It was 1999 in Ethertown . My hair was long, my attitude was bad, and I worshipped at the altar of Metallica, Judas Priest, the Misfits, and Motörhead. Fourteen years old, I was already hardened by the knowledge that I didn’t belong. It wasn’t some whiny, after-school-special type of alienation—it was like the neighborhood itself rejected me outright. The guys my age could see I didn’t fit the mold. The older kids—wannabe gangsters in their oversized jeans and FUBU jerseys—looked at me like I was some alien that crawled out of the sewer.
And honestly, I leaned into it. The more the world tried to remind me I was an outsider, the more I threw it back in their faces. Combat boots, ripped jeans, my Misfits patch sewn crooked on the back of my denim jacket. I wanted to scream, Yeah, I’m not like you, and I don’t want to be. But even when I stood tall in my defiance, there was always this little voice in the back of my head, wondering if it wouldn’t just be easier to blend in.
But I couldn’t. And I didn’t have to. Not after I found Joey, Maria, Franky—and my bass.
Joey: The Visionary
Joey was the unofficial leader of our little gang, though we never officially said so. He was the one who’d call the shots about where we’d meet or what we’d listen to. Joey had a streak of bravado that made him seem older than the rest of us, even though he wasn’t. He swore up and down that his uncle once partied with Ozzy Osbourne and drank from a shoe at some dive bar in Revere. It was almost certainly a lie, but we let him have it. Joey had a Flying V guitar, a real one, though the neck was chipped, and the pickups barely worked. He couldn’t play worth shit, but he always looked like he could. That was Joey in a nutshell—he couldn’t always deliver, but he always looked the part.
Joey’s aunt had a basement where we met every Friday night. The place reeked of damp concrete and mothballs, and the walls were lined with junk: dusty VHS tapes, rusting exercise equipment, and old furniture covered in plastic. My bass amp sat in the corner, a constant reminder of the role I played. The space was a dungeon, but it was ours.
Maria: The Fury
Maria was, without a doubt, the toughest out of all of us. She had this way of glaring at people like she could see right through them, like she already knew their darkest secrets and wasn’t impressed. Her mohawk was blue that year—electric blue—and she had these safety pins she stuck through the cuffs of her ripped jeans. Maria didn’t talk much, but when she did, you listened.
She could hold her own with the neighborhood boys, too. Once, some kid tried to grab her jacket and call her “a freak.” She didn’t hesitate—punched him square in the face, and when he stumbled, she kicked him in the shin for good measure. We cheered her on from a distance, even though we knew we’d probably be next if we got on her bad side.
Maria loved the way my basslines kept our chaos from spiraling out of control. “You’re like the glue, man,” she said once after a jam session. “Without you, we’d just be noise.” I didn’t say anything, but that meant more to me than she’d ever know.
Franky: The Brain
Then there was Franky, the quiet one. He was scrawny, pale, and had this floppy mop of brown hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in months. He was kind of a disaster—always losing his stuff, failing tests, forgetting what day it was. But when it came to music, Franky was a savant. He knew every lyric to every song by Metallica, Slayer, Pantera—you name it. He could even tell you which track Lars Ulrich had written on an album and why it sucked.
Franky didn’t have a basement or a guitar, but he had this crappy boombox with duct tape holding the battery cover on. That boombox was his greatest treasure, and every time he pressed play, he’d close his eyes like he was at a concert, not sitting cross-legged on Joey’s grimy basement floor. He loved to dissect my basslines, pointing out every influence he thought he heard in my playing, from Geezer Butler to Cliff Burton.
The Birth of Monstrama
It was Joey’s idea, though the name came to him by accident. We were sitting in the basement, half-watching an old bootleg VHS of a Judas Priest concert Joey’s older cousin had swiped. Joey, mid-mouthful of stale Doritos, muttered something about “monster drama.” We all looked at him.
“Monstrama,” he said, letting the word hang in the air like it was some kind of epiphany. “It’s like, monster drama. You know, like what we are—freaks with problems. Metalheads with too much existential shit in our heads.”
“Do you even know what ‘existential’ means?” Maria shot back, smirking.
“Shut up, Riot Maria,” Joey said, using her self-proclaimed nickname. But the name stuck. We were Monstrama now.
