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extremely extrem e
March 2011 [T77] decibelmagazine.com
cover story
death The story of perseverance
upfront 10 news Extreme cinema
24 inquisition Space cases
14 grinding it out Monkey business
26 murder
15 brewtal truth Pales, in comparison 16 cry now, cry later Innit to winnit 18 studio report:
origin
Estranged bedfellows 20 volture Wasted and wanted 22 abysmal dawn Channel surfing
construct No tattooed millionaires
28 the famine No vice, all virtue 30 cauldron Bubble trouble 32 ulcerate The fear keeps them there 34 diesto Fucked up in the streets
reviews
features
77 lead review On Darker Handcraft, Trap Them pull nothing but mallets out of the hat
36 call & response:
78 album reviews Records that are all beast mode, all the time, including Owen Hart, Neuraxis, Imbroglio, Primate and Hate 94 sub:culture South-ofheaven’s Gate
anal cunt
Straight talk 38 mogwai Post- secrets 40 q & a: kirk
windstein
Addicted to sludge
48 the decibel
hall of fame The Jesus Lizard threw great Goat on stage and wax
96 south pole
dispatch
Thanks for the memories
44 special feature:
orchestral metal Digging deep in a very different kind of pit
cover photo by frank white
Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright© 2011 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights issn 1557-2137 | usps 023142 reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.
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extremely extreme
March 2011 [T77]
Pu bli s her
Ed itor -In-Chief
managing Editor
Ar t Di rector
Se nior Ed itor
a dozen pages to our worldfrom the editor exclusive oral history of Chuck Schuldiner’s legendary Death, I won’t belabor the point of just how important Chuck’s music was to the development of the entire death metal scene. But I will say that words can barely express how vital records like Spiritual Healing and (especially) Human were in my journey to becoming an extreme metal obsessive. Longtime Decibel contributor and Death cover story author Chris Dick wasn’t at a loss for words, however. Despite having nearly 10,000 words to work with while assembling his exhaustive oral history, there were still a number of choice interview cuts left on the butcher’s table due to space and clarity issues. So, rather than let these stories remain born dead to this world, we present to you, dear readers, the following regurgitated guts: Frederick “Rick Rozz” DeLillo: I showed up the first day of high school with corpsepaint on. Spikes, the whole get-up, man. For real. We all wore corpsepaint back then. Not the white stuff, though. Just the black around the eyes. Hellhammer and Slayer did it. I remember I was asked by the principal not to wear the raccoon make-up again. ’84, I think it was. Scott Carlson: Chuck wiped a booger on his wall and then stuck a penny on it. It stayed there forever. He did that right when we got there to impress us with something really gross. The penny was still on the wall when we left. Borivoj Krgin: Chuck requested that Roadrunner [Records] include a clause in his contract that I was not to be given any advance tapes of Symbolic prior to its release. Eric Greif: We were touring the world for Human, and some of the European dates were a few weeks behind Bill [Andrews] and Terry [Butler]’s tour with Massacre. We found anti-Chuck graffiti courtesy of the Massacre dudes in more than one backstage room over there. James Murphy: I had little time to prepare for Spiritual Healing. When they’d ask, “Hey, James, you got a riff for that?” I’d just look at them and say, “Uh, yeah!” Of course I didn’t. So, I just made up riffs as I went along. No one knows that I was going fishing for riffs. Scott Carlson: We did end up working with Chuck at a Cadillac dealership [washing cars], and Chuck once ran over a poor mechanic’s leg trying to back a Caddy limo out of a stall! Luckily, the guy suffered no serious damage! Ah, good times.
—albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief
Albert Mudrian
albert@redflagmedia.com
Andrew Bonazelli
andrew@redflagmedia.com
Jamie Leary
jamie@redflagmedia.com
Patty Moran
patty@redflagmedia.com
Chuck BB, Mark Rudolph, Paul Romano
des ig ner
Bruno Guerreiro
prod u ction
Lucas Hardison Albert Mudrian
albert@redflagmedia.com
215.625.9850 x103
Since we’ve already devoted
Contributing Writers
alex@redflagmedia.com
co ntr ibutin g ar tis ts
adv ertising
just words
Alex Mulcahy
un der to nes section
Drew Juergens
Ma rke ting Di rector
Kevin Juliff
drew@decibelmagazine.com kevin@decibelmagazine.com
Online Dec iblog ed itor
Andrew Bonazelli
soc ia l med ia p romotio ns
Chris Dick, Kevin Juliff
andrew@decibelmagazine.com
Anthony Bartkewicz Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Shawn Bosler Liz Brenner Brent Burton Richard Christy John Darnielle Jerry A. Deathburger Chris Dick Jeanne Fury Ula Gehret Nick Green Joe Gross James Hoare Jonathan Horsley Cosmo Lee Frank Lemke Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Kirk Miller Greg Moffitt Etan Rosenbloom Scott Seward Kevin Sharp Rod Smith Zach Smith Leah Sottile Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel Jeff Wagner Greg Whalen Catherine Yates Co ntr ib utin g ph otogr aphers
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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1550-6614) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright© 2011 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PR INT ED IN U SA
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fanbase *
nions meet the miima gined) (real and
blog, Metalcakes: http://metalcakes. blogspot.com/. The woman who runs it, Kathy, knows her shit: all the recipes are delicious as hell, and she has great taste in bands, too. She’s made recipes for everybody from Priest to Black Tusk, and they all rule. You guys should do a feature on her someday—it’s one of the best metal blogs out there! My favorite is the Bathory recipe, “Baptized in Fire and Frosting.”
Reader of the
Month
John Humphrey Denver, CO
What record do you credit with opening the door for you to extreme metal? I was sort of late to the extreme metal game. But I picked up Meshuggah’s Destroy Erase Improve and Opeth’s My Arms Your Hearse my junior year of high school, and finally took my seat at the smorgasbord of Swedish death. A couple years later, I picked up Decibel #2, with the Reign in Blood Hall of Fame, a record I had (shamefully) never heard before then. It was a total life-changer. Now I have a Slayer tattoo because of you guys!
6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
What are the best and worst Decibel covers ever? From an art direction standpoint, I love the Refused, Slayer (“American Psycho” cover, #58) and Napalm Death covers. Last year’s High on Fire and Danzig covers were silly but fun. And even though I’m a huge Star Wars dork, the Tauntaun-meets-Queen Amidala Dimmu Borgir cover makes me laugh every time I see it. That one’s some Level 12 black metal nerdery right there. I’d love to see an Eyehategod or Weedeater cover story someday. Awesome bands, and totally weird sense of humor, too. You bake a lot of cupcakes. How can you tell that they’re metal cupcakes? I take no credit for my creations. I actually get all the recipes from this awesome metal baking
You consider yourself “an unabashed Swedophile.” What’s your favorite band from today’s Swedish metal scene? Dude, tough call. I think the metal and hardcore scene in Umeå, a smaller town in the north country, is amazing: I love Meshuggah, Refused and Cult of Luna. My recent favorites have been the traditional doom bands— Witchcraft, Graveyard, Ghost. If you ask me, the future of Swedish metal is gonna be found in the ’70s-worship stuff coming out now. My girlfriend and I are going to Metal Town in Goteborg this summer, and I’m psyched to see Watain and At the Gates on their home turf. Of course, I could always go with my clutch and say jävla ABBA. I love that band, man. You can’t spell “Sabbath” without “ABBA!” Fucking Magnets: How do they work? I asked the science teachers at my school about it, and they all gave me a very thorough explanation of the physics involved. Although one of them used a badass analogy about ninjas and samurai as opposing forces. All I know is, if it’s got anything to do with the last Metallica album, count me out.
Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novel Black Metal, Vol. 1. For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com
d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 7
web gems presents:
s s e f o k c u n S s Symphonie insane In which we recount the most nth and inspired posts of the mo from our comrades in blog METALSUCKS READERS CHOOSE IHSAHN’S AFTER AS THE BEST ALBUM OF 2010
R.I.P. BASIL, CANINUS, 2001-2011 You know from our Cutest Kitties in Metal spread and For Those About to Squawk blog series that Decibel = pet lovers. So, it was a major bummer to learn on MS that Basil, co-front-dog of deathgrind pack Caninus (who once shared a split with Squawk columnist Waldo’s Hatebeak) has passed away. Basil, a 10-year-old pit bull, was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor and put to sleep. You might assume that Philly’s not a dog-loving city given our NFL team’s current quarterback, but our black hearts go out to Most Precious Blood, the masterminds behind this awesome cult project.
For everyone who complains about the supposed homogeneity among metal magazines and blogs, here’s an interesting curveball. Following an impressive succession of yearend top 10 lists, MetalSucks asked their faithful readers to determine the best metal album of the year. The results were Gore/Bush tight (but not rigged), as Ihsahn’s After beat out Kvelertak’s self-titled debut by a mere three votes. Ihsahn’s record wasn’t even in our Top 40, incidentally. Use the margins of this feature to discuss, literally, amongst yourself.
