The Persistent Unknown
The Making of Lethargy’s It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand

At first glance, one might assume Lethargy’s It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand gained Hall of Fame access because of the contributions its musicians have since made to the broader world of extreme music more so than the album’s impact. Members of the band that ruled the frosty, garbage plate-covered streets of Rochester, NY throughout the ’90s eventually turned up in Brutal Truth, Nuclear Assault, Kalibas, MungBeanDemon, Blurring, Today Is the Day, Arcadea, Primate and Elusive Travel, amongst others, and are today still flashing their wares in Sulaco, Sully and Mastodon. Some names are more recognizable than others. One happens to be one of today’s biggest metal bands and more than a couple others are inarguable legends.

But what guitarist/vocalist Erik Burke, drummer Brann Dailor, bassist Adam Routier and guitarist Bill Kelliher emerged with from various basements in 1996 was an under-appreciated masterwork of bewildering tech-metal that buzzed like a swarm of bumblebees colliding into live hydro wires, scurried like burning rats in a Tolman maze, changed directions like a UFO hot-dogging over Area 51, raged like a 121º drop Takabisha rollercoaster and confounded like impenetrable mathematics. Following three demos—Lost in This Existence, Tainted and Humor Me, You Funny Little Man—and relative isolation on Lake Ontario’s southern shores, Lethargy joined forces with the only producer they ever knew, Doug White, to capture some of the most tightly wound, exactingly synchronized and tenaciously syncopated expansive brain metal ever to go unheard by the masses.

Herein lies the unfortunate rub: Being co-released by micro-labels Dirty Girl Records and Endless Records meant that, unless you were a western New York music scene participant, chances are the scholarly fury of Lethargy’s one and only album passed you by. Being oft-heralded as ahead of their time and eluding categorization also meant that labels who were already having a difficult time selling anything that wasn’t grunge or alt-nation took a pass on the spiraling density Lethargy conjured.

When we gathered the core lineup to yap about the past, we learned (literally on the first day of interviews for this piece) that a reissue of It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand is being prepared for release later this year—ironically, by Relapse, the label that Burke (via Brutal Truth) and Dailor and Kelliher (via Mastodon and Today Is the Day) spent years with. And even more ironically, one of the labels that shooed the band away back in the day. It’s never too late to right a wrong, as they say. First step: welcoming It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand with wide arms.

Need more classic Lethargy? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with all four members who performed on It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.

The post Lethargy – It’s Hard to Write With a Little Hand appeared first on Decibel Magazine.