We even tried to start a band. Joey on his barely functioning Flying V, Franky on air drums (because we couldn’t afford a real kit), Maria and I screaming into Joey’s aunt’s old karaoke machine. I held down the basslines as best I could, even though we barely knew what we were doing. It was awful—truly, genuinely awful—but in that moment, it felt like we were kings.
Ethertown A World of Our Own
Outside, Ethertown kept spinning. The streets stayed cracked, the old men kept muttering, and the kids in tracksuits kept sneering. But inside that basement, we had a world of our own. We’d spend hours debating who was the better frontman, Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford, or trying to rank Slayer’s albums by sheer brutality. We’d daydream about the day we’d leave Ethertown behind for good, maybe tour the country as Monstrama, opening for Megadeth or Slayer.
In that world, my basslines were the pulse. Joey’s riffs would take off like a rollercoaster, Franky’s makeshift drumming would crash and stumble, and Maria’s voice would soar and snarl. My bass would be the thing that held it all together, even when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
It didn’t matter that the dream was impossible. What mattered was that, for a few hours every week, we weren’t just freaks or outcasts or "those kids." We were Monstrama.
Looking back now, I realize how ridiculous it all was. But I also realize how much I needed it. Monstrama wasn’t just a name—it was a lifeline. It gave us permission to be who we were, unapologetically, in a world that wanted nothing more than to grind us down.
We were a comedy no one laughed at. But we didn’t care. We were too busy headbanging to notice.
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The Ritual of Fridays
Every Friday night, like clockwork, we’d convene in Joey’s aunt’s basement. The ritual never changed. We’d arrive one by one, dropping our backpacks and scrounging for snacks in the cabinets upstairs. Joey’s aunt never seemed to care what we did, as long as we didn’t break anything or let the neighbors call the cops.
The basement was our cathedral. It didn’t matter that it was cramped and smelled faintly of mildew. What mattered was that it was ours. The lightbulb overhead buzzed faintly, casting everything in this dim yellow glow, like we were huddled around a campfire.
Joey always had something new to show off—a bootleg tape he’d scored at the flea market, a magazine clipping about some obscure band, or, on rare occasions, actual gear. One night, he showed up with a distortion pedal he’d swiped from a pawnshop. It didn’t work, but that didn’t stop him from proudly stomping on it and making guitar noises with his mouth.
Maria would usually show up last, with a six-pack of cheap beer she’d somehow managed to snag. “Don’t ask,” she’d say, but she’d flash that mischievous grin that made you wonder if she’d punched someone to get it.
Franky was always the first to dive into the music. He’d set up his boombox in the corner, fiddling with the tape deck like it was some sacred artifact. I’d pull my bass from its usual spot in the corner, plug into my amp, and start playing something slow and rumbling to warm up. Joey would yell, “Faster!” and we’d dive into the noise together.
And then, the music would hit. Loud, raw, and unapologetic, it filled every corner of the room, drowning out the world above us. For those few hours, nothing else mattered.
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The Outside World Intrudes
Of course, the outside world had a way of creeping in, no matter how hard we tried to shut it out. There was the time Joey’s older cousin Tony showed up, drunk and belligerent, demanding to know why Joey hadn’t invited him to “the party.” Tony was the kind of guy who thought he was God’s gift to Ethertown —slicked-back hair, gold chains, and a laugh that sounded like a car backfiring.
“What the hell is this?” he said, looking around the basement. “You guys some kinda cult?”
“No, Tony,” Joey said, rolling his eyes. “It’s a band.”
Tony picked up Joey’s Flying V and plucked at the strings, wincing as the out-of-tune notes echoed through the room. “You call this a band? You can’t even play this piece of crap.”
Maria, ever fearless, stood up and crossed her arms. “Yeah? Let’s see you do better, Tony.”
Tony sneered but didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he handed the guitar back to Joey, muttering something about “loser shit” before stumbling upstairs. I caught Joey’s eye and nodded, plugging my bass back in. For the rest of the night, Joey played his guitar with a new kind of determination, as if to prove something. I matched his energy with my bass, our rhythms locking tighter than ever before.