Grand Magus
Hammer of the North
TAGS: BEST OF 2010, IHSAHN, KVELERTAK
Korpiklaani Tequila
TAGS: CANINUS, MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD
THE AUSTERITY PROGRAM’S JUSTIN FOLEY INTERVIEWS AQUARIUS RECORDS’ ALLAN HORROCKS AND ANDEE CONNORS ABOUT HOLIDAY SHOPPING AND THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
WE’RE LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AWAY FROM THE RELEASE OF NYC SUCKS!!!
TAGS: ALLAN HORROCKS, ANDEE CONNORS,
Just as we at Decibel love to spotlight kickass music from radical bands via our already notorious Flexi Series, MetalSucks cofounders Vince Neilstein and Axl Rosenberg are likewise tr00 believers in bringing the noise. Hence their free 27-track collaboration of the best extremity the Big Apple has to offer, NYC Sucks. Boasting names like Made Out of Babies, Tombs, East of the Wall, Castevet, Wetnurse, Krallice and the Austerity Program, we cosign vigorously. Oh, and don’t let the headline confuse you. By the time you read this, Sucks will be up for download on MS.
THE AUSTERITY PROGRAM
TAGS: NYC SUCKS
The holiday season is way over, but it might’ve gone a little easier if you read this hilarious, weirdbeard interview with SF staple Aquarius Records’ co-owners. Horrocks and Connors treat the always-amusing Justin Foley to their underthe-radar metal picks of the year (Realmbuilder, Murmuure), riff on ’80s Christian metal (Horrocks: “At least the Jesus people believe it and I don’t think a lot of the Satanic guys do. So, it adds another layer of sincerity that makes it more fucked up”) and reveal their ideal storeclearing jam (one-man quasi-rapper Fastest).
Visit www.metalsucks.net • 8 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
compiled by Andrew Bonazelli
Enforcer
Midnight Vice
Death
Lack of Comprehension Visit the official Decibel channel at Metal Injection http://www.metalinjection.tv/decibel
ARCHITECTS THE HERE AND NOW
CRADLE OF FILTH DARKLY, DARKLY, VENUS AVERSA
BELPHEGOR
CAULDRON
BLOOD MAGICK NECROMANCE
BURNING FORTUNE
HOUR OF 13
KING’S X
THE RITUALIST
NAPALM DEATH BOX SET
LIVE LOVE IN LONDON
news A
’s
Top
Underground 5 Metal Documentaries of All Time As cool as the inaugural Heavy Metal Film Festival sounds, don’t expect to see screenings of the following gems. Mostly because we don’t know where the hell you’d find these master tapes.
1
Hard ‘N’ Heavy Grindcore Special Video WHAT IS IT: Special issue of the mostly hair metal Hard ‘N’ Heavy Video Magazine from 1991. Features interviews with Dig Pearson, Napalm Death, Paradise Lost, Morbid Angel, Godflesh and Carcass. First and last appearance of Jennifer and Grob of Sonic Relief Promotions. YOUTUBE KEYWORDS: mick harris old interview OR paradise lost intie OR interview carcass digby # OF TIMES ALBERT HAS SEEN IT: 200, at least
2
Det Svarte Alvor (“The Black Seriousness”) WHAT IS IT: Black metal documentary produced by Norwegian television in 1994. Features early interviews with Garm from Ulver, Hellhammer from Mayhem, Ihsahn from Emperor, not to mention Immortal applying corpsepaint. Subtitled. YOUTUBE KEYWORDS: det svarte alvor 1/4 hq (broken into four parts) # OF TIMES ALBERT HAS SEEN IT: 100, at least
Theatre of Pain
Samuel Douek announces the first annual Heavy Metal Film Festival
G
et ready to throw some butter-flavored horns in the air. From March 31 to April 3, Los Angeles will host the first annual Heavy Metal Film Festival, conceived and organized by movie and metal buff Samuel Douek, and backed by Nuclear Blast Records and Decibel.
It was at a screening of Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey at the Sydney Film Festival in 2006 where Douek, who runs the Mexican Film Festival in Australia and America, first had the idea to feature great forays into metal cinema. “I’ve been watching a growth in metal films,” he explains. “After Headbanger’s Journey, we saw Until the Light Takes Us, then we saw Flight 666, then LEMMY. This day and age, every new metal release comes in a digipack with a bonus DVD, where we can see really cool footage. Many bands are touring and recording with cameras, so the amount of video material is huge! At the same time, documentaries are growing in popularity due to the ease of creating them. You can get a very good camera and a computer and make a film. The combination of all these things made me believe that a metal film festival could be a great success.” As of press time, there are no set-in-stone lineups, but Douek says, “We’ll have premieres and other popular [movies]. Whatever we screen, 1 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
if it’s not a premiere, it will be accompanied by the directors or have [additional footage]. We will do our best to screen unique and original material.” There’s an open call for submissions of full-length features, documentaries, shorts, makings-of and live concerts, but don’t think you’ll be subjected to amateur iPhone clips shot from the nosebleed seats. Competent editing and camera skills count, says Douek, who cites Meshuggah’s Alive, the Ian McFarland-directed concert film, as an example of an exceptional visual presentation. But most important, Douek is looking for movies that tell great stories. “Also, I think we metalheads want to see ourselves having a good time,” he adds. “I think some of the most memorable parts in metal films are when you see the audience going crazy. Last but not least, we want to hear great music. Banging and loud music at the cinema is a great feeling!” —Jeanne Fury
3
Thrash ’Til Death WHAT IS IT: Early ’90s Florida death metal scene documentary featuring Death, Obituary, Cynic and, um, Roadkill. Also includes lots of footage of Tampa’s legendary Ace’s Records. R.I.P. YOUTUBE KEYWORDS: thrash til death part one (broken into three parts) # OF TIMES ALBERT HAS SEEN IT: 5
4
666 at Calling Death—Impressions of Death Black Metal WHAT IS IT: Great interview footage from 1993 with members of Immortal, Cathedral, Blasphemy and Impaled Nazarene. Highlights include pained expressions on the faces of Euro clubbers who are subjected to death metal. And Glen Benton writing on a camera lens with a Sharpie. Subtitled. YOUTUBE KEYWORDS: 666 calling death (broken into 10 parts) # OF TIMES ALBERT HAS SEEN IT: 20
5
NRK1 Black Metal Documentary WHAT IS IT: Includes interviews with members of Darkthrone, Satyricon, Mayhem, Emperor and Dimmu Borgir. Originally broadcasted on Norwegian television in 2003. Subtitled. YOUTUBE KEYWORDS: nrk black metal (broken into four parts) # OF TIMES ALBERT HAS SEEN IT: 2
d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 1 1
news
now slaying Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records we spun the most when we weren’t explaining the difference between the American Slaughter and the Canadian Slaughter:
Metal
Muthas Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell
This Month's Mutha: Sally Witte Mutha of Municipal Waste, et al’s Dave Witte
Where do you live and what do you do?
Do you go see him play?
We live in Hazlet, NJ and moved into this house when Dave was nine months old. I’m a school bus driver.
Oh yes. We went to the Gramercy Theatre when they played here last year, and we had VIP seats and everything. It was very enjoyable.
How did Dave get into drumming?
He’s in so many bands. Has he always been such a hard worker?
That’s a unique story. When he was 11 years old, he wound up being sick for Christmas and got a disease called Guillain–Barré syndrome. It’s a virus that attacks the nerve endings of your fingers and feet, everything. He was in the hospital for three weeks and the doctors couldn’t do anything about it. He was out of school from Christmas vacation until a week before they were getting out. And he had to have occupational therapy three days a week. My brother Victor is a drummer, too, and he gave him a pad and sticks for occupational therapy, and he got the bug from that. Do you like what he does?
Oh yes, are you kidding? As much as I’m not a fan of that type of music, of course we are. And the music’s entertaining. [Laughs] He can really do anything he wants, but he’s very relaxed in what he’s doing and he’s very good. We’re very, very proud of him. 1 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Always. He used to have a corporate job and after he got home from a European tour with MeltBanana in 2001, he told us that he didn’t think he could it anymore. And it was my husband who told him, “You’re young enough, pursue your dream. Do what you want to do.” So, he left his job and has been doing this ever since. Anything else you’d like to add?
