Cosmic Charley guitarist/ frontman Nathan Kunkel did everything himself for the local funk rock band’s new concept album “The Bitterness of Men.”
“It follows our hero Charley who leaves his girl and goes to war, gets wounded and comes home and kind of goes insane,” summarized Kunkel.
“The Bitterness of Men” is the trio’s third CD and first full length release. Drummer Tony Arsenault and bassist Thomas Bird complete the trio.
“When he gets back he’s in a post-apocalyptic world,” continued Kunkel who developed the story of the course of a year.
“I tried to highlight the bitterness of man and asked why is it that way. I wanted to talk about that,” he said, noting the concept explores the effects of war.
Kunkel recorded the entire CD in his home studio and taught his bandmates how to play their parts.
“I took my time on this album. I thought the last one felt a little rushed. I like to just let my creativity flow,” he said.
In addition to Kunkel’s songs, he also recorded “In This City,” by Lethbridge songwriter Steven Foord, which fit in with Kunkel’s narrative.
“It’s a great song so I thought it should be recorded,” he said.
“And he loves our version of it,” he said.
Kunkel observed the project started to come together with the first four songs, which reflected Charley’s experiences in battle and the rest of them grew from that core. They are also the songs they play together as one unit.
They also lent themselves well to various props and costumes on stage.
“So it really is a rock opera,” he said.
“I’ve got no plans to do that,” he said.
In the meantime, he said the songs stand out on their own.
He noted his band mates were happy to let him do the writing and were happy to learn their parts.
“Tony didn’t have time to write because he just had a baby. And Thomas is in school. So we didn’t have the time to write and record together,” he said adding they were happy to learn their parts for live performances.
“Some of the parts are pretty challenging, so they liked that,” he said.
“They love playing it live,” he added. Bassist Thomas Bird does play on Frozen Rain, Bitterness of Men, Lucky Lady, Drive, Dark, Funked up and Want.
They played a couple of high profile gigs last year including opening for the Pack AD on Oct. 6 at the Slice and the CD release party at the Owl Acoustic Lounge on Nov. 28.
