RBOTD #199: Insinu
Not going to insinu-ate anything
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Insinu/117040
Country: United States
Location: Ridgefield, Connecticut
Genre: stoner/heavy metal/hard rock
Formed in: 2004
Status: unknown
By the Numbers
Insinu is the:
78th band formed in the 2000s
43rd band from the United States
12th band with an unknown status
Its genre tags have been seen:
Stoner: Two times
Heavy: 39 times
Hard: 13 times
Member Connections
Insinu is a bandalone.
Know 'Em?
Nope. I am now 10/199.
Sketch Check
Pass.
RateYourMusic Scores
Insinu has not been rated.
Adjusted scores are calculated similarly to the Trad Belt scoring system. Please read that column for more information.
Trifecta Tracker
Insinu has not achieved the trifecta.
A band can achieve the trifecta by titling a song after itself on a self-titled release. Iron Maiden's "Iron Maiden" on 1980's Iron Maiden is an example of the trifecta.
I should buy a lotto ticket because, boy, this is like surviving until the end of a Final Destination movie. Why am I lucky? Nothing by Insinu appears to be streaming. This failure of the internet to perform its core duty and archive everything would normally annoy me to no end. In Insinu's case, it's great because of this note pinned to its Metallum page, emphasis mine:
Insinu formed through the program "Rock on America" when they were in sixth grade. They started under the name Element.
SIXTH GRADE! I am a cruel, heartless critic, but I am not going to blow up the spots of sixth graders, especially 16 years later, especially over songs created through a summer camp program.
Is anyone at their best in sixth grade? I know youth is wasted on the young, but that would be bleak if sixth grade was one's peak. It's a time fraught with…a lot. There are so many things to contend with, the brain-warping effect of puberty first and foremost. When I was in sixth grade, I was even stupider than I am now, which is saying something because I sometimes check my pockets for my car keys...while driving. Like, I distinctly remember the semester-long project in one of my classes was designing and marketing a product. Easy A. You could do anything. You just had to exhibit a modicum of effort and common sense. Me? I failed. I "created" a guitar pick called "The Snake," which was just a heavy Ernie Ball pick with an S painted on it with whiteout. The marketing part? I wrote "THE SNAKE" on a shirt in puffy paint.1 This is world-class moron behavior, but it was fine at the time because it was SIXTH GRADE. WHO CARES? Now, imagine someone blogging about it today on Business Insider. Hardest of passes.
Anyway, all of that is to say, Insinu, I release you from my typical RBOTD duties. I'm not going to hold anything you did in sixth grade against you. The chances these songs are good are more remote than Adam Sandler filming a Click sequel on Pitcairn Island because Insinu is not Enslaved and this demo is not Nema. Sure, I'm tickled by titling a song "The Final Introduction" and sequencing it last, but I don't want to know anything else about it.2 Nope. Not happening. We're done. Congrats on making it into Metallum, Insinu. Goodbye, forever.
So, let's switch gears and talk about the adults in the Insinu story. What was "Rock On America"? This was tough to find because the nondescript name veers into unGoogleable territory. For instance, there's Rock-on America, a Facebook group of 550 members for those who love to paint rocks.3 There's also Rock On America !, the YouTube channel for Rock Over America, a now-defunct rawk webzine that posted some of the worst-sounding interviews I've ever heard. I'm not saying the interviews are bad, although they might be. I'm saying that the fidelity is abysmal. Example? Here's one with Betsy Bitch from Bitch. It's as if someone recorded police scanner chatter to a wax cylinder. I used to record phoners on a mini tape recorder for years, and my stuff sounds like Mutt Lange produced it compared to this garbage. How does this sound this bad? Did this person lose their tape recorder inside of a dog?
My hunt for Rock On America went like this for over an hour. Dead link after dead link, dead end after dead end. But I think I finally cracked the case.
Here's a 2008 post on Rick's Music Blog advertising Summer Jam Camp, aka "ROCK ON AMERICA." "Students will expand their skills and see what it's like to play in a band in a rock/pop setting," the program description stated. Eight weeks, $250 tuition. You auditioned to determine your level and then were shuffled off into an ensemble. In one of three two-hour blocks, you lived and died with your bandmates over the course of the summer with the aim of eventually playing in front of your folks. You can see some later jam camp shows on the Rick's Music World YouTube channel.
And you know, this seems like an excellent way to spend a summer. I whiled away my summer camp years learning box stitch and hoping like hell we could play dodgeball instead of doing something boring like getting in touch with my feelings. Would I be less of a talentless hack if I spent a summer woodshedding with fellow band-curious young people? Probably not! But it might've gotten me out of my shell and set me up for better music experiences down the road. That seems worthwhile. While I'm clearly blinded by adulthood, feeling the dull throb of "Ooh La La" regret because I chose the wrong paths in life, I think a rock/pop summer camp is a genuinely rad undertaking. I wish there were a metal equivalent. Like, I don't know, teach kids to play "Paranoid," "Ace of Spades," or "Praise the Lord (Opium of the Masses)," or something. What could go wrong?
Rick's Music World is still going. Its flagship location has been in Raynham, Massachusetts, since 2001. You can read more about co-founder Rick Santos's story here. Took a gamble to fill a community's need for art, lovely stuff. And, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone at Rick's Music World, thank you for not uploading anything from Insinu to the internet. You really saved my ass.
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Never a fashion plate, I wore this shirt into high school. This act of laziness apparently entered my name into the grapevine due to its, uh, phallic mysteriousness. I was oblivious to this until way later when someone asked me about it. It has been...quite the life.
The aborted direction this RBOTD could've traveled down was trying to crack if Insinu is responsible for the only Velvet Revolver cover in Metallum. It is not. Amnesia, a groove metal band from Italy, covered "Slither" in 2017.
This being Facebook, how many rock painters were at the Capitol on January 6? Definitely not none, right?