He’s a great cook. He loves it. He even has a burger named after him, the Witte burger. He invented it himself. It’s regular ground beef, but in the middle he puts cream cheese and grilled onions on top that were soaked in Sriracha and beer. If you ever get a chance to go on his food blog (davewitte.blogspot.com), you have to check it out. I also think he’s the best thing in the world. He told me not to say anything like that, but I think it’s true. —Shane Mehling
Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f Death, Human Death, The Sound of Perseverance Death, Spiritual Healing Death, Scream Bloody Gore Massacre, From Beyond ---------------------------------Andrew Bonazelli : m a n a g i n g e d i t o r Death, Leprosy Death, Individual Thought Patterns Death, Symbolic Mantas, Death by Metal demo Control Denied, The Fragile Art of Existence ---------------------------------Patty Moran : s e n i o r e d i t o r Electric Wizard, Black Masses Thorr-Axe, Roots of the Mountain John Coltrane, Olé Farflung, The Myth of Solid Ground The Cramps, Flamejob ---------------------------------Bruno Guerreiro : g r a p h i c d e s i g n e r Death, Human Rosetta, Wake/Lift Warhorse, As Heaven Turns to Ash Electric Wizard, Come My Fanatics… The Holy Mess, Benefit Sesh ---------------------------------Kevin Juliff : m a r k e t i n g d i r e c t o r Cough, Ritualistic Abuse Black Anvil, Triumvirate Cephalic Carnage, Misled by Certainty Decrepit Birth, Polarity The Contortionist, Exoplanet
guest slayer --------------------Dirk Verbeuren : soilwork
Triptykon, Eparistera Daimones Autechre, Oversteps Godflesh, Selfless Gojira, The Link Brutal Truth, Ill Neglect 7-inch
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ramblings
l a t rew
Btruth
guide to staying kvlt while drunk… and drunk while kvlt by Adem Tepedelen
itorials Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Ed From Brutal Truth Frontman Kevin Sharp Corporation Jigsore Quandary It’s really a game of patience. And I’m really no better than the kid I was waiting for Santa’s bounty all those years ago. I wake. I grind fulltilt. I collapse. I get up the next day and do it again. I do not sit well with the posturing and chess games mentioned last month. As I recall, I was just finishing the recording the Primate EP, crapping on about stones of steel. Of which, seem relegated to the scrapyard as of late. Good news: The record came out sounding about as good as anything I’ve been involved with—absolutely kick-ass on all points. The bad news: Devils and lawyers are circling the chum and deciding this capacity and the terminology of that point, all determining who has the rights to feed on the corpse we created. What started as a boys’ night out amongst friends has become a feast for suited swine I will never meet. A bullet on a PowerPoint quickly chased down with a handful of M&M’s in a conference room, which looks no more or less interesting than any other room in whatever chop shop. Essentially, it’s a punk record. Bill Kelliher sorted out a room and engineer. I put together some concepts and art. Evan Bartleson handled photos. Shayne Huff is a sober drummer who also happens to be a logistical genius. And I say this with the most heart: Dave Whitworth has
enough punk salt to float a battleship in one foot of water. But there is another animal in the picture, a non-glamorous tick in the music business, which is significantly buried in small print. If cocaine is rock ‘n’ roll good, then the legal profession is forced rehab. Buzz Osborne once told me one time he’d never sign anything he’d have to pay someone to read. I guess desperation creates dialog of selfsufficiency. I would love to live in that magic kingdom. But I’m not Buzz; I have to play the legal chess their profession creates to justify job pay and security. I’m not saying they are all devils. I have met a few that are warriors in the crime against rock. But as a profession, I do not understand them or the paper trails of bureaucratic politics they feed me at excessive rates. Did you know that Jesus likes to party? And that sharks’ eyes roll when they tear flesh? Waiting for legitimate answers is like looking down the subway tunnel. Not only is it a crappy way of spending your day, but that kind of negativity will eventually find a shotgun in your mouth. I wash it off my hands. I will occupy my mind. I will spit some venom. Do another gig, write another record. This record will come out. And there will be another day. Lord, thank you for hammering my stones back in shape. They sure do shine. A
What started as a boys’ night out amongst friends has become a feast for suited swine I will never meet.
1 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Love That Lager
T
here’s nothing worse than an elitist beer geek. The kind of guy (yeah, it’s almost always a dude) who is sure that his taste in ridiculously expensive, fussed-over brews is far superior to whatever it is you’re into. We, on the other hand, realize that not everyone has the same palate/taste when it comes liquid refreshment, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We may not share your enjoyment for, say, a frosty Busch Light, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get why you like it. In fact, the majority of beer drinkers in the U.S. (and probably worldwide) are simply looking for an experience that doesn’t go much beyond wanting to catch a buzz from a refreshing, easy-drinking barley pop. Thus the proliferation of pale lagers. Even in countries like Germany, England and Belgium, where some of the iconic brews of the world originated, most people reach for a pale lager of some description. But here’s the thing: This style doesn’t have to be lacking in character and interesting flavor, as many of the more popular American versions are. A well-made pale lager can be a sublime thing in the right hands. We rounded up some top Adem Tepedelen American brewers to drinks your give us the lowdown milkshake, on a beer style that has or your beer, perhaps been unfairly or whatever maligned else he can get his hands on.
i l l u s t r at i o n b y j . p. f l e x n e r
Is it any harder to make a good flavorful pale lager than, say, a pale ale?
Making a technically “clean” pale lager takes the same sound brewing techniques it takes to make a pale ale. Where the difference comes in is that lagers have a much more subtle, crisp and less fruity flavor profile than most pale ales, so any off flavors will come screaming through. Tony Magee (Lagunitas): Do bears go to mass on Sunday? Does the Pope defecate rurally? Uh, yes. Waaaaayy yes! Barnaby Struve (Three Floyds):
What, in your estimation, are the hallmarks of a quality pale lager? Magee: The palest of color, extra clean palate, a firm hop spine, a soft and malty thorax, and crisp finish. Oh, and it’s easy to slam ’em down, too. Garrett Oliver (Brooklyn): [It] should be very direct and clean, without lots of extraneous fruit or spicy flavors, unless these are derived from hops. Lagers can certainly be very hoppy, and Brooklyn Lager is dry-hopped.
Is it hard to sell pale lagers to craft beer drinkers?
I think it’s only now that consumers—especially craft beer enthusiasts—have become more sophisticated that people won’t reject a helles or pilsner out of hand. That said, you still hear some craft brewers speaking derisively about “yellow beer.” Well, some of my favorite beers are yellow, but they’re not boring. Todd Haug (Surly): We brew a helles called Surly Hell—all malt, 4.7% ABV, unfiltered—and we cannot make enough. True beer drinkers respect a well-made lager. Oliver:
What are some of your favorite pale American lagers (micro or macro) and why?
Surly Hell is the beer to go for. It’s an amazingly tasty beer that is an accurate reflection of the traditional helles style, and it’s named Hell. Haug: Full Sail Session Black [Lager]—loads of flavor in a lowABV clean lager, and it’s black. And, of course, Surly Hell Oliver: I like Victory’s Prima Pils; it’s very individualistic, but still manages to express itself as somewhat old-school. Like our Brooklyn Pilsner, it’s notably hoppier than most German pilsners these days. I’ve had some nice pints of Sierra Nevada’s Glissade. On the lighter side, but still pleasant, I like Full Sail’s Session Lager. Magee: Mine, Lagunitas Pils. Why? Because we make it, of course. The very best next-in-line is Victory Prima Pils, but that is only because we don’t make it! A Struve:
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ramblings
now cry later * cry by j. bennett illustration by bruno guerreiro
Christmas
Thunderstick with 12.25.10
Dear Diary,
Christmas infuriates me in a thousand different ways, but mostly because Mum gives my brother Lightning Rod all the best gifts. This year he got an iPhone and one of those ’lectronic readers wot let you get the Times paperless-like. She give me a lucha libre mask and a carton of ciggies again this year, which only proves that she has never understood me or my refined sense of aesthetics. After presents, I went to my room and listened to Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” over and over again on my old Hello Kitty 45 player. Then Dad busted in without knocking. Again. “Quit sulking,” he tells us. “It doesn’t become you.” What he means is: “You get free room and board here, innit? So, don’t act all pissy when your stocking comes up light.” Back when I was in Samson, I didn’t have to put up with this shite. I was king of the neighborhood in them days, lead drummer for one of the most popular NWOBHM bands in the land. We opened for Robin Fucking Trower at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, don’t forget. AND I WAS THE SECOND-EVER DRUMMER FOR IRON MAIDEN FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Lightning Rod used to follow me around like a wee puppy back then. He wouldn’t even be called Lightning Rod if it weren’t for me giving him the nickname as encouragement, like. He would be just plain old Clive Graham, assistant to the assistant of the vice president of the local council estate. But I’d still be Thunderstick, even though Bruce Dickinson won’t return my calls. Alas, I guess nobody gives a toss anymore. Not even me own Mum. Christmas supper is awkward, as usual. Mum’s half in the bag by 3 o’clock, and Dad’s well on his way. Meanwhile, Lightning Rod keeps looking things up on his iPhone just to annoy me. “According to Wikipedia, Blackpool is the fourth 1 6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
