ECHO HOLLOW — Superficial Intelligence (2004)

Cool story. I am on Amazon looking for new Tourniquet this week (which is excellent) and their algorithm produces Echo Hollow as an additional recommendation, undoubtedly due to the Guy Ritter Gary Lenaire connection. I already had Diet of Worms but somehow I HAD COMPLETELY MISSED THEY DID A SECOND RECORD 14 years ago. I sampled it on iTunes and bought it. IT IS INCREDIBLE!

If you’re into hard rock / metal / alternative this is highly recommended if like me, you missed this on the first go-around. Amazon classified it as alternative which is a shame because this record has way more guitar riffs and solos than the average alternative record. This is Guy and Gary at their creative peak. Every song is unique, creative, catchy, with intelligent lyrics. Gary is riffing within the context of each song and lends screaming vocal parts in all the right places. This record is the mid point between Tourniquet and Luke Easter’s latest pop rock effort.

When you sample, do not be dissuaded by a couple of slow intros. Guy injects the right emotions at the right time into every song.

1. ADHD - perfect kick off mid tempo rocker, with a shuffle feel
2. Whatever If — very hooky song, slow start then gets huge. This was probably submitted as the “single” and responsible for the alternative tag
3. Superficial Intelligence - the title track is based on acoustic guitar picking and it’s haunting. When the huge distortion chorus kicks in, you will beg Guy to make more music.
4. Empty — cool riff followed by another cool riff folllowed by another cool riff....and then.....another...ok you get it.
5. Middle of the Mind - remember the vocal effects on Broken Chromosomes? They’re back. Guy and Gary trade vocals in this one in the chorus
6. Bring It — Gary owns the vocal in this one. “Eye for an eye....”. It is freaking awesome. The first real “metal song” in the record.
7. Late Movie — cool pop song. End of solo sounded like something EVH might play.
8. Columbus Day ...instrumental. Ok overall, good guitar work throughout
9. Yesterday’s Ghost — too mellow for me. I skip this track
10. 1973. Now we’re talking again. Punk rock sounding rock, tons of aggression, with some Tourniquet style changes. Also a metal song. The song deals with abortion post Roe v Wade,

So there it is. Curious if others enjoy this as much as I do. It doesnt have a tune that supercedes the triumph that is the Diet of Worms title track (Luther taking on the Catholic Church), but overall it is better and more enjoyable than that first CD.

I honestly had no clue they put out a second album! I will definitely check it out, Diet of Worms was fantastic

Yeah, this album is great!

It was originally supposed to be released a few years earlier. Then it was not happening. I think at some point it was certain the album wouldn't ever be released, but I recall that oddly for a while one or some or all of the songs were in some synthesizer as demo songs.

Then in 2004 Gary released a solo album The Lost Years with most of the songs being unreleased Echo Hollow songs. And very soon after The Lost Years the release of Superficial Intelligence was announced.

In any case The Lost Years had 10 songs of which 7 were on the new Echo Hollow album. Two of the songs were Cripple Need Cane songs that didn't end up in The Big Dance (2005) album. The demo versions of those songs were available in the Cripple Need Cane website. One is an instrumental that hasn't been released anywhere else ever.

When Superficial Intelligence's release was announced I immediately ordered it online. I was such a big fan of Guy and Gary and loved Diet of Worms to pieces.

The album, while not as heavy as Diet of Worms, was really good and I listened it through tens of times soon after I got it. Guy's voice was amazing as always and most of the songs were great too.

I think the only song I didn't care for and I still don't really care for is Late Movie. And Whatever If isn't that great either even though it has some good parts in it. The rest are very good. Bring It is an actual thrash song, although perhaps the simplest thrash song ever created, and I remember how big deal it was when it basically was Gary's brief return to thrash. His last thrash recording had been in The Collected Works of Tourniquet with the two new songs in 1996 and it looked like Gary was getting further and further away from thrash and, frankly, from metal too. He already had demos of his future music in his websites and they were the Cripple Need Cane stuff that was more alternative hard rock than actual metal.

My favorite song in the album is 1973 where Guy Ritter sounded furious and almost better than ever. And I like the Rafik Oganyan songs too (he was also the vocalist of Cripple Need Cane). By the way, I love Yesterday's Ghost. That's a great moody melancholic blues track.

Hey Airola — How would you rank the Diet of Worms songs, in order? Curious about that....

