Tag Archives: Sunspot

New Music Inspired By The Podcast – American Monsters!

So this weekend our band, Sunspot, released our latest EP, American Monsters. What we’ve been doing is creating song demos for the podcast for every episode and then after a few months, we pick our three favorites and go into the studio and record them. We’ve always used the paranormal and pop culture as an influence for our music, I mean we’ve made fan videos for everything from Torchwood to Star Trek: Generations, so our love of sci-fi and the occult has always been baked right into the music. We were having a lot of the discussions that we have in the podcast already (usually in the van at 3 o’clock in the morning as we were driving through the middle of nowhere) so we thought we might as well talk about it too!

sunspot music

We called the EP American Monsters because we thought it was a really catchy name and the episode we did wth Linda Godfrey was one of our favorites. She’s one of our favorite investigators and authors into the weird (and bonus, she’s from Wisconsin too!) Since she covered plenty of American monster legends in her book, we thought we’d take the symbolism of the wild creatures that she writes about like Bigfoot and werewolves. While most of us won’t encounter bipedal canines, most of us face outrage and anger on the Internet every day.

American Monsters: An Interview with Linda Godfrey

While I’m not a fan of the phrase “political correctness” (it’s mostly just a code word in the culture war), I do believe in diversity of opinion and that unpopular opinions (even ones that offend people) have a right to be heard, not shouted down just because some people don’t like it. You don’t win the war of ideas through crushing dissent, you win by convincing people you have the best idea. That’s the essence of our “American Monsters” and it’s a track that’s very classic Midwestern Power-Pop (think Cheap Trick, we even do a sly play on  “Dream Police” in the song.)

Silver Screen Saucers: An Interview With Robbie Graham

“Seeing Is Believing” was inspired by our conversation with the author of Silver Screen SaucersRobbie Graham. It’s a synth-rock Disinformation Age conspiracy anthem about media manipulation. Of course, the song is about how the UFO mythology of the past fifty years was exactly what the CIA wanted us to believe (something even the new X-Files embraced), but it really could be about any story that we get distracted by to take our mind off something that would enrage us.

Alien disclosure would be awesome, but I don’t know if it’s as important as knowing the food pyramid we grew up with was heavily influenced by the meat and dairy lobby, that the Drug War is necessary (and hasn’t destroyed millions of lives), or that the NSA has an actual Artificial Intelligence program named after Skynet from The Terminator. More people know the domestic grosses of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice than know these things.

Have an Out of Body Experience: With Luis Minero

I’ve never had an out-of-body experience but one of these days I’m going to, dammit! Dr. Luis Minero gave some simple steps to attempt an OBE in our podcast interview and one of the things that struck me was when he said you once you reach the right state, you just “push yourself out of your body” and that seemed like a cool thing to express in a song.

Have you ever been in a situation so traumatic that you would do anything to escape but you couldn’t physically leave? Something terrifying or horrible? A lot of people say that when something like that happens, they get that detached feeling of being somewhere else, watching the thing happen to them  – that’s called “derealization” and it happens often during traumatic moments. That’s “Push”, a song about escaping those moments, forcing yourself out of your body to be able to face what you need to.

Anyway, we just thought you might like a little background on the tracks. You can download the new EP for free at http://www.sunspotuniverse.com right now.

If you’re interested in learning more about our band, Sunspot, we have won the Wisconsin Area Music Industry‘s Artist of the Year (an award won by other cheese state luminaries like Violent Femmes, Garbage, and Bon Iver) and have won also Best Rock Album from the Madison Music Awards three times. Some of the latest reviews we’ve gotten are:

“Sunspot learned to embrace its charming weirdness… the band members are making some of the best music of their career.”
– Isthmus, Madison, WI

“They sound oh so, familiar and like nothing you’ve ever heard before.”
– Power Play Magazine, UK

“A perfect piece of Pop Rock.”
– Get Ready To Rock Blog 

We’re really proud of the new music and if you enjoy it, please let your friends know about the songs as well (you can find a bunch of ways to share it on social media right here). Most of all, thanks for listening!

0 – Make First Contact with Mike and Wendy, Your Haunted Hosts to the Weird Reality Between Paranormal Activity and Pop Culture

This is the first episode of Sunspot’s brand new podcast, See You On The Other Side, a new paranormal pop culture podcast. In it, you’ll get a little background as to why we find it fun to talk about the supernatural, paranormal, and general other-worldly topics and their relationship with the entertainment industry.

Mike and Wendy recap some of the strange things that they and their bandmate Ben have witnessed while on tour, including a terrifying post-show excursion into the haunted basement of Ballyhoo’s in Merrill, Wisconsin, visiting the haunted railroad crossing in San Antonio, Texas, brushes with orbs caught on video, suspicions of aliens, and more.

Please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions for show topics! We’d love to hear from you.

Featured Song: We Are The Darkness from the album Singularity

This song is available on iTunes and also has a video on YouTube. We hope you enjoy it!

Lyrics:

We are the impossible,
the things that should not be,
caught between Hell and Purgatory.
We are the invisible.
Waiting in the dark,
bearing the Devil’s mark.
We are the untouchable,
the kind they walk right through and never even have a clue.
We are the polluted souls.
Sloth and gluttony,
a leper colony.
The unwashed and the unholy.

Better to rule in Hell than never have a chance,
I’ve never been so glad to be forever damned.

And we will scream and we will cry,
and we will stand against the wind and watch them rail against the night.
Beware the human and his silly little game,
We are The Darkness, baby, we are not the same.

We are the undesirable,
Bleeding from the barbs carved into pariah hearts.
We are the un-nameable.
Demonic and sinful,
diabolical.
We are the abominable,
with spirits that are stained,
drunken on the blood of saints.
We are the wicked and the cursed,
doomed to fear the dawn,
an infernal spawn.
We are the whores of Babylon.

Better to rule in Hell than never have a chance,
I’ve never been so glad to be forever damned.

And we will scream and we will cry,
and we will stand against the wind and watch them rail against the night.
Calling all vampires, calling all succubi,
We are what they fear the most and we will never die.
And we will scream and we will cry,
and we will stand against the wind and watch them rail against the night.
Beware the human and his silly little game,
We are The Darkness, baby, we are not the same.

We are The Darkness, baby, we are not the same.
We are The Darkness, baby, we are not the same.
We are the ones that they will try to hold in chains,
the ones like you and me, we are a different breed.
And they’ll call us evil, the sons and daughters of Cain,
Find excuses for their hate and they will know us,
When they curse our name.
When they curse our name.
When they curse our name.
And they will know us when they curse our name.

And we will scream and we will cry,
and we will stand against the wind and watch them rail against the night.
Calling all vampires, calling all succubi,
We are what they fear the most and we will never die.
And we will scream and we will cry,
and we will stand against the wind and watch them rail against the night.
Beware the human and his silly little game,
We are the darkness, baby, we are not the same.

Links to Things We Discussed about the Band and Paranormal Pop Culture