most densely populated district of England and Wales outside of London,” he informs us with a giant shit-eating grin. “Isn’t that where your old drum kit washed ashore after you tried to give it a proper Viking funeral in Troon?” When I fail to react, he starts downloading fart apps and working them relentlessly, occasionally chiming in with his own not-so-virtual contributions. Our idiot cousins are in stitches, of course, but he’s really starting to get on my tits. I spend the rest of the evening resisting the urge to throttle him into oblivion while all the aunts and uncles fall asleep in front of the telly. I picture my hands wrapping around his soft white throat, thumbs pressed firmly on the Adam’s apple, fingers squeezing the carotid artery like one of those grippers with the plastic handles that I used to nick from the gymnasium. His eyes bulge from their sockets as his face slowly turns purple. I can see his blood vessels and, like, capillaries starting to burst. Sputtering like the mental midget he is, he grasps at the air for help that
never comes. And then I punch his fucking card, once and for all. Free at last, it seems! Free at last! But mostly I just bide my time, watching the clock until that magic hour when I can go down the pub, have a pint or 12, and wear my new rhinestone mask in peace. Occasionally, some of the boys from Fist or Praying Mantis turn up and we have a laugh. Inevitably, someone will put Maiden on the jukebox and I’ll have to open that someone’s face up with a left cross. At which point I will be politely asked to leave. At which point I will probably tell everyone in the pub to fuck off. At which point I will be escorted out by Terry, the bouncer and my old mate from primary school. At which point I will stumble home, only to find Lightning Rod giggling like an idiot, probably watching that Shaker Weight video on his iPhone for the three hundredth time. Like I said, Christmas infuriates me in a thousand different ways. A
in the studio
*origin
studio report
origin title
TBA producer
Rob Rebeck
I
t’s Origin,” asserts founding member and guitarist Paul Ryan studio Chapman of the band’s new material. “It’s ludicrous speed death metal.” Recording It may sound like business as usual after four albums and 13 Release date years of forthright fretboard abuse for Topeka, KS quintet Origin, but Spring 2011 there are a few variables to consider. The next album, the one they’re label currently knuckling down on, will be the first outside of Relapse, whose Nuclear Blast aesthetic the band helped define—along with Nile and Suffocation—in the gore-soaked hearts of veteran deathsters. It’ll be the band’s first for Nuclear Blast; not to mention the first in a decade without vocalist James Lee, replaced by Mica “Maniac” Meneke, previously tour vocalist with young space age vocoder-enthusiasts the Faceless. “It just got to a point where we couldn’t make it work anymore,” says Ryan of Lee’s departure. “Was it amicable? No. Was it for the best for both of us? Yes. It was time for both of us to move on to new paths, and we both have.” At time of writing, Origin are cracking their knuckles over the fourth day of drum tracking (“John [Longstreth] is working the whole kit,” says Ryan proudly, “not just on the snare and kick drum; he’s really busy on the skins.”) in Kansas City’s Chapman Recording with Rob Rebeck, who handled the
band’s previous record—and unlikely Billboard entry—Antithesis. Mass appeal madness doesn’t really gel with writing songs that only guitar nerds want to take to bed with them, so it’s technical, but not to the point where it sounds like a transmission between futuristic cyborg infiltrators or some shit. “I see what works with our material in a live situation, and that’s what influences my ideas on what to write for the next album,” Ryan confirms. “I write what makes people move. It’s cool to be tech and have people stand there while you’re playing a million bpm and basically get a golf clap, or you can write a song with dynamics and song structure to get the crowd moving and going crazy. “So far,” he finishes, “I think it’s some of the best material I have written to date.” —James Hoare
studio short shots
Arch Enemy ready first new studio LP in four years Despite having two solid months at southern Sweden’s snow-covered Sweet Spot Studio, melodic death metal role models Arch Enemy made a point of honing their compositions well before they began tracking drums on December 1 of last year. “The album has been written all over the world—on our tours and at home in our studio,” singer Angela Gossow explains, even as guitarist Michael Amott and engineer/
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mixer Rickard Bengtsson finish tracking rhythm guitars for the yet-to-be-titled release. “Everybody brought something to the table. The
new album is a true band effort. No egos attached. The same goes for the recording process. Everybody is getting involved.” As for direction, the follow-up to 2007’s Rise of the Tyrant and the Swedish quintet’s ninth studio album (due via Century Media in the spring) finds them branching out and then some. Kinda. “It’s all gonna be reggae and hip-hop,” Gossow jokes. “But we are keeping the 666 bpm blast beats and the screaming! No, seriously—I believe it is Arch Enemy at its very best. It’s an extreme metal extravaganza.” —Rod Smith
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volture
Volture
Ryan Waste and friends party like it’s 1981
I
n many ways, the proliferation of digital technology has been a curse to the music world. It’s made music trading too easy, it’s made music recording too easy, it’s made selfreleasing too easy. The end result is a bazillion bands with no business putting something out. As archaic as the analog tape era may seem, there was a process whereby the cream rose to the top. Band records a demo, sends a few around, demo gets copied and passed around if it’s any good and, if there’s enough buzz about the band, it ends up at a label that signs the band and puts something out. ¶ Volture’s six-song Shocking Its Prey EP (Heavy Artillery) reminds us, in many ways of that era. Obviously the Richmond, VA-based band— which includes Municipal Waste guitarist Ryan Waste (who plays bass here), guitarists Nick Poulos and Dave Boyd, vocalist Brent Hubbard and drummer Barry Cover—has taken advantage of the conventions of the digital era, but there is an 2 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
aesthetic that reeks of NWOBHM circa 1981 or one of the early Metal Massacre compilations. The recording is rough, raw and real, sounding like a well-recorded, well, demo. “We were going for that, but it’s actually all we could afford,” says Waste of the self-funded recording. “We didn’t add any triggers to the drums, we didn’t do over a lot of takes. This came out how the band is trying to sound, and it’s a bonus if it sounds like that old stuff.” Waste has, in Municipal Waste interviews, voiced his love of obscure trad metal, so it’s not surprising that he’s following a similar path with Volture. Everything from the band name and proto-power metal iconography to Hubbard’s high-register vocals hark back to a much simpler time in metal. “These [bands] didn’t even know what they
were doing at the time,” says Waste of the old school. “All they had was, like, Sabbath and Deep Purple, and punk was coming out. So, they just kind of sped up that stuff, and I think it’s the perfect form of music. It’s got the raw energy and it’s not over-produced. It’s just a really cool time for music—like, ’78 to ’83.” Just because Waste is still actively involved in Municipal Waste, however, don’t think that Volture is something done on a lark, as a side project. “It’s way more than that to me,” he says. “It’s exciting for me, because it’s starting something from the ground up, and I can use what I’ve learned in the last 10 years with the Waste to put into this. So, I’m just trying to get it off the ground. I’m putting it as a full-time project.” —Adem Tepedelen
profile
* abysmal dawn
I
can think of no greater living hell on earth than having to record double rhythm guitar tracks on each side for a technical death metal band,” says Abysmal Dawn guitarist/vocalist Charles Elliott exasperatedly, discussing the ordeal of making his band’s third album. “I’m the only guitar player in the band, so I was recording all the rhythm guitar parts. We’re doing it old-school style, where you record two guitars per side. There was a point where I had to record the hardest song, ‘Pixilated Ignorance,’ maybe three or four times because of little problems we had, and I was dying, man. We were almost done at one point with all the rhythm tracks, me going from work straight to the recording studio every day for most of a month, and it was killing me. And then we found out half the shit got lost, and I was blowing a gasket. But I just got my shit together and just started chopping away at it. I think it turned out even better just from me playing them that many more times.” ¶ That it did. Boasting songwriting that deftly balances aggression and melody, bolstered by a monolithic mix from Erik Rutan (Cannibal Corpse, Hate Eternal, Goatwhore) 2 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Abysmal Dawn
Reprogrammed death metallers find life less complicated (but more technical) as a trio and driven by newfound band chemistry, Leveling the Plane of Existence is a massive improvement over 2008’s Programmed to Consume, the kind of breakthrough many knew the Los Angeles trio was capable of, but had yet to see. “We tried to step it up a notch in all aspects, and I think having Scott [Fuller, drummer] in the band now too helps a lot,” explains Elliott. “I wanted the drums to be a lot busier and the music to be more extreme. Then Scott came in and he had that similar vision for the drums, and he added a lot, as far as our sound goes. If the riff is technical but still catchy, we want the drums to complement and [have] interplay between all the instruments. We want to retain
some melody and some hooks, so it has more than just shock and awe value. We want to have more staying power than that.” Although the band fully intends to tour as a foursome again— original guitarist Jamie Boulanger left in 2008—Elliott says things are going so well with the three current core members, including bassist Mike Cosio, that he’s reluctant to add another permanent guitarist. “We just recorded as a three-piece. When I was going in to record, it just didn’t feel right to add anyone at the last minute. I’m just really happy with the chemistry between the three of us right now; we work really well together. Things seem to flow… the album just came together so quickly.” —Adrien Begrand
