Evergreen Terrace

Posted by Vicki on 08.05.05

Evergreen Terrace is a 5 piece melodic hardcore band out of Jacksonville Florida who are responsible for the worst Smashing Pumpkins cover I've heard in a long time.

Up until now I was prepared to accept on face value the fact that they act like the Bloodhound Gang's less intelligent kid brothers who had found a good gimmick and were now having as much fun as they could with it. Then I read the track listing on 'Burned alive by time' and saw the light.

What grabbed my attention was the combination of 'Funeral grade flowers' and 'Taking care of dead fish', on their own fairly standard emotional rock influenced song titles but with their powers combined they could be a reference to the events laid out in Chuck Palahniuk's 'Survivor.'

The plotline of 'Survivor' documents the rise, 15 minutes of fame and plummet of Tender Branson the sole survivor of a Creedish cult who committed mass suicide ten years previously. Technically Tender should have also committed suicide upon hearing the news, but he didn't, instead he continued cleaning a house for a faceless couple who shouted constant needless instructions down a speaker phone; he was given a case worker as part of a Federal Survivor Retention Programme, and somewhere along the way he ended up being the only survivor and found himself with an agent who built up a religion around him.

This being a Chuck Palahniuk novel the religion is less about god or salvation and more about making money. Tender is hardly a self-made Messiah when every aspect of his 'life' is controlled by his agent, from his constant vitamins pills, stair masters and anabolic steroids. However his decline is all of his own making.

Tender starts his story at chapter 47 and works backwards, telling his story to the black box of flight 2039 until the gas runs out and the plane flames out. He has a fish called number 641; he explains that "my parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and fourty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die." He also steals fake flowers from graves and pretends to be a suicide hotline operator in the evenings.

It could be coincidence that Evergreen Terrace came up with album tracks that are exceedingly reminiscent of the book and they really are as dumb as they look - having written a song about the evils of live journal ('Dear Live Journal').

More likely they are actually intent on using their fan base to start their own death cult, which would explain why their last album included covers of the song from 'Flashdance', 'Mad world' and The Offspring's 'The kid's aren't alright.'

So if a kid in an Evergreen Terrace t-shirt and glazed eyes is seen clutching a gold fish and a bunch of fake flowers in an airport boarding lounge don't say I didn't warn you