The Will to Death

The Will to Death
The Will to Death
Studio album by John Frusciante
Released	June 22, 2004
Recorded	December 2003 and January 2004
Length	42:23
Label	Record Collection
Producer	John Frusciante
John Frusciante chronology

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	68/100^[1]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	^[2]
Alternative Press	^[3]
NME	6/10^[4]
Mojo	^[5]
Pitchfork	7.4/10^[6]
Q	^[7]
Tiny Mix Tapes	^[8]

The Will to Death is the fifth studio album by American musician John Frusciante, released on June 22, 2004 on Record Collection. The album reached #36 on the Top Independent Albums chart.^[9]

The vinyl edition of the record saw a repressing from Record Collection on December 11, 2012. These reissued records are 180 gram and come with a download of choice between MP3 and WAV formats of the album.

Frequent collaborator Josh Klinghoffer appears, performing drums, bass, guitar, and keyboard.

The album cover is a photo taken on Cimitero Monumentale di Milano. The man is Luigi Ontani.

Background and recording

In 2004 Frusciante announced that he would produce six albums during a six-month break from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with The Will to Death being the first of these. Following the long and costly recording of his previous album, Shadows Collide with People, Frusciante decided to experiment with recording music quickly and in a minimalist fashion, performing a maximum of two takes per track.^[10]

Frusciante has stated that the album is intended to be "the opposite of Shadows Collide with People":

On The Will to Death, I thought it would be a good idea to make a record with very little backing vocals, because we’d done it so much on Shadows. I always have to have a new idea for each album. For The Will to Death, the idea was to have very little backing vocals. There’s a lot of other huge differences. In every way, I wanted the opposite of Shadows.

On January 16, 2013, John provided a definition and theory of "The Will to Death" on his website. ^[11]

Track listing

All tracks are written by John Frusciante, unless otherwise noted

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"A Doubt"		4:19
2.	"An Exercise"		3:47
3.	"Time Runs Out"		4:00
4.	"Loss"		5:20
5.	"Unchanging"		3:54
6.	"The Mirror"		3:02
7.	"A Loop"		4:32
8.	"Wishing"		2:48
9.	"Far Away"		2:17
10.	"The Days Have Turned"		2:23
11.	"Helical"	John Frusciante, Josh Klinghoffer	2:13
12.	"The Will to Death"		3:48
Total length:			42:23

Personnel

The following people contributed to The Will to Death:^[12]

Musicians

John Frusciante – vocals, guitar, piano, synthesizer, bass guitar on "Far Away", "Unchanging" and "The Will to Death"
Josh Klinghoffer – drums, bass, keyboards, guitar on "Helical" and "The Will to Death"

Recording personnel

John Frusciante – producer
Ryan Hewitt – engineer, mixing
Rafael Serrano – recording assistant
Jeff Moses – recording assistant
Bernie Grundman – mastering
Dave Lee – equipment

Artwork

Lola Montes Schnabel – cover photograph
Mike Piscitelli – design
John Frusciante – design

References

^ "The Will to Death Reviews". Metacritic.com. Retrieved 2016-12-18.
^ Allmusic review
^ It's all very simple, organic and, best of all, easy on the ears. [Oct 2004, p.140]
^ Zooming sheets of spacious wind-tunnel prog and raw, solo-spattered soul. Commercially, it's suicide. [26 Jun 2004, p.55]
^ Stirring but sombre stuff. [Aug 2004, p.86]
^ Pitchfork Media review
^ Contains some potentially highly commercial music, were it not for the underwhelming production. [Sep 2004, p.118]
^ "John Frusciante - The Will to Death". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
^ "John Frusciante Chart Performance". Billboard. Retrieved 2007-09-17.
^ "John's Letter About the Album". John Frusciante. Archived from the original on August 20, 2007. Retrieved 2008-07-22.
^ "The Creative Act". John Frusciante. Archived from the original on 2013-12-25. Retrieved 2020-02-07.
^ The Will to Death liner notes