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inquisition
O
Black metal duo kills first, asks questions later
minous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm is one hell of an album title. But metal bands, particularly those a few guitar picks deep in the occult, Satanism and Near Eastern philosophy, have long been known to dream up byzantine album titles. Cases in point: Blut Aus Nord’s Thematic Emanation of Archetypal Multiplicity, Deathspell Omega’s Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, Kataklysm’s The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation and Dimmu Borgir’s Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. As for what Washington-based black metallers Inquisition are trying to communicate on their fifth studio album, we’re not sure even Trey Azagthoth, Morbid Angel’s lead Necronomic scholar, would have a clue. Fortunate that Dagon, one of Inquisition’s two interstellar orators, is here to peel apart our feeble minds. ¶ “It means ‘obscure laws of the universe,’ and I couldn’t explain it better,” says Inquisition’s classicallytrained main croaker/riff purveyor. “The laws of thermodynamics and astrophysics in general are, to me, a parallel of heaven and hell, fire and ice. It’s a simple concept, but really, during mankind’s entire lifetime heavens and hells have been all around us. Space is the ultimate power ever known to man 2 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
and nature itself. The infinite universe is darkness—Satan in real living form.” Indeed, space is a frightening concept. No single word describes the vastness of the Great Darkness. But music—particularly black metal—approximates just fine. Inquisition’s Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm is an intrepid sojourn, where Dagon and drummer Incubus are macrocosmonaut guides through the starless night. Sounds like a load of shit, but Inquisition are one of the few bands to wrangle and refocus the imagination skyward through the power of riff. Untoward riffs. Riffs that never should be. Riffs that confuse the mind and stir the soul. “Well, I love the guitar first of all, much more than metal itself,” Dagon says. “I see a guitar as my second soul, and through it I speak. Therefore, what comes out of it must be important, must be good and meaningful, because
I have important things to say with it. I want to elevate people spiritually with my melodies and take them to realms where my mind is most of the time, where my thoughts are, and allow them to see what is there. It is heaven and hell entwined into one unit. My thoughts and inspiration are fueled by the universe, the cosmos, and the astral sea where the true ‘Satan’ exists.” Where Ominous Doctrines fits in Inquisition’s discography, Dagon’s quick to quell any and all speculation that it falls behind the imperial Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan. “Artistically and technically, it’s the best album Inquisition has done in every sense. The performance is tight, the production is clear and very organic, the riffs are rich and more on the attack than ever, the transitions are fluid, vicious and creative… while the vocals clearly mark the territory, letting everyone know these vocals are here to stay.” Word. —Chris Dick
andres castro
Inquisition
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murder construct
Murder Construct
T
SoCal deathgrinders release savage debut, nine years in the making
here are many descriptions you could level at Murder Construct, the five-headed SoCal deathgrind machine that ripped extreme music a few new assholes in late 2010 with their eponymous debut EP on Relapse. “Ferocious.” “Indomitable.” “Unsettling,” even. But what about the term “supergroup”? ¶ “I HATE IT!” seethes Murder Construct founder/guitarist/second vocalist Leon del Muerte, the vitriol palpable even through his emailed interview responses. “There’s no such thing as a death metal celebrity, so anyone who thinks that’s a valid term for their group is a little big for their britches.” ¶ Fair enough, but it’s tough not to be impressed with Murder Construct’s CV. Del Muerte has done time in Impaled, Destroyed in Seconds, Phobia, Exhumed and Intronaut, among others; drummer Danny Walker shared the latter three bands with him, in addition to stints with Uphill Battle, Bastard Noise and Jesu; vocalist Travis Ryan also fronts Cattle Decapitation; bassist Caleb Schneider anchors Bad Acid Trip, and guitarist Kevin Fetus founded Watch Me Burn and the Fetus Eaters. In the interest of avoiding Del Muerte’s wrath, we’ll 2 6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
just call Murder Construct a monstrous assembly of talent. Though you’d never guess by looking at the EP’s paltry 18-minute run time, Murder Construct’s IPO has been in the works for nearly a decade. “I started it up [in 2001] as a side band to alleviate some of the tension we’d been having in the Impaled rehearsal room,” says Del Muerte. “Back then I felt like I was tired of compromising with other bands and players. I wanted to take the reins and do MY own thing… the reason it was shelved for so long was, despite playing with an awful lot of really cool people, I was having a hard time really finding people on the same page.” The debut EP sounds like the page being ripped apart and rewritten as it goes. A base of relentless grind is constantly uprooted by death metal heft, left-field time signature changes and other eyebrowraising goodies—producer Bennett Erickson’s collection of Middle Eastern hand percussion even
makes a guest appearance in “End of an Error.” “Originally, [Murder Construct] was just about as simple and fast as possible, but now it’s moving on into some stranger and likely faster territory,” explains Del Muerte. “It’s all straight aggression and getting-it-off-the-chest kinda action, along with some odder meters and some kinda dark, discordant stuff mixed in. It’s totally the evil dickhead side of me getting its say-so in the matter.” What happens now that Murder Construct’s first chapter, nine years in the making, has finally closed? “Right now we’re writing for the LP with the entire lineup. It’s proving kinda difficult for me to let go of control,” admits Del Muerte, a self-proclaimed “music Nazi,” “but it appears to be working out. I still spend 50+ hours a week at work, and most of my free time with Destroyed in Seconds, the cat and the lady. For right now, not much has changed. I’d definitely welcome some of that shit!” —Etan Rosenbloom
m y s pa c e . c o m / s e a s o n o f m i s t
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profile
* the famine
T
he Famine are a technical death metal band on Solid State—wait! Don’t run away! These guys aren’t your average Christ-core crew. They do believe in the Big Guy, but their vocalist, Nick Nowell, has some pretty definite ideas about his group’s separation of church and (metallic) state. “Our drummer, Mark [Garza], is a deacon at his church, and a loving husband and father, but the guy owns like every Deicide record that came out up until 1996. There are people out there from the religious right that would say that he can’t be a righteous man because of that. I know him as an individual and I know that to not be the case... We’ve toured with bands that do the praying onstage, and that’s their business, but then I see them get offstage and they’re chainsmoking and chugging Jack and dropping F-bombs. I’m not judging, but I don’t want to put myself in that predicament. I think our personal feelings and our personal agenda need to be left at the door when we’re playing music.” ¶ Their latest release, The Architects of Guilt, proves that these guys are the real 2 8 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
The Famine Technical death metal band goes into the fire—for Jesus!
deal. From the thrash attack of “Ad Mortem” to the half-time Obituary plod of “To the Teeth,” the Famine would fit just as well on early ’90s Earache as Solid State. Not only that, the record does what all good metal should do: It questions authority and The Man, or, in this case, The Church. “Honestly, a lot of this album deals with criticism of organized religion. Even practicing Christians and people who are very strong in their faith should have some outstanding issues with things that are being done in the name of the Lord and Jesus Christ and the Church right now. There are some awful, heinous acts being perpetrated, and they’re being swept under the rug. I don’t think that makes me a heretic
to point those out,” Nowell insists. “The album is one big indictment. ‘The Crown and the Holy See’ is about oppression, from start to finish, and I think that the Catholic Church deals in that wholeheartedly from time to time, and I think it’s a sham, and I think it’s a shame to perpetrate that in the name of something so good and so holy.” The Dallas-based act has had to go through a lot just to get that message out, too. Between parting ways with original vocalist Kris McCaddon and losing their studio and all their equipment in a fire barely a month later, their 2010 was pretty rough. Still, Nowell keeps it positive going into the new year: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” —Jeff Treppel
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* cauldron
Cauldron
Canadian power-trio sets it all alight
A
sk Cauldron vocalist/bassist Jason Decay about the meaning behind the title of his band’s second and latest album, Burning Fortune, and he’ll give it to you straight: “Burning Fortune basically sums up the way we’re living our lives right now,” he says. “We’re putting everything into Cauldron. Everyone in the band has dedicated everything they own, every asset, to Cauldron. We’re potentially gambling with our future. There could be nothing to show for it in 10 years, or it could be cool.” ¶ If Lady Justice had a say in the matter, this Torontonian power trio would be headlining an arena somewhere right now, imploring all the local earth dogs and windmillers to scream for them, Long Beach. Equal parts melodic NWOBHM and early Mötley Crüe, Cauldron tore up Europe and the States (both tours were alongside their Swedish labelmates Enforcer, whom Decay sees as kindred spirits) in support of their killer 2009 full-length debut, Chained to the Nite, which is still in heavy rotation on Decibel’s personal 3 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
