This was the last album I made before leaving the apartment where I grew up and spent most of the first 22 years of my life – it’s an album made on the precipice of a total overhaul, and everything on it is about that death and summing up of my previous life in some way.

It can be a pretty uncomfortable listen, even compared to my other work from that time. The theme of sucidiality is present throughout the album, and this was something I was still dealing with in a much more raw way than in later albums like Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue that tackle this from more of a distance, when I’d already done a lot more healing.

“The Virgin Mortician” is based on personal experiences that played into a lot of deeper trauma around homophobia and similar issues.

“Rats and Reptiles” acts as my final statement about the psychiatric abuse I experienced growing up in NYC, and also touches on the problems of capitalism and White supremacy, things I’d rarely confronted as directly.

“It’s Been a Long Night” closes it out with a musical summary of a lot of what I love and hate about the time I spent growing up in NYC, how much it changed in that time, and how much it stayed the same.

released April 14, 2016

The Elusive and Terrible Wendifer took the photo on the album cover in Cobourg, Ontario, 2016.

Jesse wrote the lyrics and music, played all the instruments, sang, engineered and produced the recordings, and designed the album cover, in Brooklyn, also in 2016.

Photos from the now infamous Twice Volcanicized photoshoot on Cobourg Beach, Ontario by The Elusive and Terrible Wendifer: