Written: May 19 2025

Frodus

'93-'99

Final Lineup: Shelby Cinca (vocals, guitar), Jason Hammacher (drummer), Nathan Burke (bassist)

I found Frodus through Thrice while I was in high school. It was an accident. I listened to Thrice's cover of "The Earth Isn't Humming" and felt something wasn't quite right. The acoustic sound and maracas didn't really seem to fit. The pacing was odd. I searched up the song online and found out it was in fact a cover. Frodus's version was faster. Realer. The vocals more aching and more sincere. Nothing like Dustin's manufactured voice and aches. Frodus's version haunted and consoled me.

I listened to their album in pieces, out of order, and not every song. I listened to two songs to decide if the whole album was worth listening to: "The Earth Isn't Humming" and "There Will Be No More Scum". And We Washed Our Weapons in The Sea is an artistic achievement. Not many people like the sound, and that's OK. To me, it's a work of mastery and genius. It needs no further qualification.

Weapons begins with "Red Bull of Juarez". It's the sound of an artillery gun being loaded with ammunition. It's a howitzer getting ready to fire. Shelby screams: THE WEAPONS DRAWN, ROCK N ROLL IS WAR. Weapons ends with the title track, "And We Washed Our Weapons in The Sea". It is a serene instrumental. If I were to distill this album into a question for a seeker of meaning, or a lover of art, it would be: How does one transcend war? Such a question can only be answered in the form of the ancient story, repeated again and again with every birth of every boy, of the boy growing up. That's why this album means so much to me. It is a grasp at inner peace.

1. Red Bull of Juarez

In every moment of defiance, I hear the opening bassline. Then the gasp between every sentence.

/I'M LEFT FOR DEAD NOW. I'M LEFT FOR DEAD RIGHT NOW./

2. The Earth Isn't Humming

/Fell into the sound, in front of me, unchanged by those around. Directionless, an open sea. We'll watch as time tumbles down./

It's been a decade, and all I can say is that this song is about change and being an observer to change.

3. There Will Be No More Scum

/Torn away from my warmth. The progress of science. Put to work to destroy. For diplomacy. Stupid human scum. Insect gods./

/I awoke dead. The sky filled with bombs./

The first invective against mankind in this album. My brother said the guitar-work here sounds "evil". He meant that as a compliment.

4. Out-Circuit The Ending

This is my favorite track of the entire album. I am almost ashamed of that choice, if it was a choice at all. Other songs are more musical. But this one is the most sincere, somehow. It touches my heart. "Out-Circuit" is the turning point in this album. It picks up where the previous track left off:

/Feels like all our days were stolen. Waiting for the bombs to start falling./

/Passion replaced by strategy, your stained glass heart yearns for it. An open door somewhere waits for me. Your arms are strong, but they do not find me./

Here is an evolution of the previous track. Anger has been replaced by poetic reflection. Love again replaced by the desire for power, and a beautiful, fragile heart that wants either connection (passion) or domination (strategy). Neither the lyrics nor delivery clear what "it" refers to. I think the stained glass heart wants strategy, just by how the sentence is constructed and when taken with the lines that follow, where the singer is left alone and disconnected.

/Born without wings. Drawn to fight. Drawn to win. Drawn to be erased. Chainless. Undying. At least I'm not innocent./

I would write down this lyric in my notebooks and scribbled in the margins of my doodles while at school or at work, again and again. It is anti-romantic (romance being the sense that all that was valuable was in the past). It is the most striking line of the entire album. It is another way of saying: "I have witnessed". It is a defiance against purity and wallowing in the past, and a defiance against wishing oneself free from sin or whatever you believe makes you ugly and unworthy and incomplete.

5. Chiriacho Summit

/Debt. Empty stares. Strike back with the hate of a young man's heart./

Yes.

6. Belgian Congo

I would always skip this song. Not because it was awful or lacking quality, but it replicates the quality of cruelty and devastation so well. It is the song that plays in the aftermath, when one takes stock of grief and loss. When one remembers the black and white picture of the withered African, sitting on some porch, with the severed hands and feet of his little daughter. Can there be any poetry for this man or his people? There are no lyrics in "Belgian Congo"; it is a quiet song of the devastation of man against man, and by witnessing the violence, it is another invective against mankind.

7. The Awesome Machine

/I saw it once, in a dream: buildings extend, mankind the sea. It'll happen: cultures mesh into one. See it now as we open our eyes./

I have collected my dreams for five years now. To me they are a source of truth. If you take me seriously, you won't say: "These are all completely self-contained and have no reality outside the mind of the dreamer". Instead, you'd say: "What has the man gone through, what has he seen and felt, that has made the dream appear to him like this?" I started collecting my dreams because of a friend and only recently, when I was re-visiting the album again (once again) did I find another kinship within it to hold dearly.

/The machines never died. We will be vindicated./

This line didn't mean so much to me until one day, I listened to Conglomerate International, Frodus's earlier album, the one right before Weapons. At the very end of the very last song, after a long period of silence (or was it static?) a robotic voice coldly says this line. I was enlightened. Something was illuminated with in me. I saw the evolution of art: a line was re-used. This time, instead of the robot's voice which coldly prophesized the threat of machines and the end of humanity (and therefore the end of art), it's Shelby who sings it as a refrain. It becomes a meditation. His voice gets sharper; he starts screaming it until the song ends. No longer was it a threat from cold metal, but a warning from warm flesh, gasping between lines.

/The recurring threat of technology can be used to destroy populations. It's not a reason to reject it all, just the minds who abuse the knowledge./

Here is another evolution to the themes in "There Will Be No More Scum" and "Belgian Congo". Technology is a threat. Yes. But what makes it a threat are those who abuse it for power. The tools that build ships to cross the whole world are the same tools that let you build slave ships to cross the whole world.

8. 6/99

/I thought hope was lost. I tried not to look back. Haunted by darkened thoughts. The void drew me closer. Until we are brought back by the lives of those we love. Hope was lost, I closed my eyes. Hope was lost, I closed my eyes./

9. Hull Crush Depth

Another instrumental. I used to skip this song because I thought it was bad. One day, I was listening to Weapons in the car, and gave this song another chance. It was beautiful. Suprisingly beautiful, not just bearable. Still, the song is robotic and repetitive; at times almost like a buzzsaw. There's the sound of SONAR throughout. Almost intelligible radio chatter. What is "Hull Crush Depth"? It's when the pressure of the ocean around a submarine is so great, the submarine implodes.

10. Year of The Hex

The final invective against mankind. It is screamed. Shelby gasps between every line; I love to hear those gasps (the recording remembers the body's strain) and the utter rage that comes forth. It is the rage of men who despise greed.

/BEAT THEM AT EVERY TURN. NOTHING HURTS LIKE A HURT FOR MONEY. TRADE LOVE FOR DIVIDENDS. IN THE END INHERIT NOTHING./

/I WISH PAIN UPON THIS CITY. OLD WORDS HOLD NO MEANING. I UNFOLD TO FACE MYSELF. LAUGH AT THOSE WHO LAUGH AT THE DEAD./

The ultimate verse before the screams become unintelligible:

/THERE IS NO FINAL WORD AS LONG AS YOU BREATHE. THERE IS NO FINAL VERSE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE./

11. And We Washed Our Weapons in The Sea

Does that mean we cast our weapons out, or purify them for the next war? In any case, we let go.