playlist. We caught ’em at the Black Castle in Inglewood that year, just up the street from where the Lakers used to play. “That show was crazy,” Decay recalls. “There were only about nine white dudes in the whole place—us, you and Enforcer—in a sea of brown headbangers. It was great.” With new drummer Chris Stephenson of Ottawa thrashers Aggressor in tow, Decay and guitarist Ian Chains have their hopes pinned on Burning Fortune, another righteous slab of prefix-free metal that features an instant fisthoister in opener “All or Nothing,” a cover of an obscure 1990 demo track by masked Detroit metal squad Halloween (“I Confess”), and a tribute to former Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered—and posthumously raped—by her psychotic exboyfriend/manager in 1980 (“Tears Have Come”). “It was originally
called ‘Tears o Cum,’ which was pretty greasy,” Decay concedes. “So, we changed the title to seem more like a KISS tune. But the Dorothy Stratten story is sorta relevant to us because she was a small-town Canadian girl who was killed in the year I was born.” Not that relevance has anything to do with Cauldron’s musical philosophy. “I know how I want Cauldron to sound,” Decay says, “The main thing[s] I listen to are records from ’84 to ’86, made by real bands that were very enthusiastic about playing music. But before we go through that filter, the emphasis is on songwriting. And I take songwriting influences from anybody from Journey to Carcass. You wonder what the future will bring for playing such an unpopular style of music, but then again, you don’t start playing this kind of music for financial gain.” —J. Bennett
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ulcerate
Ulcerate
Kiwi death merchants destroy ‘em all
U
lcerate should definitely contribute a few tracks when the time comes to pen the soundtrack to a manmade ice age, or some sort of similarly gnarly environmental collapse that’s left us with nothing but processed cheese and babies for food. What could be better than some evocatively bleak death metal while panic-buying canned goods and bottled water on the day when the chemical factory has turned the sky green and the river purple? New rager The Destroyers of All is a disorienting, desolate doozy, taking elements of weird post-metal to construct a sound that would be mother’s milk to ADHD Neurosis fans. ¶ “Yeah for sure, subconsciously at least,” says drummer Jamie Saint Merat. “We’re all big fans of those bands, so it’s just kind of crept into the sound here and there. It’s really of no interest to us to become another ‘post’ band, though, but there’s a definite tonality and aesthetic that we share with bands of that ilk. Most of the stuff that fills my playlist these days is not death metal, to be 3 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
honest, or at least pretty much nothing from the last decade. The kind of atmosphere I’m looking for, in metal at least, doesn’t really reside in modern death metal so much.” Seeing as atmosphere and dynamics had all but been presumed extinct in death metal as the mandatory slam muscle squeezed it all out, it is worthy of a Trey Azagthoth-style wow-ee (!) that the genre has been exhuming the horror factor that made it so exciting in the first place. Maybe being from New Zealand, a country whose metal scene is pretty compact to say the least (do check out Diocletian, Witchrist, Vassafor and Creeping), has helped Ulcerate shy from genre-herding, and Australian bands such as StarGazer, Portal and Impetuous Ritual lend credence to the notion that isolationism of that quarter of Planet Earth breeds creative individual-
ism. When Saint Merat’s holding down the kick-drums and guitars gnaw over the top of off-kilter rhythms, Ulcerate have shades of Blue Note, such is their unpredictable verve and imagination. But it’s all a question of challenging their audience, and isn’t that kinda a big part of death metal? “We definitely have the ethos that we’re writing music to be listened to again and again,” says Saint Merat, “and we have little to no interest in dumbing things down to entertain a mosh pit, so maybe a jazz reference makes sense there. As for the term ‘technical,’ goddamn I fucking hate it in relation to music! We kind of lost interest in the speed race after the first album, mainly because we took a step back and asked ourselves what is the music we want to listen to, as opposed to play—often the answer to that question is night and day.” —Jonathan Horsley
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Diesto
T
Portland crew gives thanks for noise rock and sludge metal
he “No Thanks” list in Diesto’s new album, High as the Sun, consists solely of the following quote: “Bands that are better at sucking up and music politics than playing original music.” Guitarist/vocalist Chris Dunn offers a metered chuckle of resignation when Decibel inquires as to whether these venomous words of wisdom are based on a specific situation. ¶ “Nah, it’s totally general, nothing specific about it. It’s just… man… people are so fucking concerned with what other people are doing and, really, I don’t know why I put that in there. Maybe I was just feeling it that day. Overall, people should focus on what they’re doing; don’t worry about other people’s shit.” ¶ Whether people worry or not, Dunn and Diesto have been doing their own shit for a decade, their irreverent attitude allowing the Portland-based band to transform themselves into a thunderously sludgy present-day guise, betraying their initial style, which was more akin to the AmRep bands that impressed upon Dunn when he was coming of age. ¶ “I grew up in Minneapolis and used to go down [to 3 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
shows], stand in front of Hammerhead and Cows, watch those dudes play and try and figure it out. I never thought I was a good guitarist or singer, but watching those bands just crush made me give it a shot.” Thus, Diesto were born as a noise rock power trio. The Outland EP and Doomtown 7 full-length were released during the mid-’00s. Those recordings were more in the vein of the Jesus Lizard and Cherubs as opposed to the grating, post-doom slow-burn of High as the Sun and predecessor Isle of Marauder. “I just needed more space,” exclaims Dunn, explaining the directional shift. “I was tired of carrying the weight of the band [on guitar] and trying to fill every space; I wanted to expand the sound. Around the time we were writing Isle of Marauder, only [drummer] Scott [Ulrich] and I were really showing up for practice. We’d throw 10-minute long pieces at each other
to check out with no one else around to scrutinize us. And when [guitarist] Mark [Bassett] joined—he’s a big prog and Rush fan—he was like, ‘Holy shit!’ and we were like, ‘Really?’ He came in and opened everything up even further with his perception and guitar parts, which are totally different than mine.” With a solid lineup bolstering the stylistic alteration, the now-quartet continues to explore expansive, yet still grating and dissonant, musical realms driven by psychedelic and desolate western motifs. “It’s pretty much that place right before you pass away,” says Dunn of the album’s title. “You’re in the desert, you’re isolated, you’re on your horse, then your face is next to the sun and you’re hot as shit because you’re elevating out of your body towards the sun. It’s all tied together in that moment before you die when you’re at the end of a good road and long run. Or something like that.” —Kevin Stewart-Panko
The second part reminds me of the worst song on the soundtrack to Kermit the Hitler—ya know, the one that sucks! [Abysmal Dawn, “In Service of Time”] track
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Cradle of Filth, “Forgive Me Father (I Have Sinned)” from: Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa [THE SKINNY] Mmmm… penis sandwich Sounds like… the owner of the Hallmark card shop. Yeeeesssssss [scary voice], the owner of the Hallmark card shop attending the Quentin Crisp lookalike contest with boyfriend Boy George eating a penis sandwich on rye!
CALL&RESPONSE
A.c. how many members of Anal Cunt does it take to
complete a semi-coherent Call and Response? Both of them, apparently. To acknowledge the release of their new LP, Fuckin’ A, we sent grindcore provocateurs Seth Putnam
track
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Bring Me the Horizon, “Don’t Go” from: There Is a Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let’s Keep It a Secret [THE SKINNY] Let’s just dive right in, shall we?
heavily spelling-corrected reactions follow:
track
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Cauldron, “All or Nothing” from: Burning Fortune [THE SKINNY] Decibel does not condone speaking ill of REO Speedwagon
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Was it supposed to be such low volume? Shit, what’s that guy’s name? Sounds like a swashbuckling wigger having a threesome with Kevin Cronin and Dennis DeYoung, while listening to a horsedriving sweet symphony by the Kermit (Toboggan) Mozart album Ode to Snarf Core Volume 3.
The beginning of the song had those pygmies’ “cluck-cluck” dyadic. That’s because the first part of the song was so boring I forgot about them. The second part reminds me of the worst song on the soundtrack to Kermit the Hitler—ya know, the one that sucks! The rest of the song was sung by a guy who name should be UN-Evil Chuck.
track
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Abysmal Dawn, “In Service of Time” from: Leveling the Playing Field [THE SKINNY] Google Search result for “Kermit the Hitler” sadly yielded zero matches
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Inquisition, “Astral Path to Supreme Majesties” from: Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm [THE SKINNY] OK, Blinky probably is gay Cast of transsexuals transforming into the characters of the arcade game Pac-Man over the gayest German pop song of the ’80s; you know, the one where the guy shoots up cum on the cover.
3 6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
This song was so uninteresting that all I could think of was that song by Poison from Germany that goes “in the dark-a-ness of your mind” plus “all that gold.”
Freddy Mercury, Bruce Vilanch, Harvey Fierstein, Peabo Bryson and 20 guys from the Ramrod writing the song together.
and Tim Morse seven songs, identified only by title. Their
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Primate, “Global Division” from: Draw Back a Stump EP [THE SKINNY] At this point I could just switch the tracks and responses and no one would even notice
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Night Bitch, “Sex and Magic” from: Sex and Magic [THE SKINNY] Did anyone actually make it this far?
