Wisconsin heavy rockers Droids Attack wanted to do something special with the title-track of their latest album, Sci-Fi or Die (review here), so they hid it. No, really. It’s hidden. As in you need to go and find it. Fortunately, you don’t have to go that far. If you bought the CD when it came out at the end of February, you already have “Sci-Fi or Die” whether you know it or not. It’s in the jewel case, under the disc tray, behind a false back card on a mini-CD of its own with its own special artwork and lyric liner. “Something special” achievement unlocked.

As to what you’ll find when you dig out that mini-CD, “Sci-Fi or Die” is a departure from much of the record that bears its name, moving away from the full-thrust of songs like “New Plague” into almost proggy riffing and spacious, echoing vocals reciting lyrics that not only acknowledge the listener’s success — “You have found our hidden track/Sci-fi or die” — but then immediately express gratitude for said listener having bought the album — “Thanks for choosing Droids Attack/Sci-fi or die.” Hard to beat that as far as charm goes, and the trio of guitarist/vocalist Brad Van, drummer Tony Brungraber and bassist/backing vocalist Darwin Sampson know plenty about charm, as anyone who’s actually already bought the CD can tell you.

Below, you can exclusively stream “Sci-Fi or Die.” It’s not available digitally anyplace else. You can’t buy it except as the CD with the CD, and you can’t download it anywhere. So if you want to hear it, now’s your chance. If my description above didn’t explain properly how to find the mini-CD in your copy of Sci-Fi or Die, Van was kind enough to make an unboxing video for the album in which he not only goes through the process, but rightly takes some time to highlight the excellent and intricate artwork throughout the package by Eli Quinn, which is already in my notes for some of the best cover art of 2016 and should be in yours as well if you’re the list-keeping type.

Van also gives some comment on what drove them to handle the secret track this way under the song itself, which you’ll find on the player below.

Please enjoy:

Brad Van on “Sci-Fi or Die”:

We were goofing around at practice, and we joked about writing a hidden track song about finding the hidden track. We came up with a bunch of elaborate ways to hide it, including really dumb ideas like hiding a treasure map in the album liner notes and actually burying a box with the song in it somewhere when we went out on tour.

We definitely didn’t want to do the typical ‘tack on 20 minutes of silence’ after the final track that people would fast forward through, and we didn’t want the track to be a senseless noise jam, or anything useless that folks would just want to skip. It’s more of a missing puzzle piece that fits right in as the final song of the album. It’s also the title-track, “Sci-Fi or Die.”

Tutorial: How to Uncover Droids Attack’s “Sci-Fi or Die”

Droids Attack on Thee Facebooks

Droids Attack on Bandcamp

Droids Attack website

Tags: Droids Attack, Droids Attack Sci-Fi or Die, Madison, Riff Reaper Records, Sci-Fi or Die, Wisconsin

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2016 at 9:35 am and is filed under audiObelisk, Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.