07.04.87

"July 4th Demo"
16 Track Studio Recording
Recorded at Trianon Studios, Long Beach, CA
Produced by ATTAXE, Engineered & Mixed by Greg Anderson.

Mike Bonaventura – Guitars
Jim Houle – Drums
Todd May – Guitars
Gary Sebourn – Bass
Mike White - Vocals

Song list:

PLAY - Justice of the Peace
PLAY - SDI (Death From Above)
PLAY - Preach Violence

Our first "real studio recording"! I remember going in and recording this quickly on July 4 and mixing July 5th - picking up tape copies and driving straight out to Corona for the Anthrax gig that afternoon. We only had 2 copies at that time - one of which I still have. We made a few copies for friends and promoters, but this demo was never distributed so most ATTAXE fans have never heard it. (Also, within six months of this recording we changed vocalists, making this demo unusable for promotional purposes.)

Looking at the photo of the studio brings back memories of the look of utter disbelief on the face of engineer Greg Anderson when he first heard us rip through our songs - we were the first "speed metal" band he had recorded and, honestly, he didn't know what to do with us! We just played the songs with a few solo overdubs and that was it.

Some song background: "Preach Violence" was written entirely by Gary Sebourn - we added our solos, etc., but this was Gary's song 100%. I wrote lyrics to "Justice" & "SDI" - the latter about the idea of technological warfare. I always thought the solo Mike wrote and played on this one was one of his best.