Gary also released "The Lost Years 2"

LOST YEARS 2 (2007)
1 - Stay The Same
2 - Blame It On The Man
3 - Rangali
4 - Superfiical Intelligence (Remastered)
5 - Yesterdays Ghost (Remastered)
6 - Thursday (Remastered)
7 - ADHD (Remastered)
8 - Columbus Day (Remastered)
9 - Diet Of Worms (Remastered)
10 - Bring It (Remastered)
11 - 1973 (Remastered)
12 - Late Movie (Remastered)
13 - Whatever If (Remastered)

I agree that this is a great, highly underrated album. I had always heard that one of the reasons Guy left Tourniquet is that he was tired of singing heavy thrash songs. So it surprised me when Tourniquet switched gears to a more straight ahead hard rock/metal sound with Vanishing Lessons, and surprised me even more when Diet of Worms came out as the opening title track is pretty much trash. This album seemed more like something he enjoyed doing. I was surprised that Guy didn't release more music like this after Superficial Intelligence. Maybe we'll get more from him on some new Gary Lenaire tunes. Stop the Bleeding was a great teaser and shows that he still has "it". While I love the Echo Hollow stuff and most of the solo stuff that Gary put out, I cannot stand the Cripple Need Cane vocals.

The full interview with HM (from 2007) can be read here...

https://sites.google.com/site/silenceismadness777/guy-ritter/guy-ritter---interview

heck wrote:Hey Airola — How would you rank the Diet of Worms songs, in order?  Curious about that....

1. Diet of Worms
2. A Fool's Errand
3. Sad
4. Thursday
5. Take My Shoes
6. Through the Veil
7. Sunday Bloody Sunday

The first four songs were quite hard to rank.
The last three are pretty clear to me.

Diet of Worms is the best song, but sometimes when I've listened to it too much I start to think Thursday, Sad and A Fool's Errand could take the first position.
And even when I think Diet of Worms is the best, it's hard to put those three songs in order. Sometimes I love Thursday the most. Sometimes Sad. Sometimes A Fool's Errand.

Currently A Fool's Errand takes the second place because the chorus is sooooo good. It's one of my favorite choruses ever. The song itself is kinda odd because of those weird vocals by Guy where he sounds like he's holding his nose. Currently I think Sad has catchier chorus than Thursday and has more interesting parts overall so that's why I put Sad over Thursday. But as I said I have thought both of them as the best songs on the album at some points in my life.

Take My Shoes, Through the Veil and Sunday Bloody Sunday are the only songs I have never thought that could be among the top three. I think the position of Take My Shoes is the clearest one. It's worse than the four above and it's better than the two below. But I'm not too sure about which one is my least favorite, Through the Veil or Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Fundy wrote:Gary also released "The Lost Years 2"

LOST YEARS 2 (2007)
1 - Stay The Same
2 - Blame It On The Man
3 - Rangali
4 - Superfiical Intelligence (Remastered)
5 - Yesterdays Ghost (Remastered)
6 - Thursday (Remastered)
7 - ADHD (Remastered)
8 - Columbus Day (Remastered)
9 - Diet Of Worms (Remastered)
10 - Bring It (Remastered)
11 - 1973 (Remastered)
12 - Late Movie (Remastered)
13 - Whatever If (Remastered)

Yeah, I bought those three new songs when this was released. As there weren't any physical CDs available I didn't feel the neew to buy the whole thing. With The Lost Years a physical copy was sold so I bought that one.

Blame It on the Man was available on the Cripple Need Cane (or Gary's own website) before the Cripple Need Cane album was released and I was disappointed it wasn't included in the album. Stay the Same was playing in the Cripple Need Cane website for quite a long time too. I recall it played in the background without an actual visible player playing it. I loved the song and had to use some magic tricks to download it from the site (there was no download link to it). I was glad to pay for it later when this collection was released.

I wonder how those remasters sound like...


Anyway, I downloaded all the available songs from Gary's or Cripple Need Cane's website and I still have demo versions and some unreleased tracks too!

Here are the titles of the currently unreleased tracks:
Cold
Faded
Few Miles Away
Frustrate
Given
Pieces
Tell Me
We Were Kids

Here are the demo versions of songs that were released on the Cripple Need Cane album:
Faster
I Believe
Next
Outline
Stupid Noise

I think the demo versions of I Believe and Stupid Noise are better than the finished versions. The finished versions seem to be heavier as they are played from lower key and might be a bit slower too but for some reason the demo versions have always felt better to me.

I still might even have the old cd-r I burned sometime in 2003 before the Cripple Need Cane album was released. I used to listen to it in a campus of a school I was back then. Perhaps that is the reason why I ended up liking the "original demos" the most after the album was released. Maybe I just got too much used to them.

I feel like the most elitist Gary Lenaire hipster there is when I say I listened to Cripple Need Cane when there were only demos and that I liked the demos more I was so excited about anything by Gary that I even ordered a Cripple Need Cane t-shirt with the CD

Anyway, I wonder if Gary is going to release those song sometime in future.

“Thursday” from Diet of Worms still haunts me.