Jay Bennett and his manager, Jefferson Macklin (coincidentally also the manager of Death Ships and David Vandervelde), showed up at the studio running a half hour late—it might have even been more like an hour late. They thought they had some cushion as the Death Ships guys knew exactly where they were going, practically natives to the area, and would be loading in. Drummer Lars’ dad commutes to work at the Rock Island Arsenal every morning and that’s just a stone’s throw from the studio, out in the middle of the Mississippi River, heavily armed, not very dangerous and with a terrific golf course to its credit. They should have been here setting up as Bennett’s backing band, but they were running late. When they got here, no questions were asked—it could have been an emergency waffle run for all we know—and they instead just blew everyone’s hair back with a precise and dominatingly fierce performance. There are a lot of people who dust off the broken record tagline of, “They’re better live,” and think it applies perfectly to every band they’ve ever heard. An awesome thing would be if that weren’t true and that bands were great live and differently great on record, creating two different experiences altogether with the same set of songs. An even more awesome thing would be if a band makes a dope album and then comes out and is four times as great live, pushing the material to where it can comfortably rule. Death Ships are a band of the latter denomination. Seeds of Destruction is a lovely album—ripping in places, but mostly the hot swallow of booze from a jug on a stiff night—but as anyone will tell you (as Gram Parsons as their witness) Dan Maloney and his Death Ships are Midwestern weather when they’re on the stage, emulating the topsy-turvy form the skies take on all occasions where they’re from and where we’re from. Obviously, we have to respect that. We’re the ones who want to see tornados and when the black stuff starts building to the west, our eyes are on fire with impending joy. — Sean Moeller

First song
Great American (Death Ships) [4.52MB] [1278 downloads]


— original version appears on Seed of Devastation
Really old song that we’ve been closing with live lately. It’s rad when people sing along to the “You can ride with me,” part in a call and response style. Probably my mother’s favorite song.

Second song
Shit-Eating Grin (Death Ships) [5.98MB] [1240 downloads]


— unreleased
A newer song that we love to play live. It is named after our drummer Lar’s infamous smirk, but great because we tend to vary the tempo depending on our moods. I would imagine this song will find its way onto our next record.

Third song
Symmetrical Smiles (Death Ships) [3.61MB] [1209 downloads]


— original version appears on Seed of Devastation
This song is where I get to play tambourine and hop around. Sometimes I like to pull a signature Axl Rose snake move, but you know — not as good and sans leather pants. This is the only song we use a tambourine on but we have gone through three of them already. The other dudes find it hilarious how anal I am about the location of the tambourine after we play our set. I think people don’t realize that good tambourines actually cost 30-40 dollars. This is one of my favorite songs off Seeds and a dick-kickin’ rocker.

Fourth song
Story Never Gets Old (Death Ships) [4.98MB] [1269 downloads]


— original version appears on Seed of Devastation
Another old poppy song that I originally recorded for a split tape I released with Paleo, back when he called himself Infinite Jest, back in 2001/2002 on my self-start, short-lived tape club called Faithful Anchor. The song has since been transformed and this version is special for the “reggae” outro which probably is more an homage to The Band then say Bob Marley, but I’m pretty sure two of our five members were stoned during its recording.