Punk's origins are commonly traced to a mid-'70s revolt against the self-indulgent excesses then dominating rock, excesses most vividly symbolized by the era's grandiose prog-rock concept albums. Three decades afterward the T4 Project arrived with a comparably extravagant creation, one whose scale recalls the star-studded theatrical works that Hawkwind's Robert Calvert once devoted to experimental aviators and Norse voyagers. Bearing the plainly descriptive title Story-Based Concept Album, the project fuses the narrative conceits of The Who Sell Out with those of Green Day's American Idiot. At its center stands guitarist and producer Shannon Saint Ryan, earlier known for fronting the little-documented hardcore band Meet the Virus under the moniker T4. (Virologically, T4 denotes a bacteriophage that invades and destroys damaging microbes such as E. coli; the liner notes of Story-Based Concept Album, however, imply that Saint Ryan misconstrues the organism as an attacker of helpful rather than harmful cells.) Saint Ryan supplied the music and production while Jason Cruz of Strung Out wrote the lyrics and performed the principal vocals. The resulting rock opera follows two teenage punks whose romance unfolds amid a brutal, authoritarian world, its storyline punctuated by mock advertisements skewering elements of the former military-industrial complex. Three years of sessions assembled an ensemble spanning thirty years and two continents of punk lineage: Trotsky of Subhumans and Spike T. Smith of the Damned on drums; Jay Bentley of Bad Religion, Tony Barber of Buzzcocks, and Mike Carter of Glass & Ashes on bass; Paul Roessler of .45 Grave on keyboards; Fletcher Dragge of Pennywise, Greg Hetson of Circle Jerks, Peter DiStefano of Porno for Pyros, and Armand Tambouris of From Satellite on guitar; plus Naked Aggression's Kirsten Patches handling the female leads, supported by a thirty-seven-voice choir. Story-Based Concept Album was tracked in 2006 and first circulated solely as a digital download from the band's site before receiving its formal release in 2008.