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The Big Idea
One night, in the middle of a particularly heated argument about whether Anthrax or Megadeth had the better live shows, Joey stood up and declared, “We should play the talent show.”
We all stared at him like he’d just announced he was joining the chess club.
“The school talent show?” Maria asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m serious,” Joey said, pacing the room like a general rallying his troops. “Think about it. All those normies, sitting there, expecting some stupid lip-syncing or whatever. And then *bam*! Monstrama takes the stage and blows their minds.”
Franky looked skeptical. “You realize we don’t actually have songs, right? Or, like…talent?”
“That’s what practice is for!” Joey said, his eyes alight with the kind of manic energy that only comes from bad ideas.
To my surprise, Maria nodded. “Screw it. Let’s do it. Worst-case scenario, we get booed off the stage. Best-case scenario, we make someone’s ears bleed.”
And just like that, we had a mission. I started working on basslines that would hit harder than anything we’d ever tried before, something that would make even the normies feel it in their chests.
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The Album That Never Was
It was Joey’s idea, of course. He’d been combing through the classifieds at the back of some music magazine when he found it: a secondhand Tascam digital 8-track recorder. It was scratched up and probably older than we were, but it worked. Or, at least, Joey swore it would work.
“It’s perfect,” he said, holding it up like it was the Holy Grail. “We’re gonna record an album. Monstrama’s debut. The world’s not ready.”
“The world’s definitely not ready,” Maria said, smirking. “Probably for the best.”
But Joey was determined, and his enthusiasm was contagious. By the end of the night, we were all on board. If nothing else, it was something to do—a way to make our mark, however small, before Ethertown chewed us up and spat us out like it did everyone else.
The Studio: Joey’s Aunt’s Basement
Joey’s aunt’s basement was transformed into our makeshift recording studio. The space was as far from soundproof as you could get—every now and then, you’d hear muffled yelling from upstairs or the distant roar of planes overhead. The walls were lined with Joey’s uncle’s old mattresses, which we leaned up against the concrete in an attempt to “improve the acoustics.” It didn’t work, but it made us feel like we knew what we were doing.
The Tascam 8-track sat on a wobbly folding table in the corner, surrounded by a mess of tangled cables and duct-taped microphones. None of us really knew how to use it, but Franky, with his obsessive attention to detail, managed to figure out the basics after a few hours of trial and error.
“We’ve got eight tracks,” Joey announced, pacing the room like a general preparing his troops. “Drums, guitar, bass, vocals. Maybe some backup vocals. That’s all we need.”
I grinned, cradling my bass. “Finally, I get to lay down some real tracks.” I’d spent the last week perfecting basslines that would punch through the mess of our sound and add some much-needed depth.
Recording the Masterpiece
We decided to record live, all of us playing together in the same room to capture the raw energy that made Monstrama what it was. The plan was simple: we’d record the instrumentals first, then overdub the vocals later. It sounded easy enough in theory, but in practice, it was chaos.
Franky had borrowed an old, beat-up drum kit from a cousin, but one of the toms was busted, and the kick pedal kept sticking. Joey’s Flying V sounded like it was being amplified through a toaster, and the single microphone we used to capture the room sound kept cutting out.
But none of that mattered. When we hit “record” on the Tascam and launched into our first song, it felt like magic. Joey’s sloppy riffs, Franky’s uneven drum fills, Maria’s primal screams—it all came together in this messy, glorious cacophony that could only be Monstrama. My basslines were the glue, anchoring the chaos with a steady groove that refused to let the songs completely fall apart.
We recorded five tracks that night, each one more chaotic than the last. There was “Necrocity,” a fast, thrashy anthem about a zombie apocalypse, and “Double Bass Descent,” which was basically just Franky hitting the kick drum as fast as he could while Joey tried to keep up. Maria contributed “Scream Queen,” a furious, two-minute rant about the girls at school who thought they were better than her. My basslines roared underneath it all, giving the songs a weight that even we were surprised by.
Vocals and Chaos
The next night, we overdubbed the vocals. This was where Maria really came alive. She grabbed the mic like it owed her money, her voice tearing through the basement like a chainsaw.
“Louder,” Joey kept saying, even though we were already redlining the Tascam.