Well, um, Richard Simmons, Andy Dick, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, Andrew Dice Clay and a Synagogal full of gay homosexual faggots all thrown into an oven after the fist meeting the dreaded homosexual beating wall! A
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I WA MOr aG new batch of
delive ecticism post-metal ecl by Rod Smith
3 8 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
ince 1997, when Young Team propelled Mogwai into the foreground of a thriving global post-rock scene, bands ranging from Explosions in the Sky to Pelican have come to bear the mark of their influence. Meanwhile, the Glaswegian quintet keeps moving on—but not without revisiting past sources of inspiration: Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will finds the band working with producer Paul Savage (Aerogramme, Arab Strap) for the first time since Young Team. Square Thatcher Death Party,” the song bears “It was completely different in every way,” guitarwitness to the band’s ongoing love affair with ist Stuart Braithwaite relates via a muddy GlasgowKrautrock, it’s as much exception as rule. From Minneapolis connection. “The way we write is very opener “White Noise” to closer “You’re Lionel different, now—the way we play, record. Also, Paul’s Richie,” the album abounds with the rich sonorigrown enormously as a producer. The only similarity was Paul himself—the feeling of working with an old ties and labyrinthine interludes that have long endeared the band as much to lovers of metal and friend. I think that working with Paul made us feel its affinities as to, say, soundtrack fiends or indie comfortable—but we’ve known him way longer now, rockers ready to step up from the Sword. so even that’s different.” “I wouldn’t say metal is the main kind of music I None of the changes in working methods have listen to,” says Braithwaite, “but I do spend quite a made Mogwai any less themselves: The band’s bit of time with it. I really like Torche. I really can’t seventh studio album and first for Sub Pop offers say how it factors into what we do, just because I a fuckload of their most beloved attributes: intrithink anything you like—any records you listen to— cate counterpoint, rhythmic complexity and their influence eventually finds its way into your attention to all things dynamic. Bringing ex-Long music on a subtle level. And then there’s more obviFin Killie frontman and multi-instrumentalist ous stuff. Sleep’s Dopesmoker had a huge effect on us.” Luke Sutherland back for his first guest spots in Eclecticism aside, Hardcore is easily the heaviyears—on violin and vocals—only enhances the est album to date from a band that saves most of feeling of career-length continuity. their gravity for shows. Even ’60s-tinged bouncer Still, the way Sutherland and the band interacted “San Pedro” drives like classic Queens of the reflects their new m.o. as much as anything. Given Stone Age and bristles with speed-picked vortices. their perfect execution, processing and mix placeBraithwaite, John Cummings and Barry Burns ment, his falsetto vocals on “Mexican Grand Prix” never skimp on guitar sound like the sort of thing distortion, while often that might have required days as not, bassist Dominic of experimentation. Aitchison dallies on “Originally, the only sludge’s margins. As for vocals on the song were comMartin Bulloch, if he puterized,” says Braithwaite. didn’t hit his drums damn “We sent Luke a demo and he hard, he’d be inaudible. tried different things. To be Speaking of which, honest, it was quite a simple what comes out of process just because what he S t u a r t B r a i t h wa i t e Mogwai’s recording seswas singing and how he was sions is one thing, if and singing it [fit] so well with how it’s interpreted live and loud—with the band’s the music. I’m not sure how much time he spent signature, full-frequency, full-bandwidth harmonic on the song, but by the time we got together, it nebulae and firestorms in full effect, quite another. sounded great. Luke was in the studio with us for Though only moderately crushing through earbuds, two days. He played on, like, six or seven songs, “Lionel Richie” is almost surely destined to eventuand did an amazing job. He’s terribly efficient.” ally send weaklings at shows running to less soniOne way both band and collaborators work difcally active locations while making the rest of us ferently now than in the past is by trading files feel like basset hounds in flying convertibles. As the and demos whenever recording time approaches, slow-burning majesty generator tumesces, guitars enabling fast exchange of ideas even under the approach volcanic intensity while Aitchison releases most demanding conditions. Given Mogwai’s tourthe remainder of his subterranean lava reserves. ing schedule since the release of ’08’s The Hawk “We’ve made the potential for live interpretaIs Howling, Hardcore might easily have taken way tion a studio priority in the past,” says Braithwaite, longer if not for the digital option. “but I think now our attitude is more ‘let’s just “Everything about the band is more efficient,” make a good record and see what happens.’ It’s Braithwaite continues. “Back when we were very really freed us up in a lot of ways. When I first young, we’d spend all this time preparing, inevitably heard the mixes for the live album, I was really bite off more than we could chew, and then panic. surprised. There was a lot of music I’d never heard We’re a lot more aware now of what needs to be done, before. Live music has to be physical. It can’t just and doing it is a much smoother process for us.” Thanks in part to “Mexican Grand Prix,” Hardcore be aural. I think that’s one reason live music hasn’t been affected that much by the recession. It’s an boasts more fast songs than any previous Mogwai album—as in nearly half. And though, like “George altogether different experience.” A
Sleep’s Dopesmoker had a huge effect on us.
d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 3 9
QAKirk Windstein with
Crowbar’s commander-in-chief sobers up and saws off a new slab of heavy interview by j. bennett 4 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
O
n the second floor of the W Hotel in New Orleans’ French Quarter, Kirk Windstein and his wife Kate are laughing about a Chelsea Handler standup routine in which the late-night comedienne cracked jokes about all the latent jizz stains one can expect to rub up against in your average hotel room. Crowbar’s gregarious mastermind is rocking a Melvins T-shirt and cargo shorts, exposing the impressive Thin Lizzy tattoo on his sturdy calf. Over the last 22 years, Windstein has risen to prominence through his membership in Crowbar and the supergroups Down and Kingdom of Sorrow, though it hasn’t always been the smoothest ride. On this particular morning in mid-November, the 45-year-old New Orleans native has been clean and sober for nearly four months after decades of drug and alcohol abuse. The trials and tribulations of his ongoing sobriety process are detailed in the lyrics for Sever the Wicked Hand, the first new Crowbar album in six years. Our man explains all:
Does Crowbar feel different after being away for so long—and coming back sober?
Yeah, it’s like a brand new everything. I still enjoy playing the songs we’ve been playing forever. We’re playing a few new ones live, but I don’t want too much to get out there before the record’s out. Literally by the time you get on the bus or back to the hotel, it’s already on YouTube. [Laughs] But yeah, it’s brand new, man. All this hard work and paying dues for decades looks like it’s finally paying off, figuratively and literally. The new album is highly anticipated, much more so than any previous Crowbar album. Do you think it just took some time for Crowbar to be fully appreciated, or is it that your profile has increased because of Down?
I think it’s both. I also think it also helps that younger bands like Hatebreed, like Chimaira, like Killswitch [Engage]—Mike D. from Killswitch did the artwork for the new record— are letting people know that they’re Crowbar fans. I call ’em younger bands ’cause I’m, like, 80. [Laughs] But that’s raising a bit of interest. Obviously, all the touring with Down over the last few years has helped, too. Maybe this is tooting my own horn a bit too much, but I think we were really before our time. To do what we were doing 20 years ago, people didn’t know what to make of any of it. Besides the Melvins, Carnivore, Cathedral and maybe Winter, I never heard anybody else tune that low. When we started the band, thrash was at its absolute peak. I mean, I played in a lot of thrash cover bands before I started rediscovering Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus and bands like that. When we first came out, we’d go onstage and say, “We’re Crowbar from New Orleans,” and then we wouldn’t stop playing. When a song would end, we’d let feedback roll, get a sip of beer or whatever, and then count off into the next song because people hated us.
We’d always be sandwiched between thrash bands, so people would be yelling at us, throwing shit at us, telling us to get off the stage, telling us we can’t play, we suck, whatever the hell it might be. So, that’s what I mean about being ahead of our time in some ways. There was never really a genre for Crowbar to fit into, and we never changed our sound. Now, we’ve progressed and matured, but we haven’t consciously changed our goals. It’s just that times have caught up to what we’re doing. That’s really what a lot of this interest is about. To hear what we were doing 20 years ago was odd, and there were very few bands in the world doing it. The Melvins were a huge influence on Crowbar early on, right?
Oh yeah. I mean, when I heard Gluey Porch Treatments and Ozma, I had ’em both on one disc and that was like my favorite thing. Carnivore was a big one, too, because when we do play fast,
What inspired the title of the new album? It obviously seems like it’s related to getting sober.
Yeah, totally. Even if I were drinking or doing blow, I’ve always written about these types of things, but this time I’m a lot closer to what I’ve been singing about forever, which is just getting rid of the negative things. So many people back in the day hand-wrote letters from all over the world, people who were gonna commit suicide, their wife got killed in a car wreck—the worst possible things—and they told me, “Your music and lyrics pulled me through this.” So, Sever the Wicked Hand is about getting rid of anything negative and moving forward. I mean, I’ve been up and down with depression and drug and alcohol abuse my whole life, really. And you can’t give up, you know? There is a light at the end of the tunnel. And Trouble said, “Run to the light.” There are so many living examples of guys in bands getting sober and finding religion, but you seem to have found a new confidence in yourself, which is more admirable in a lot of ways.
Well, I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I believe in God and Jesus. I was raised Catholic, but I don’t follow any religion. I have my own relationship with God. But for me, it really is about doing something for myself. I’m 45 years old and it’s an entire lifestyle change. I’m trying to eat right, and I actually gained a lot of weight immediately when I stopped drinking, which everybody does because you take to the food. For me, it was pizza—Domino’s every night, just ridiculous amounts of food. But I’ve finally got back into the groove of going to the gym. In fact, I’ve got my gym clothes in the car and I’m going straight to the gym after this. I’m at the point in my life where it’s time to change everything and see things differently. A
Even if I were drinking or doing blow, I’ve always written about these types of things, but this time I’m a lot closer to what I’ve been singing about forever, which is just getting rid of the negative things. it’s always hardcore-sounding, and we got that from Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front and Sick of It All, but Carnivore had the Sabbath doom stuff, the drop-tuned stuff and the hardcore. We’ve always said our sound is a hybrid of Carnivore and Melvins, and it really was. Those were my two favorite bands in the world at the time.
year ago, if I were here right now, I’d be bombed. It was weird just passing up the barrooms when I drove down here. A year ago, I would’ve gotten someone to drive me down here or I would’ve taken a cab, and I would’ve asked you if we could do the interview at a bar, even though it’s only noon. But I have a totally different attitude [4] d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 41
Obedience thru woodshedding Captain Kirk keeps it slow and low
now. I’m not gonna say I’m not gonna drink again, but I can tell you I’m not gonna get onstage drunk and I’m gonna conduct business as a professional. I’m up at 6:30, 7 o’clock on the Internet every day, doing emails, phone calls, for hours—promoting Down, Crowbar, Kingdom of Sorrow, myself, whatever. I’ve never had this kind of attitude before. I’ve never been a business guy, never thought it was important. But this is my life. This is my job. This is what I need to do. How long have you been sober now?
