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There is something strangely familiar about the Bomb Shelter.
While it has all the regular trappings of a high-end Los Angeles
recording studio, first-time visitors to the room the Crystal
Method have used to create their music over the past decade are
more likely to think they've just wandered into a NASA mission
control center. Several computer monitors blink silently, thick
wires run out of keyboards and into mysterious dark corners.
There is an arsenal of hard drives obscuring the pictures on the
walls and at the center of it all a pair of imposing office
chairs. Located in a two-car garage in a small house in the
suburban neighborhood of Glendale, the studio takes it name from
an actual bomb shelter that was installed in the front yard
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nearly ten years ago Ken Jordan
and Scott Kirkland moved into the house and converted the space
into their own private recording studio using just a few hundred
dollars. Now the only element that looks out of place in this
ill-lit, decidedly technical environment is the band itself.
Dressed down in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers, the duo is filling
out a semi-circle with John Garcia, one-time frontman for
California desert rockers Kyuss, who has come by to add vocals
to a track for the Crystal Method's third album, Legion of Boom.
The song is called "Born Too Slow," and at the moment it is
stubbornly living up to its title. Former Limp Bizkit guitarist
Wes Borland was here earlier laying down the powerful, textured
riffs. Jordan and Kirkland have already knocked out the bass
and rhythm parts. Now it is up to Garcia to deliver a vocal that
matches the song's exuberant fury, except he's not really
feeling it. Being that this is the first time he has met the
duo, it's necessary to break the ice before work begins. As the
studio fridge only has a few cans of beer to offer, someone is
sent out to retrieve backup in the form of two additional
twelve-packs. Then a bottle of Jack Daniel's mysteriously
appears.
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