“You want louder?” Maria snarled. She let out a scream so fierce it actually blew out the cheap mic we were using.
Joey and Franky looked horrified, but I couldn’t stop laughing. It was so perfectly Monstrama—a beautiful disaster that we somehow managed to salvage.
When we played back the recordings, it was a mess. The levels were all over the place, the mix was muddy, and there were audible crashes and thuds from the drum kit falling apart mid-take. But underneath all that noise was something real.
“It’s… raw,” Franky said diplomatically.
“It’s perfect,” Joey corrected.
The Album Release That Never Happened
We burned the tracks onto a single CD, which Joey immediately scrawled “MONSTRAMA: RAW & UNCHAINED” on with a Sharpie. It was our debut album, our masterpiece. We had grand plans to make more copies, maybe even sell them at school, but the CD never made it past our circle.
Instead, we played it for ourselves, over and over, sitting on the basement floor with beers in hand and grins on our faces. Every time we listened, we’d point out the mistakes, the missed notes, the moments of chaos. But instead of fixing them, we celebrated them.
“Listen to that,” Maria said one night, pointing at a section where Joey’s guitar cut out entirely. “That’s the sound of Ethertown , right there.”
“Yeah,” Joey agreed, nodding sagely. “Gritty. Authentic.”
We never made another album. Life got in the way, as it always does, and by the time we had the chance, Monstrama was already starting to fall apart. But that one CD, that single night captured on an old digital recorder, became a kind of relic—a reminder of who we were and what we’d built together.
The Thrash Jazz Odyssey
The idea to experiment with jazz came from Franky, of all people. It was a rare Saturday afternoon rehearsal in Joey’s basement, and we were halfway through arguing about whether Slayer was technically more "musical" than Metallica when Franky blurted out, “You know, jazz is kind of like metal.”
We all stared at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Excuse me?” Maria said, her voice dripping with skepticism.
“No, really,” Franky insisted, pushing his mop of hair out of his face. “Think about it. Jazz has all these crazy time signatures, improvisation, weird scales. Metal does that too, but, you know… louder.”
I looked up from my bass. “Actually, he’s got a point. A lot of jazz basslines have that loose, improvisational feel. I bet we could mess with it.”
Franky grinned, finally feeling validated. “Exactly!”
The 11-Minute Masterpiece
Joey started noodling with riffs, Maria screamed nonsense into the mic, and I layered a deep, sliding groove underneath it all. My bass became the foundation of our experiment, the one constant as Joey’s riffs twisted into new shapes and Franky’s offbeat rhythms teetered on the edge of collapse.
The result was an 11-minute rollercoaster of tempo changes, dissonant chords, and unhinged screams. By the end, we were sweaty and breathless, our faces lit with disbelief.
“What the hell was that?” Maria asked, grinning.
“Art,” Joey said dramatically.
“More like madness,” I muttered, but secretly, I was proud.
The World Wasn’t Ready
We never played our jazz-thrash experiments outside the basement, but they became some of my favorite memories. It reminded me why I played bass—not for recognition, but to hold the chaos together and create something that was ours.
“Monstrama’s jazz phase,” Joey said one night, leaning back against the basement wall. “We’re ahead of our time.”
“Or just out of our minds,” Maria said, laughing.
“Same difference,” Franky added, twirling a drumstick.
For those nights in the basement, we were explorers of a sound that didn’t exist anywhere else. It was messy, imperfect, and absolutely beautiful. And for a bassist like me, that was more than enough.
The Glory of Failure
We spent the next two weeks “rehearsing” in the basement, which mostly consisted of Joey thrashing on his Flying V while Franky banged on an old cardboard box he’d found in a dumpster. Maria and I traded off vocals, screaming into the karaoke machine until our throats were raw.
The talent show was a disaster, of course. Half the crowd laughed, the other half looked genuinely scared. Joey’s guitar screeched and wailed, Franky’s drumming barely held together, and Maria’s screams echoed through the gym. But it was my bassline that carried us, a steady rumble that kept the chaos from collapsing entirely.
By the time the principal cut our set short, we were drenched in sweat and grinning like maniacs.
As we packed up our gear (if you could call it that), Maria turned to Joey and said, “Well, we sure as hell made them remember us.”
And that was enough.
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