The Dark Side of Love

The Dark Side of Love is a song inspired by Zephaniah 3 and the message by Dr. J. Vernon McGee. People often associate the love of God with good feelings, happy thoughts, blessings, and even prosperity. However, there is much darker side to His love. One that makes us uncomfortable to talk about or imagine. One that can invoke terror.

It is the dark side of love—God’s love. And in order to make this clear, perhaps I should brief you on a terrifying scene.

Dr. J Veronon McGe

Read about more songs from Ugly on the Inside.

Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled
Safety and security were left for her to revile
Her evening wolves leave nothing for the morning
She knows no shame to spite my every warning

I am the destroyer of nations
I lay waste to their cities
The streets are empty attractions
Jerusalem, I thought you would fear me

The whole world will be consumed
By the fire of my jealous anger
It’s a dangerous perfume
Poured out from the dark side of love

Purify the lips of my people
Bring low the high and mighty
Raise up the meek and humble
Bring back your captives before your very eyes

On the Inside

The first full length song on Ugly on the Inside, is the title track. This song wastes no time with nice words, political correctness, or feels. There’s a large and growing school of thought today that people are basically good, and beautiful on the inside. And while that is a nice sentiment, and makes people feel good, it’s far from the truth. The hard truth is, we’re all ugly on the inside.

Sure, we might feel like we’re good at times, but our hearts deceive us and quickly turn on us. The heart of mankind is evil. There’s a sickness inside, like a storm brewing in the distance growing ever closer. Even the good, and kind things we do are like whitewashing a tomb, making it all pretty on the outside while we’re rotting within.

While this song paints a dark portrait of humanity, there is more to this story. I will continue to dig deeper with the next song.

Ugly on the Inside

Pretend that I’m okay when I’m falling apart
Never imagined that life would imitate art
I don’t know if it’s remorse or regret
The constant bad dreams haven’t let up yet

We’re all ugly on the inside
We were told that we were beautiful, but that’s a lie
You’re all ugly on the inside
There’s a sickness that comes from within, and then you die

Pretending I’m okay when I’ve fallen apart
Impending darkness broods as it swarms my heart
There is so much that I must hide
At times it seems like it’s impossible, but I still try

We all still deserve everything we get
And it’s much too late to try to turn back


Beyond Our Understanding

The introduction to the new album Ugly on the Inside is a short instrumental thematic industrial noise track. In essence, it’s dark and somewhat chaotic nature sets the scene for the rest of the album.

The noise patterns glitch, toms and snare pound rhythmically in the forefront. The ominous voice sampled in the background poses the question. “Can we be sure there are no supernatural laws beyond our understanding?”

The short song itself came into existence just 2 weeks before the completion of the album. N and I sat down after much of it was built and sampled the 1943 horror film Dead Men Walk on Archive.org. There was more gems in that film than just this one, but you’ll have to wait for those.

Ugly on the Inside

Ugly on the Inside

New music coming Friday, Feb 1st. This 6 song EP is industrial rock at it’s grittiest. Ugly on the Inside is a dark look into the human condition and the ultimate realization that is captured in the song Hole.

Ugly on the Inside (full album)

Track list:

Nearly all of the songs on this EP have been years in the making. Two in particular are about 20 years old, and have a deep history, but never before released. I will be releasing blog posts covering each song over the next few days. Let’s shoot for one a day, along with a preview of each song.

Ugly on the Inside

In a galaxy far, far, away…

This is a prequel to my original post titled “A Long, Long Time Ago…”. There I explain the history of Deadset A.D., and give away the album for free. Enough about that.

In the days before Deadset A.D., there was a band called “Stranger than Phiction”. This band was blend of punk, metal, rock, and on the recording – industrial. [GASP] Industrial music before Glyptic Minority? How far back does this go? We’re talking late-mid 90’s. So yeah, it was bad. But good. You’ll see.

On the recording you’ll hear the worst layering of acoustic and electric drums that you have ever heard. We just hooked up some cheap mics to a crappy drum kit and had the drummer play along. Oh yeah. The drummer. His name was Bulldog. Well, it was actually Randy – but nobody called him that (I guess he earned the name in prison). Then we had another Randy who played bass (didn’t go to prison, so he got to keep his name). James played and sang with us for a while (eventually went to prison, but he’s good now). We had a number of people who played here and there (I’m guessing at least one or more of them wound up in prison). I can’t even remember them all. But those were the key people over the few years we played.

A few production notes… This was probably recorded on a combination of a MiniCD player and a 486 Micron PC with a SoundBlaster sound card (thanks, Dad for letting me use it). Both the guitar and vocals were recording using the first generation of guitar floor pedal multi-processors. Don’t laugh. It was the only thing I had. Also, it was entirely produced in Acid Pro 2 in my parents basement, which is basically like playing with Lincoln Logs by today’s standards. My guitar was a plaid Samick Blues Saracino, which played terribly. I’ll look for pictures.

Can’t wait to hear how awfully amazing the 90’s Industrial garage band scene was?! Look, or listen, no further. Check it out. But, please be sure to fasten your seat belt securely and park your mind in a judgment free zone. Extra points will be awarded for those who make it to the end.

In case you’re wondering what kind of Christian band lets such shady characters play with them, it was the kind of Christian band that worked with at-risk youth and young adults. So yeah, we had a lot of really cool people play with us that didn’t always make the best choices in life, myself included. Eventually I came to the conclusion that STP was equally a ministry for the people who joined us for so many short stints. It was about the fellowship with other believers who had real life struggles with hard issues. Not every believer looks and acts like The Church Lady. Believers are people who claw and struggle to get through life while placing their faith in Jesus Christ. Not to be cliche, but we’re not perfect – just forgiven.