MUSIC
FROG GOD (Matt Reilly) is a lo-fi psychedelic synthpop musician from San Diego, California. All music is written, recorded, and produced by the Frog God himself. Frog God was founded in 2015 and has been steadily releasing full-length albums and EPs ever since.
PLEASE NOTE:
1. Frog God sounds best with headphones set to its highest volume, while under the influence of something (anything).
2. Do not be alarmed when songs change genre wildly from track to track. You may encounter maximalist synth pop anthems, energetic shoegaze shanties, catchy & groovy instrumental jingles, moody & introspective dream pop dirges, spacey psychedelic ballads, or even a few vaguely religious hymns. Relax; this is the normal Frog God experience.
DISCOGRAPHY:
Frog God Loves You [EP] - 2016
Boronic! - 2016
Frog God Lives! - 2017
For The Boys [EP] - 2018
FROGHAÜS - 2019
JULIUS [EP] - 2020
Word of Frog - 2021
Bless The Space Communist! - 2022
Hand Jiver (Single Release) - 2022
FROGPOCALYPSE - 2023
Vanitas Vanitatum - 2024
FROGPOCALYPSE
Released November 18, 2023.
The development process for this album was a weird one. It actually started off as my attempt at a space opera concept album, but I soon felt the idea was trite and contrived, and consequently scrapped the entire idea. However you can still tell some songs are pretty spacey, even if I've given them different lyrics and titles.
Given all that has been going on in the world, the ideas of apocalypse and doom and despair became prominent in my head, and moved me to change the concept of my album from SPACE to APOCALYPSE.
This album is all about nuclear war and the end of the world told from the different perspectives of humans experiencing this cataclysm.
If you're a true fan, you'll probably notice there are some remakes on this album. I did recreate some of my earlier songs now that I know much more about production and whatnot. I just wanted to hear how my songs would have sounded if I recorded them with an actual microphone rather than iPhone headphone mics. These remakes are not meant to replace the original songs, but merely offer another slightly more accessible alternative to my older, extremely lo-fi songs. If you prefer the original, then cool, that means you have good taste, and they will always be there for your aural pleasure. I threw them on this album because they match the vibe perfectly. ‘Skybug’ was always about nuclear war, and ‘Burnington’ was always vaguely post-apocalyptic in nature.
BLESS THE SPACE COMMUNIST! [EP]
Released July 1, 2022.
At the time of this release, society was (and still is) crumbling further and further each day. It felt insane to continue to write and record music while everything was falling apart... but you gotta keep busy, eh? This album is staunchly anti-capitalism and mainly about my lost hopes for a better future. That being said, it also contains some hopeful tracks since Frog God is in a good place right now.
As for the name of the album, I think I saw a video once where some avowed 'space communist' fucked with some old conservative and one of the comments said 'bless the space communist!' and here we are... almost 10 years after seeing that video, it's now the name of one of my EPs. I've been on the internet for too long.
Anyway, fuck the US government, fuck billionaires, fuck politicians, fuck.
JULIUS [EP]
Released March 8, 2020.
Alternate title: You Been Liked Trumbo.
Spiritual successor to my last EP 'For the Boys' . Basically just a few songs I had been meaning to release forever, along with some HD remixes of super old songs. 'Friend' was actually the first song I ever wrote.
FROGHAUS
Released September 2, 2019.
The happiest depression album ever!
These lyrics are among the saddest and most worrisome lyrics I've ever written, but I tried to counteract that by writing the happiest sounding melodies I've ever written. Yes, the lyrics involve excessive suicidal ideation but you can't tell under the heavy upbeat drums and triumphant synths.
If you're one of those people who actually read the lyrics, don't worry too much about me, I've just been going through a tough time for the past 25 years. It'll probably get better at some point, right? lol
My previous album, Frog God Lives, was a deep rumination on spirituality, finding meaning in oneself, Hindu/Buddhist philosophy, etc. This album, on the other hand, has wholeheartedly embraced the fact that life has no inherent meaning and everything is absurd and bleak and pointless. There is literally no purpose to anything. This world is an evil, soulless place and we are all doomed as a species. The world sucks. Do drugs until you die.
FROG GOD LIVES!
Released September 15, 2017.
This album represents the suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end.
Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real.
Wandering in deserted places there are found many traces and tracks from which we deduce the movements of heroes and gods and so we weave history. Yet were our vision to become a little clearer we might discover that all these tracks are merely made by ourselves during our own earlier wanderings.
In order to escape from this prison, one must learn not to come to an arrangement with its indisputable comforts.
For when delusion is gone and the truth is realized by means of inquiry into self-nature, when the mind is at peace and the heart leaps to the supreme truth, when all the disturbing thought-waves in the mind have subsided and there is unbroken flow of peace and the heart is filled with the bliss of the absolute, when thus the truth has been seen in the heart, then this very world becomes an abode of bliss.
Rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind, beaten helpless by neurotic thought, like the relentless fury of the pounding waves in the infinite ocean of samsara.