About The Shizit
“A metalhead and computer geek”
Seattle, 1999. Heart of the WTO protests, the dot-com bubble. Starbucks? The Shizit, JP Anderson and Brian Shrader, began during this hinge point of history.
Well actually, the Shizit begins just shy of that watershed in the final months of 1998. JP had been in a few bands prior, and was fresh out of an eastern-influenced, industrial rock band called NuMantra. They had a self-released album under their belt and a song on a compilation album highlighting bands from the NW United States. By late ’98, that project had folded and JP began to work on something new. He placed an ad for a guitarist in Seattle’s local alt paper, The Stranger. Brian responded to the call and the two were introduced January of 1999. Brian was impressed with the tracks JP had, it was exactly the music what he wanted to play. He self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a “metalhead and computer geek,” a title humorously touted in just about every piece of journalism ever written about the band, and this biography will be NO EXCEPTION. Luckily, this was what JP wanted to hear. That descriptor couldn’t be a better match for the aesthetics and ethos that he wanted the band to embody. By mid-99 they signed an agreement to be 50/50 partners and gave themselves the name “The Shizit” because, simply, JP believed the band was the shit. Can’t argue with that logic, really.
On the Tech
JP had a Roland XP-80 workstation keyboard which he used to compose and arrange all of the Shizit’s tracks aside from guitar and vocals, all of which were guerilla-recorded at their practice space into a Roland Virtual Studio, likely the VS-880 or 1680. These things were the bleeding edge of affordable recording stations at the time, and yet made completely trivial and obsolete by the computer workstation software that caught on just a few years later. If making electronic music seems difficult and ambitious today, it was ten times worse back then.
They used much of this same gear live, which you can catch glimpses of in the Herdcore video.
Brian’s guitar was tuned to drop-B and fed through a Digitech ValveFX rack processor. Digitech gave up on support for the product fairly quickly, so Brian went about developing software to create new effects (“patches”) in a graphical environment, releasing the software freely. You can still view the website he built showcasing the software.
“Are you ready for some fucking pain?”
The Seattle music scene would not then, not now, not ever be kind to a band like the Shizit. Electronic rock, industrial metal, whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it had very few home bases. Places like Graceland, The Catwalk, and Fenix Underground existed, and they played where they could, but they didn’t play live all that much. The majority of photos you’ll see still floating around the internet are from a handful of shows: mostly their showcase at the EMP Sky Church and their UK tour with Alec Empire.
To find an audience that actually connected with their music, they’d have to embrace the nascent tech emerging at the same time the band was. At Brian’s urging, the band put up a website, and gave away songs for free there and on mp3.com. Record labels at the time were charging out the nose for CDs. They had a stranglehold on media and they thought could keep it forever. Today, we know exactly how steep the fall was for the recording industry, as they continually tried to step in the way and use the law to halt progress. In 1999, however, the band was taking a risk. At best, the band stood to gain a few more listeners. At worst, they’ve devalued their music to nothing.
Like any band, The Shizit’s first tracks were raw. Some songs were personal episodes, and some were a sort of high-concept adolescent cyberpunk anthem. The recording was lo-fi. It didn’t matter. Their sound didn’t have much of a parallel, and it clicked with the online audiences accessing mp3.com. They were topping the charts. Not just of their genre, the entire site.
It’s something we take as a given now, but mp3.com had the novel concept to compensate their top artists with a share of their ad revenue. Probably not enough to quit their jobs, but the band was earning enough to know they were doing something right.
“We are starving and bleeding before we unite on anything”
The music starts speaking for itself here. The 1999 debut EP “Evil Inside” gave way to the 2000 EP “Script Kiddie,” featuring polished re-recordings of some favorite tracks and demos of their debut album to come. The sound and the lyrics JP brought to practices began to evolve and mature. The songs became about what was discussed during the band’s practices, namely politics. Who could blame them? They were present at the WTO protests in 1999, they wanted their message to be heard. The state’s reply? Tear gas, riot gear, and a stick to the head. Their music would be about what they saw and felt at that time. They wanted to energize the music and raise the stakes.
What was the Shizit’s political stance, anyway? What did all the megaphone shouting mean? It wasn’t about building a political party or a platform with specific policies. The Shizit stood, above all else, for honesty and integrity. We have been told lies from authority for so long, we expect to be lied to. We accept that we are lied to and we don’t care. We are told that the world changes while it stays the same. It is time for honesty. No more lies, no more bullshit. They were not utopians or idealists, but the blatant hypocrisy on something so fundamental as honesty fuels the anger in each and every Shizit song.
