#playing enemy

I feel bad being honest, but I also don’t want to be disingenuous… I didn’t like Cesarean. I only bring it up because back when I Was Your City came out in 2005 I wouldn’t give bands a second chance. Now I have a release day playlist I update every week, sometimes with 200 songs by artists I’m pretty sure I won’t like, but I want to be positive. Anyway, because of the internet social circles I had back then, and nothing to do with Kiss It Goodbye, nineironspitfire, or Undertow, I tried Playing Enemy again. The first thing I noticed was the slight change in Demian Johnston’s vocals. I liked them so much more. Next there was the smashing of seemingly innumerable parts and changes into a song… and every song. In the mid-00s when all I listened to was, what I called at the time, “tech metal”, this fit right into all the warped busyness in music that I loved. Then there were the lyrics. I didn’t have a physical copy of the record/CD/whatever, but what I could make out sounded like thoughts with which I could identify. I often toyed with the idea of buying the CD just so I could have the lyrics, knowing I would never play the actual CD. However, some 15 years later when the Great Falls boys obtained the last remaining copies of the …City LP from Corpse Flower, I placed another bandcamp fee free pandemic Friday order, not exclusively for the lyric sheet, but it was a big part of the allure of owning the record.

Maybe you can pick up Fly Us Home here?

Playing Enemy - Closer To Caesar 

The origins of Seattle's metallic, complex, screaming, and inventive Playing Enemy can be traced back to another band, a band called Kiss It Goodbye. Kiss It Goodbye formed when Deadguy's singer and guitarist convinced ex-Rorschach drummer Andrew Gormley and former Rorschach bassist Thom Rusnak to relocate to the Northwest. They released a phenomenal album through Revelation before their founding guitarist exited. [source: extract from the allmusic.com band bio]

Playing Enemy - Benstone

Go buy the vinyl reissue of the great album that this song is from, I was Your City.