Furiously Killing, the song

Ralph and I started, as we always do, with a bass line and a page of lyrics. These being not so much lyrics as a description of a dream I had the night before.

There was a dark mood, a kind of foreboding as the song came into being. Helicopters were flying overhead, it was hot and the door to the studio was open. We knew the song was disturbing.

There's a guy in LA named Rush Riddle who produces and puts out records. We had played at his house parties as Webaworld (the band that preceded Puttanesca) and Rush wanted to record us. One day we set up in his living room studio and started playing "Furiously Killing." I was very excited about the song and thought he would like it.

"STOP!" he said right in the middle of the first take.
"You can't do a song about that!"

And I was genuinely surprised by how freaked out he was. I thought it was clear. The song was a dream, a commentary on how even unconsciously we contribute, we participate in this culture of violence. The song wasn't celebrating violence but asking, compelling people to wake up and "get off the car" of the trolley headed towards certain destruction.

Rush's reaction plus the shredding vocal at the end put a hex on the song for me. We recorded it at Catasonic along with all the other songs on Puttanesca in 1996 but when Mark remixed the album in 2006 we never even thought of putting "Furiously Killing" on the final record.

Only when we started mixing bonus tracks for fans in Italy did "Furiously Killing" see the light of day. The song was mixed and ready to upload the weekend before Virginia Tech happened. I listened through wincing at the detached vocal describing a bloody murder from the killer's point of view.

Sadly, still relevant 11 years later.