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Title: The Spice Girls EP / When You Don't Matter
Release date: July 2009

Tracklisting:

1. When You Don't Matter
2. Slice Up Your Wife
3. (Viva) Forever

Information:
A meditiation on 90s girl-band The Spice Girls. More than any History Of Guns release before, this has polarised opinion of the critics. Some reviewers who don't know what we're about have completely missed the point that the genre-choices and sound-design are deliberate and intentionally part of it... most importantly of all Slice Up Your Wife is supposed to be SATIRE of both The Spice Girls faux-feminist stance AND macho misogynistic rap/rock. Some people say never explain yourself or your artistic intentions... and with that in mind, here's a few words of explanation:

When You Don't Matter
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
First up, it starts with a drunk voice moaning about how people have never understood what we've done. This is not supposed to be taken too literally. Fortunately for us, although massive success has so far eluded us(!) there are people that get what we're about and what it is we try to do... we're not just barking into the wind.
It's a song about becoming obsolete. Whether a relationship that has run it's course and the love's gone, or people who've been famous that the public don't care about any more. The Spice Girls comeback single 'Headlines' in Xmas 2008 was by far their worst performing single, yet the tour was massively popular. The world had moved on and only wanted them for nostaliga purposes.
Musically it's unashamedly in the 90s electro-goth style (which is of itself pretty obsolete) with a few modern touches.

Slice Up Your Wife
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
History Of Guns in no way condone domestic violence. If there was any kind of revenue stream coming our way we'd donate it to www.refuge.org.uk , but sadly this being the real world and there's no money to be made by moderately successful underground bands these days, for charity or otherwise.
The title is straight wordplay on The Spice Girls song 'Spice Up Your Life'. The cartoon-violent depiction of spousal murder described by the title is intended to overtly subvert The Spice Girls faux-feminist stance. Lyrically we're shouting the lines across each other hopefully satirising what I'd label misogynistic american college rock/rap. (of course PWEI were also guilty of this in their younger days but at least they later acknowledged it)

There are a couple of clues that this is meant to be satire... verse two addresses female to male violence in the same cartoon terms for balance to hopefully show we're not *actually* arch-sexists! Empowering women and equality are noble aims, but we question the validity of empowering women by teaching them to use their sex appeal to get ahead, and wonder how much The Spice Girls believe(d) their message or were they using feminism as just another fashion accessory, just another selling point. The biggest clue that this is a satire and we have got a little more going on below the surface than is otherwise suggested is the middle section which goes: "De Cleyre, McElory, But Dworkin is harder, We moon walk the zeitgeist, Or marry a footballer". (These aren't names picked from a search engine, 'Mercy' by Andrea Dworkin is one of the most horrific things I've ever read.)
Musically it's intended to be lo-fi drunken electropunk... Originally we were going to put heavy guitars on it, but wanted to keep as much of the original Spice Girls track in there as possible. So just added a big fat drum machine, piano bass, some strings and a little touch of rhythm guitar in the choruses, and of course a different approach to vocals than we normally take.

Forever
^^^^^^^
The Spice Girls final song with Geri Halliwell was Viva Forever, a song about loss and always holding on (to faith? to love? to whatever you want really) forever, which ironically was the beginning of the end for The Spice Girls. We'd all love to believe in permanence, but in 100 short years we all (that includes you) and pretty much everyone we know will be dead. This song is the dream that we'll keep going forever... we'll watch the sun die and see what comes next. (A related song, 'Closing Down This Reality' is scheduled to appear on album 4, tentatively titled 'Whatever You Do Don't Turn Up At Twelve'.)


When You Don't Matter
(Alien/Rael)

coming soon

lyrics by del
(c) 2009
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Slice Up Your Wife
SLICE UP YOUR WIFE

verse1:
When you're feeling sad and low
We will take you, where you gotta go
Drinking, dancing, everything is free
All you need is lots of ecstasy

Go back home, off your face
Find she hasn’t, tidied up the place
Washing, cooking, nothing has been done
There’d be less mess if you’d bought a gun

chorus:
Colours of the world
Slice up your wife
Every boy and every girl
Slice up your wife
People of the world
Slice up your wife
Ahh!!!!!!!!

bridge:
Strip her to the bone
'Cos your having a good time
Bury her in quicklime
You know that you'll feel fine
Feminism is dead
Uh Uh Uh in-out
Stab her to the left
You're having a good time
Stab her to the right
You know that you'll feel fine
Knives to her face
Eye Or Ear? Stab Bite!
verse2:
La la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la

If you hear this and you’re a girl
Don’t feel left out, you know what to do
Rip his cock off
Burst his spleen
Gouge his eyes out
And all that's in between

(repeat chorus)

(repeat bridge)

De Cleyre
McElory
But Dworkin is harder
We moon walk the zeitgeist
Or marry a footballer
Shake it Shake it Shake it HARDCORE!
Shake it Shake it Shake it HARDCORE!

(repeat chorus)

(repeat bridge x2)



lyrics by max rael and dean soby
(c) 2009
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Forever
(rael)

Forever...

We're going on forever...

(c) 2009
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