reel off a series of defining EPs and a pair of well received albums, including the band's farewell masterwork, Lifetime of Gray Skies in the span of three years.
    "That was pretty much the beginning of that era of the band, probably the most well known version of the band, the lineup that was more singular in its approach," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "We were all on board with touring and rehearsing. We had a pretty rigorous rehearsal schedule. That was the most productive era of the band. It felt like an unlimited creative pool. Everyone's playing was at a really high point at that point. We were constantly writing."
    Anodyne would schedule marathon rehearsal sessions, spending three or four hours at a time working over their music. Anodyne was Hill's whole world at the time, and he poured out everything he had and felt into his music and lyrics.
    "I didn't have anything else to do," he said. "I was living this sort of lean existence. The band was everything I had. That's the way I wanted to approach it at that period. As a result, we were able to write a lot, come up with a lot of material, hone our skills as musicians. There's a lot of chemistry between us as musicians. We get there from rehearsing."
 

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 3: Start With Subtraction

Erase these moments
Erase these wasted years
Sometimes I wish I could disappear
Sometimes I can't

"Our Lady of Assassins"
The Outer Dark

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Short a drummer and second guitarist, Anodyne went through a "weird hiatus period for a couple of months" in 2001 that saw the band ultimately relocate to New York, guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. Once there, Hill and bassist Joshua Scott would recruit a phenomenal new drummer in Joel Stallings and usher in the band's most stable, focused and creative era.
    "Moving didn’t seem like a big deal to me; I was prepared," Scott said. "I was surprised when [previous drummer Ira] Bronson quit (which happened as we were loading out from the Enemymine show we had just played), but I knew we would find someone. Any confidence came from the fact that we had been playing in bands for a while, and I knew I could play in a band wherever we were. It was the normal state.  My concern was finding a job and a place to live. Luckily, Mike put me up until I did find a place."
    Once they settled into New York, Anodyne started the search for a second guitarist to take Ayal Naor's place. One of the prospects was Black Army Jacket's Andrew Orlando. The two bands had met and bonded at shows and Black Army Jacket drummer Dave Witte chipped in as a session drummer for Anodyne, so it seemed like a natural fit. Anodyne pressed Orlando into service when they played Hellfest in 2001.
    "I was very familiar with their music, loved the hell out of Quiet Wars, and the new material they had was so amazing. I was a big fan of it all," Orlando said. "We practiced a couple of times, and all I can say is that when it came for the day of the show, I felt completely overwhelmed. Listening to what Mike plays and then trying to actually play it are two completely different things. Mike is an amazing player on a very different level than me and it kind of showed. I was hanging on for dear life. But, it sounded noisy and chaotic and kind of cool."

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 2: The Great Assimilator

Only you can give
Give me what I need
It was always you

"Portable Crematorium"
Lifetime of Gray Skies

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Anodyne stood at the fringe of Boston's hardcore boom at the turn of the century, coming up alongside acts like Isis, Converge and Cave In. Though all of those bands had overlapping musical interests and shared a common love of hardcore and noise rock, each was able to spin that into distinct and unique sounds.
    "There were a lot of good bands coming out of Boston at that time," Isis drummer Aaron Harris said. "I remember thinking the same thing. Why are all these bands from Boston? We were all friends and toured together. We all rehearsed in the same crappy rehearsal complex in Allston. Isis shared a practice space with Cave In for a while, and Anodyne rehearsed down the hall."
    "Boston was definitely having a good moment," Anodyne guitarist and vocalist Ayal Naor said. "I was around a little earlier than that. There was a feeling that something was happening, and it was an exciting time to make music. ... There's a kind of feeling that something is happening and you're playing with these bands and you get excited to play with them. We'd tour with Isis and see them 30 nights in a row, and I would stand there and see them every night."
    However, guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill always felt out of place compared to close-knit relationship shared by those other bands.
   

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 1: Form is Emptiness

 I wear an iron mask to hide the ugly truth
Lifetime of gray skies

"In the Desert Sight Precedes Sound"
Lifetime of Gray Skies


    There were no press releases announcing Anodyne's breakup in 2005. The band did not hit the tour trail for one more victory lap. Burned out and creatively spent, the then-New York trio quietly canceled their plans for a European tour and laid to rest one of the most abrasive and aggressive hardcore bands of the young millennium.
    "I'm super critical of the fanfare people put on these things like 'This is our last show,'" said guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill, the band's sole constant through its eight year existence.
    It's probably a given that Converge will go down as this generation's equivalent of Black Flag, but Anodyne make a perfect Miss Congeniality to the other Boston hardcore institution's Prom Queen. Anodyne reeled off three vicious records, including apotheosis Lifetime of Gray Skies, and the requisite van-full of EPs in an eight year period, honing and perfecting their sandpaper scrape brand of hardcore. Unlike Converge, though, Anodyne fizzled partly because they were never able to identify a demographic hungry for their angular, driving, emotionally cathartic hardcore. Though Anodyne, itself, was never able to connect with a wider audience, it should be remembered as a proving ground for a series of musicians who would spin off into a host of creatively challenging bands as varied as Tombs, 27 and Defeatist.
    "It's something we all did together and it's something important to us," Hill said. "It made us grow as people and as friends. It helped us achieve the things we're doing now. It was a building block."