Mad Season

The Arc of Mad Season

The pivots — what forced Mad Season to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Bad Animals Sessions

   McCready brought the group into Bad Animals with nothing but a few riffs and a desire to play music that felt instinctive rather than polished for radio. They leaned into long, jam-heavy compositions like 'Wake Up' that allowed Saunders and Martin to lock into a jazz-influenced groove while Staley improvised his vocal melodies on the spot. The result was a record that captured the claustrophobia of recovery and the heavy, humid atmosphere of Seattle winter. You hear it in the way the songs breathe and swell, moving away from the tight verse-chorus-verse structures of their main bands.

2. 02

   The Disko Nekretnine Ghost Tapes

   After the initial success of the first record, the band attempted a follow-up titled Disko Nekretnine, but the sessions fractured as Staley’s health plummeted and Saunders passed away. McCready and Martin eventually dusted off these mid-90s basic tracks and invited Mark Lanegan to finish the lyrics and vocals years later. These recordings, eventually released on the 2013 deluxe reissue, show a band moving toward a more sprawling, cinematic desert-rock sound. Lanegan’s gravelly delivery turned these leftovers into a posthumous tribute that felt like a funeral dirge for the entire Seattle scene.

Influences

• Stevie Ray Vaughan — Mike McCready has repeatedly cited Vaughan as his primary technical North Star, even wearing an 'SRV' sticker on his Strat during this era. You hear it in the fluid, blues-drenched soloing on 'I'm Above' and the wah-heavy bridge of 'River of Deceit.' It’s the sound of a grunge kid finally letting his Hendrix and Vaughan obsession out of the bag.
• The Doors — Layne Staley’s vocal approach on Above moved away from the metal snarl of Alice in Chains toward the dark, shamanic baritone of Jim Morrison. The improvisational nature of songs like 'Wake Up' mirrors the long-form atmospheric jams found on L.A. Woman. It brought a certain gothic, Los Angeles noir vibe to the rainy Pacific Northwest.
• John Coltrane — Drummer Barrett Martin was a student of ethnomusicology and jazz who cited Coltrane’s sense of spiritual rhythm as a major influence on his playing. His use of mallets and polyrhythmic patterns on 'Long Gone Day' breaks the standard 4/4 rock mold. It’s why the record feels more like a jazz-fusion session than a grunge record.
• The Gun Club — Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s haunting, blues-punk delivery was a massive touchstone for both Mark Lanegan and Layne Staley during the 90s. The swampy, heroin-chic aesthetic of Mad Season owes everything to the desolate, haunted Americana Pierce pioneered. It’s the bridge between the blues and the gutter.
• The Stooges — McCready and Saunders grew up on the raw, unrefined power of Ron Asheton’s guitar work and the nihilism of Fun House. That grit is buried under the production of Above, keeping the record from sounding too pretty or over-produced. They kept the rough edges of the jams to preserve the primal energy Iggy Pop made famous.