Rolling Corpse Pathetique is the debut album by Toronto-based, Avant-Goth trio Output 1:1:1. Rolling Corpse Pathetique is the rolling devastation of a mundane apocalypse. It is a fear so tiresome you’re sick of it, but so vast it overwhelms you. It’s the city that sucks you dry and demands more. It’s the suicide bomber on vacation. It’s a charitable donation made in disgust of the homeless. It’s a choir of children singing Chanson réaliste, each with a 5 o’clock shadow, a cigarette in one hand, and a scotch in the other.
Rolling Corpse Pathetiqué is not a fucking COVID record, despite its genesis in lockdown. It is the development of songs Output 1:1:1 worked through during the first run of the band’s podcast, Cold Waves of Comfort. Where Cold Waves dismantled finished songs and reassembled them into extended soundscapes, Rolling Corpse Pathetique reverse-engineers the process to create songs from disparate waves of percussion, scraps of metal, and tortured wailing.
“A lot of music from the 2010s was sad but pretty - like a lot of bands listened to The Boatman’s Call and stopped there. Rolling Corpse Pathetique is the ugly side of that same sadness. It is contradictory, insensitive, self-serving, and terrifying.” - Output 1:1:1’s Danny Janvier, well past the fun stage of being drunk.
Janvier on lead single Howl - “Howl, the first video from the record, is our thesis-statement in a way. It’s overwhelming, loud, unrelenting. It’s almost like the lyrics don’t matter - I’ve forgotten what I sing in the ending chant, but the pain feeding that performance is still there. That’s more important than what words I should be singing.”
On You & Yours “You & Yours - It’s cheesy to talk like this, but it’s the best set of lyrics I’ve written. I remember moving to Toronto in 2011 and having to stretch the last $20 of my cheque across weeks since the rest of it went to rent and student debt. I’ve taken a number of underpaying jobs since I moved here, working several of them at once. ‘A city sleeps for you’ is how I feel about that. Gene [Output’s bassist/guitarist and videographer] created this horrifying video to accompany an extended version we’re using for the podcast."
Rolling Corpse Pathetique will hit streaming on Sept 8 2023, and will hit cd/vinyl when the band can justify the costs.
