Murdoc Is God

Murdoc Is God

"Murdoc's metal band would have been in the movie "Celebrity Harvest", had it been made. (One of the many ideas) was that Murdoc would leave Gorillaz and form a metal band."
- Jamie Hewlett

"Murdoc Is God", the second b-side to the "Dirty Harry" single, is a track written about (and most likely by) the band's bassist Murdoc Niccals. Murdoc was created to be a parody of the typical narcissistic rock star, with the tongue of Gene Simmons, the eyes of David Bowie, the overall look and language of Keith Richards and a crude mix of a bunch of other rockin' personalities to top it off. He takes himself way too seriously and believes in not only the cult religion of Satanism but the ideal of the "sex, drugs and rock n roll" lifestyle. The blog hasn't talked much about him (other than the fact that he's perhaps the leading cause of 2D's trauma and scars, physically and mentally), but in a way Murdoc represents the brains of the outfit being the one who formed the band in the band's ever expanding lore. Often times when the character isn't going on a rant for the purpose of shits and giggles, Murdoc's sentiments echo what Damon Albarn has said about the band in his own interviews.

Of all the songs I've looked at by the cartoon foursome, I had the least amount of ideas about what this song was about. The song's instrumental is done in what may be Damon's first venture into the genre of thick, hard and gothic heavy metal (with a hint of swaggering glam rock and noisy punk rock for good measure). The beat is centered around a repetitive rocking beat set by James Dring which is quickly followed by the noisy combo of distorted basses and electric guitars played by Damon Albarn (guitar) and Jason Cox (bass). The guitar sound on this track is like something I've never heard before, decked out in weird phasing almost "wah-wah" type effects while still retaining a raw and even somewhat frightening sound. And the vocals, the vocals are just a repeated chant of "Murdoc is god. Murdoc is god.  Murdoc is god. Murdoc is god. Johnny is dead." This song sounds like nothing Gorillaz have done before or since, in fact, that doesn't even sound like Damon Albarn singing. And that's when it hit me...

In the original idea for the Gorillaz movie, "Celebrity Harvest". Murdoc was going to form a new metal band after Gorillaz break up and he would eventually ditch them at Kong Studios, where they would be attacked by zombies, thus becoming zombies themselves. Damon Albarn was going to write new songs for the movie and was writing some while on tour with Blur in 2003 ("Dirty Harry" was written on this tour). When Damon came back and found out that the movie idea was scrapped, he and Jamie planned to use the songs and imagery from the movie on what was originally planned to be the band's second record, "Reject False Icons". So my theory is that this wasn't originally meant to be a Gorillaz song, this was meant to be a song Murdoc's new band played in the movie that Damon Albarn (probably excited to dip into an area of music he hadn't tried before) decided to record anyway. This would explain why Damon Albarn isn't singing in his 2D voice or even his own voice, because he is singing in the voice of one of the characters (pictured above) from Murdoc's metal band. But that leaves one more question, who is "Johnny"? That I can't tell you, but maybe he was a character from the movie we never got. The lyrics don't really matter in the long run because Murdoc wrote them about he awesome he is, you can replace Johnny's name with any other name during that section and the song will still work just the same. The song ends in a cacophony of noise, every instrument shows no restraint as if the band is coming out of your speakers to tear you in half. In the background there is a demonic choir backed up by a low mixed organ as if representing fear from those around them. The song ends in feedback and noise, there were no survivors.

"Murdoc Is God" remains a weird oddity in the Gorillaz discography and was probably never considered majorly for placement on "Reject False Icons", yet alone "Demon Days". Regardless of what the track may mean, "Murdoc Is God" remains to be an awesome track that sounds like nothing Damon Albarn has ever tried on a record.