Their 2001 debut LP followed suit. Titled “Soundtrack For The Revolution” (stylistically abbreviated on the front cover to so.f.te.r), the album was dedicated to the memory of Carlo Giuliani, gunned down by the state during protests around the G8 summit in 2001. The back cover featured a stylized edit of the “RESISTANCE” poster used by the IRA. The whole package was unapologetic. If you didn’t like what you saw and heard, the band wanted you to kindly fuck off. This is what the Shizit were always about but now they weren’t keeping it to themselves.
This transparency extended to their online presence. Shizit.net was more than just a promotional page, it hosted the Shizit Militia forum, and open discussion space for the band and related topics. The band often joined in the discussion themselves.
Jeremy Ray, a 3D artist, contributed art for the album’s liner. The collective spirit of the band convinced him to reach out. “I found a few of the Script Kiddie .mp3s somewhere and contacted the Shizit,” he remembers. “I showed them the liner art for the album as it developed, but I believe the ideas and concept were all mine.”
By 2002, the band publicized on their website that they wanted to add a third member to the Shizit. They found that third member in dedicated turntablist Jason Alberts. You can hear his work in the band in a few live videos circulating the net (they’re all embedded on this page, too).
“There was a video game demo,” recalls Jeremy Ray. The demo was built within the 3D art software Blender, “I spent a lot of time on it, of course it’s not very impressive now. I was looking for more people to work on it on the Blender forums. As I recall, I posted it three days before Blender’s parent company went bankrupt. So the Shizit game went on hiatus.” A casualty to the dot-com bubble implosion. “Eventually Blender went open source and became a big deal, but by that time the Shizit had broken up.”
Ray is in possession of the game files, but hasn’t been able to recover a complete version of the demo.
The band always knew if they were going find a reliable audience, it wouldn’t be in Seattle. The tide is certainly changing today, but in the new millennium, electronic music in the United States was still underground.
Later in 2002, Brian managed to negotiate the Shizit as an opening act for the UK leg of Alec Empire’s Intelligence and Sacrifice tour. By negotiate, they begged. They offered to do it for no pay and no expenses paid by the tour. They’d front it all, even the visa paperwork. With that kind of deal, Alec couldn’t refuse. The band always had a larger audience in the U.K., and this was a perfect opportunity to test how viable regular touring over there could be.
That year, the band played in the UK to sold out crowds, but personal relations between the members fell apart during the tour. The Shizit disbanded by the end of 2002.
Meditations on the End
I wish I could give you the Hollywood epilogue text, to tell you that the band remain friends today, but the reality is that they do not. Not that they hold active animosity keeping them up at night. Truthfully, I believe they simply do not think about each other or the band much anymore. They’d prefer to look forward rather than back.
I do not care about the specific reason(s) The Shizit broke up. Both members have expressed regret about the ordeal, and the cliche way it all transpired. It’s best left in the past. The conclusion I’ve made and ever needed is that touring is a very stressful experience for a band, especially one crossing an ocean and paying for the entire thing out of their own pockets. In those confines, people don’t so much show their true colors as they become ugly distortions of themselves. I dare you to act so high, mighty, and enlightened in the same situation. Also, you know, sometimes we all need to mind our own business more.
After The Shizit
JP stayed in music, releasing the first record under the name Rabbit Junk in 2004. The early Rabbit Junk sound contains echoes of the Shizit, but flaunted a willingness to experiment beyond his earlier band’s formula. Genres like hardcore punk, black metal, electroclash, contemporary drum and bass entered the mix. Emotions beyond pure anger were permitted. Politics were still expressed, but the topic was explored with more depth and permanently bound to JP’s personal life. 2006’s Reframe saw experiments with the early, emerging dubstep sound.
Staying true to the Shizit’s political edge, JP earned his Ph.D in political science at the University of Washington in 2021. As of 2025, he is an Assistant Professor at San Diego State University, specializing in “Race and Public Law in America.”
Brian has been more low key, quitting professional music after the Shizit. He worked in tech for a while, and made world travel his life’s passion, logging his destinations in a blog. He was on a podcast, talking about what he’s been up to this whole time, like cross-continental driving (!!!), as well as little bit about the Shizit. It’s not a bad listen.
The Shizit was a great band with unrealized potential. Even still, this all happened and it meant something. At a time when a lot of bands from the y2k era are finally getting overdue recognition, their music is still not available through “official” channels, and much of the publicity, discussion, and hype that existed through their active period has been lost in the digital sprawl. This website was built where the old one once stood as a memorial to that nostalgic period. The Shizit will not be erased.
“Show the world we have not forgot. Unlearn what you’ve been taught.”
