“The T4 virus serves as a warning. When you see that image, that’s pretty creepy,” says Shannon Saint Ryan of the spidery bacteriophage symbol that serves as the T4 Project’s logo. Saint Ryan is the brain behind the punk music collective whose members include musicians from the Nina Hagen Band, The Screamers, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Subhumans, Naked Aggression, Circle Jerks, Glass & Ashes, Pennywise, Bad Religion, Strung Out, Le Meu Le Purr, From Satellite, and Porno for Pyros. The goal of the collective is to create a sense of community between old- and new-school punk bands and foment political awareness through the music. The outcome of their efforts is The T4 Project’s Story-Based Concept Album, a ten-track CD conceived and produced by Saint Ryan, with lyrics sung and penned by Strung Out’s Jason Cruz and an accompanying 24-page graphic booklet rendered by punk/zine artist Keith Rosson.
The virus, Saint Ryan explains, is a metaphor for the vicious cycle of bad intentions, or as the collective’s CD art states, “the ills of the world.” It’s brainy stuff, but Saint Ryan doesn’t want punk fans to perceive the results as humorless or “fucking boring.” In fact, the rationale behind the logo reads like an action-packed Terminator 4 preview.
“I was about fourteen and in a biology class when the T4 virus was being illustrated,” Saint Ryan says. “The way it works is that the virus jumps on a cell and then injects the cell with its own DNA. That DNA starts to make viruses grow inside of that cell [and] take over it. It gets so bloated that the cell explodes and these viruses come out of it—these new babies—and then they go and look for other cells to do the exact thing to them. At fourteen or fifteen when I saw that, and I was getting exposed to punk rock being a weapon and a movement, I just saw it as this beautiful metaphor, like the viruses represent the system and the cells are the youth.”
Things are possible if you put in the effort. What I did with the record isn’t anything fancy; everyone can do it. It’s just about everyone having an idea for something, and it’s about bringing it to life.
Growing up in Clayton Brook, Lancashire, a small North England town, Saint Ryan initially viewed punks with a mix of awe and fear, until a friend introduced him to the music’s lyrics. After that, Saint Ryan says, “I thought, these people are amazing!” This passion turned into ten years of on-again, off-again gigs as a guitarist, guitar tech, and preproduction recording technician for punk bands before dreaming up the T4 Project’s Story-Based Concept Album.
In 2004, then 24-year-old Saint Ryan visualized a concept album on the level of the Who’s Quadrophenia. A punk rock epic: the System versus Man, with a good-versus-evil showdown by story’s end. Of course, there would have to be a love story, but the emphasis would remain on punks fighting what Saint Ryan perceived were the individual-crushing aspects of the hypothetical T4 virus: corporate agriculture, meaningless labor, lack of affordable health care, destruction of the environment, rampant bigotry, censorship, a police-state mentality, and polypharmacy.
Through DIY efforts, chance meetings, and a little help from his friends, Saint Ryan eventually persuaded thirteen venerable punk musicians to contribute to the album, corralling them without a backing label or promise of pay. “I’m not a great musician at all,” Saint Ryan says of his reasoning behind the collective. “But there are musicians out there where all they do is play bass; all they do is play guitar. By having that experience where you can work with other artists that can excel at what they’re doing, it brings it all to life. It gives it a super boost. And encouraging them to put their stamp on it is easy, because if it’s one person running around, it’s so fucking boring.”
The number of diverse musicians willing to contribute was a recruiting coup by anyone’s estimation—one that shouldn’t have panned out. But like his visionary status would imply, Saint Ryan was organized. His recent introduction to Pro Tools gave him the ability to blueprint song ideas to present to the musicians.
The kicker to all of this is that Saint Ryan was essentially unknown to the musicians involved and had no prior experience arranging such a large project. “Things are possible if you put in the effort. What I did with the record isn’t anything fancy; everyone can do it. It’s just about everyone having an idea for something, and it’s about bringing it to life.”
Though contributors’ record label contracts, limited studio time, musicians’ schedules, and the process of building a vocal booth in his bedroom for necessity’s sake could have made things difficult, Saint Ryan’s focus remained on getting the album and the story out there.
Saint Ryan’s approach to music had always been story-driven. “It’s always the heart of it. It wouldn’t matter if I were to play or listen to bluegrass or heavy metal. I could listen to a great fast punk sound, but if it’s about something that’s a waste of time—it could be about bubblegum—I’m not interested. The heart of it is the content, the lyrics, the story. It’s got to come from somewhere to hold it together.”
From initial recordings to mixing, Story-Based Concept Album took over two years to develop and involved seven studios on two continents. Saint Ryan is already looking at how the ideas behind the collective could be useful in other ways, and he repeatedly emphasizes that the drive for creating the collective had always been about uniting the new- and old-school punk communities—a division he saw firsthand in studio work for both camps. In the as-yet planned Making of the T4 Project DVD, the rest of Saint Ryan’s personal story may play out a bit more heroically. He has a super secret project on which he’s working that makes his voice quiver as he slyly says he’s been told not to talk about it. “This next one will be so much more than even I could imagine.”