JEFF: "Judas Iscariot (the "The" came later to avoid confusion with the black metal band) formed as many bands do - out of the ashes of others. In this case, I was the connective tissue.

I played bass and "sang" for a sort of mathy-post-hardcore band called Quarters. Not a tremendous amount of audio documentation of that band. The first of the three line-ups ended up inappropriately on a 7" comp called "Drunk and Disorderly" on Puncrock Records (the band was neither drunk nor disorderly - at least not as a rule). The third and final line-up of the band ended up on a CD comp called "Workers Comp" on The Headlock Society. Aaron was the drummer in this band.

I also played drums in a pop-punk (think Samiam as a primary influence) band called Jody Crutch. A bit more aural documentation here - we have a Bandcamp page for every thing that was ever recorded. Rich sang in this band.

Aaron came to hang out and watch a Jody Crutch practice. During a break, Rob and Dan (guitarist & bassist, respectively) went for some food, while Rich, Aaron and I hung back.

During this little break, magic happened. Aaron sat behind my drums, I picked up Dan's bass, Rich grabbed his mic....and for the next 10 minutes, the three of us (actually - four of us - our good friend Jen was there and made some noise along with us on Rob's guitar) improvised 15-second long blasts of sound - yet there were somehow kind of songs at the same time.

Dan & Rob returned, Jody Crutch practice continued, and that could have been the end of the story.

For the next few weeks, Rich pursued Aaron & I to get together and try that crazy thing we did...again. For awhile, we resisted, but eventually, we gave in....and an intense musical relationship and journey commenced that would consume me for the next 2 1/2 years.

Jody Crutch and Quarters faded away and Judas Iscariot...soon to be The Judas Iscariot....came to the fore....and made some music that meant a tremendous amount to all of us....still does more than 20 years later - and hopefully to other people too.

This demo is where it started - and it arrived very early.

Memory has faded the details....but I seem to remember it going something like this:

our first practice resulted in 5 songs.
our second practice resulted in 4 more songs.

At some point, I saw an ad in Maximum Rock 'n' Roll that Too Many Records (a label out of Spokane, WA run by David Hayes...the label was originally called Very Small Records, changed its name to Too Many Records, and then changed its name back to Very Small), was looking to do a comp of songs that were all less than 30 seconds. I wrote to the label and secured us a place on that comp.

We were only about 3 weeks into the band's existence and already had secured a spot on a label that had some clout.

It was probably our third or fourth practice when Rich brought a 2-track recorder and we decided to record all of the songs we had so we could have a track to send to Too Many Records for the comp and also have our first demo under our belt.

What we have here is that first demo which we called 'New Youth Rebellion' (our song "New Youth Rebellion" had yet to be written - but would be shortly).

The lead-off track, "Christian Science", was the pick for the comp, that was titled 'Wood Panel Pacer Wagon With Mags', and was released in 1996 as an LP + 7". Our song was the 12th song on the second side of the LP.

As I scan the tracklist, I think this was a pretty good outing for a month into the band's existence. All of these songs - like all the songs we ever wrote - were rotated into our setlists on a regular basis.

The music is raw and hardcore and simply features vocals, bass & drums. We had not expanded our horizons too much and this was before Don or Shorty "joined" the band (more on "them" later). But the songs are good.

"Foliage" was played a lot. "Airbrush Missal" was the first song we ever wrote. "College Politician" might musically be the best song and probably the greatest hint of what was coming down the road. "The Tape Gets Eaten" is a cheat....really an aborted attempt of "Cameraless Photos" - but showed the sense of humor always lying just beneath the surface. Aaron started "Never Use Cliches" while standing in FRONT of his drum kit, for no particularly good reason. But it always made us laugh, which come to think of it, is a particularly good reason.

Rich's lyrics are brilliant - as they were consistently throughout the band's time.

RICH: "This demo was recorded live to a Tascam Portastudio 424 4-track cassette recorder. I made the layout for the cassette tape in a dorm room at Hofstra University by cutting and pasting from magazines and other ephemera. The music, at that time, was pouring out of us. It was shortly before the time of this demo that we realized that the three of us comprised a certain kind of mutant-machine utilizing an theretofore unknown sensibility to engage in a kind of creative telepathy. This sensibility and telepathy may or may not come through when you listen to this. I am not sure what you hear, but I remember the feeling. I also cannot say if this is correct, but it's almost as if the performance of this music was a kind of exorcism of something we could not expel in our other projects. Thus, there was an accumulated creative energy that needed this band for its liberation. The emancipatory project of the early trio dealt a blow to a quotidian repression in music and life that still calls out for such breakthroughs. Make your own projects."

AARON: "At the time of the recording of the “New Youth Rebellion” 4 track demo sessions, the condition of the practice space under the candy store at the corner of New Hyde Park Road and Hempstead Turnpike had degenerated to unimaginable levels of squalor. Years’ worth of refuse and detritus had accumulated, and because there was no bathroom, various containers and improvised vessels of urine were stacked throughout the huge concrete rectangle that was the structure. Particularly onerous were the wax cups filled to the brim with micturate bearing thin films of mold on the surface that disintegrated to the
touch if any attempts to move or remove them occurred.

This sometimes resulted in spontaneous effluence when the deep resonance of crushing bass noise emanated from Jeff’s urine-saturated amp attack. All the concrete made the sound of The Judas Iscariot so ineffably loud, louder than any of the other bands with 4 or 5 members with which we shared the space. I don’t remember much of the tracking of the demo itself, except that, as with everything we did, there was an
urgency to simultaneously express and document. Other than that, the overall sense impression of the experience, as was the case for much of the history of that glorious hole we made so much music in, was one of unmitigated filth accompanied by ecstasies of creative glory."