Since the beginning of August. I started going to meetings and stuff, but it wasn’t really for me. I’ve already been ousted from that in the sense that drinking O’Doul’s is not sober. There’s a tiny amount of alcohol in there, so if you pound ’em, you’re still getting it into your system. Kate even came with me as support. We went to meetings for the first month or so, and I really did get a lot out of it, but I know what I need to do. Some people are program people. They’ve got to go to a meeting everyday, sometimes twice a day, and they’ve got to speak with a sponsor. I’m not that kind of person. I know where my life was, and I know where my life is now. I’m not there yet, but I’ve made vast improvements in all aspects of my life, and that’s what important.
to write riffs—and this is weird because of how dark and heavy Crowbar sounds—at like 2 o’clock in the afternoon with the sun coming in the window. I’m totally sober, no TV, no nothing, and it just gives me this spiritual kind of feeling. It’s kinda weird. You’d think I’d like it when it’s raining and cold outside, but no. I could probably write the heaviest shit I could think of sitting on a beach. Down did a tour with the Melvins last year. Buzz is another guy who likes to get up early to write, and he’s been sober for years. What kind of conversations did you have with him?
We talked a lot about music, mostly, about Jethro Tull and all these bands we have in common. It was really amazing. I asked Buzz about how he’s managed to stay sober so long playing in a band and staying on the road, and he just said, “Keep busy.” And he’s a meeting guy. He goes to meetings. He said, “If I had one beer right now, I’d be on every drug in the place. I’d find everything they had and do it. I used to have an on/off switch, but it broke.” And I know what he’s talking about. I hadn’t played sober in Crowbar ever until these last seven or eight shows we just did. And it’s a totally different feeling, you know? Was Rex Brown’s pancreatitis a wakeup call?
Were all the new songs written sober?
Every riff I’ve ever written on guitar has been written sober. But sometimes if we’re jamming and Pepper’s got a riff or Phil’s got a riff, they’ll ask me to come up with something to go with it, and I’ll have been drinking. Now, I like to do my lyrics early in the morning and I like 4 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Yeah, it was because of how bad his health got. You realize you’re not immortal. The human body is fragile. That’s why I’m trying to work out, trying to eat right. I mean, I’m still a fat pile of shit, but I’m doing what I need to do and that’s what counts. But yeah, Rex was a big wakeup call. Also, I’m a big Thin Lizzy fanatic—I’ve
read a bunch of books about Phil Lynott; I’ve got a zillion DVDs; I’ve got this tattoo [shows Decibel the Thin Lizzy tattoo on his calf]. And even with Phil, by the time the dude tried to get his life together, his body was shot and he died. Same thing with Peter Steele: I heard he was sober for a good while before he died and had the right intentions in his life and really wanted to go forward. Jamey [Jasta] told me he was talking about doing some more Carnivore reunion things. But he had already done too much damage to his heart, doing coke and whatever. That was one of my big things, too—kicking cocaine. Because it ruled my life for a good number of years, to the point where I couldn’t leave my house without a bag of blow. And drinking only makes that worse.
Yeah, I wanted to do coke so bad that I would drink, because I couldn’t do one without the other. But quitting coke was easy. All you do is stop going to those bars or lose all your drug dealers’ numbers. That’s easy. Trying to live in New Orleans and not drink beer is impossible. They’re handing out shots here at the supermarket at like noon. Some old lady is in there like, “Try this wine, honey!” So, it’s a struggle, dude, but it is what it is. If you’re still on the straight and narrow by the time you write the next Crowbar album, where is the darkness gonna come from?
Oh, there’s darkness everyday. Life’s not easy. In this business, you don’t get paid if you’re not working, but just because you made a killer record doesn’t mean you’re making money. So, we’ve been having financial struggles, I’ll be honest. But there’s always something. Even if it’s not me personally, there’s always something or somebody, a friend or family member, who’s struggling with something. So, it’s never gonna go away, unfortunately. You just have to find peace within yourself. I just try every day to be the best father I can be, the best husband I can be, the best businessman I can be, the best musician I can be, and just go from there. A
d e c i b e l : j a n u a r y 2 0 11 : 4 3
The Ocean, Dimmu Borgir and Therion
are known for their symphonies of slickness, but weaving classical musicians into extreme metal requires perfect orchestration by Kevin Stewart-Panko
4 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
A long,
long time ago, we held the opinion that not only was Canadian cellist Ofra Harnoy a prodigious talent, but also a super-hot piece of ass, to put it respectfully. That was, however, until she opened her yap during an early ’90s television interview. After being asked an oh-so-penetrating question about her favorite types of music outside her classical bread-and-butter, little-Miss-Perfect-Pitch-and-Order-of-Canada went into a diatribe against our beloved heavy metal, claiming it was “nothing but noise” and how she didn’t “consider it real music.” We wondered: How could someone so musically skilled and adept be so musically ignorant and vacuous? How could someone barely 10 years our senior sound so much like our grandparents? And really, how tuneless a scourge is mainstream and hair metal—to which she was referring—in the grand scheme of things? We imagined her and grindcore in the same room. Laughter quickly followed. Ms. Harnoy may loathe to Vadmit it, but the parallels between metal and classical music are plenty: Shrapnel Records’ neo-classical shred; post-metal probably shares some undiscovered DNA strand with new age/modern classical composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich; Germany’s Rage have recorded and performed with orchestras as far back as 1996; good luck not stumbling across orchestrated counterpoint and baroque influences in the likes of Morbid Angel and Decrepit Birth, and symphonic elements in black metal. Christ, even “Sweet Child O’ Mine”’s main melody is basically a Mozart-inspired, stringskipping exercise. And, of course, there’s the Great Kat. Some of those pushing the boundaries of music traditionally based on electric guitars and pounding drums tap classical influences when writing. Some construct parts for classical/ orchestral instrumentation, duplicating them with technology’s help. The super-ambitious will eschew the samplers and synths, and voluntarily enter into the living nightmare of tracking down classical performers, organizing rehearsals, studio sessions and live shows with an additional 25-75 musicians, while attempting to prevent using their fists or forehead to bash a hole through the nearest sheet of drywall in frustration. “Listening to the final tracks and comparing them to MIDI tracks or samples are different worlds!” explains Robin Staps of Berlin’s the Ocean on why his band has consistently enlisted the services of classical musicians for a halfdecade. “That’s why you take the pain; even with the best string samplers, it’s not possible to create the feel, tension and expression of good players with good instruments, recorded in a good room with good microphones.”
Those metal bands that willingly embark upon the path of working with an orchestra deserve tribute; their patience deserves spotlight; their organizational skill demands reverence; their ambition warrants recognition. We’re not naïve enough to believe the majority of our readers are symphonic metal fans—especially if you’re North American, as you’ll see—but a shit-ton of work goes into pulling off a collaboration with an orchestra. Dudes are suffering for their art.
THE SPARK THAT LIT THE FLAME Unsurprisingly, initial motivations for wanting to shoehorn classical music into metal involve a songwriter’s desire to express his/her openmindedness beyond their record collection. Christofer Johnsson of Sweden’s Therion simply wanted to expand upon the dalliances of his favorite prog rock/metal bands. “It comes from the symphonic rock scene of the ’70s, particularly a Canadian band called Klaatu, whose album Hope was a great inspiration. Also, Uli Jon Roth’s Beyond the Astral Skies, the symphonic and orchestral parts of Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman, Manowar’s second album and Celtic Frost’s Into the Pandemonium. I’ve always liked that extra spice, classical and opera; that made me want more and think why no one else was doing more.” d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 4 5
Basically, what’s at work is the natural progression from being interested in, or a fan of, classical music, to being brave and/or crazy enough to fully explore it. “One of our longtime dreams was to use a real symphonic orchestra and choir,” explains Jere Luokkamäki of Finland’s Celesty. Describing this band as symphonic metal is like describing a ham sandwich as a ham sandwich. They finally got the opportunity to put their instruments of reproduction away and work with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra on their last album, Vendetta. “We use a lot of choir and symphonic sounds. We wanted these to be sung and played by professionals with full instrumentation.” It’s a massive step from thinking “I’m gonna…” to actually “doing.” Those of you in bands know how difficult it is to get five (sober) yokels in a room. Imagine doing so with 20! From the outside, it would seem that step one—finding and convincing musicians to contribute to a metal band’s delusions of grandeur—would be the biggest stumbling block; one that would basically nip everything in the bud before anyone got to the starting line. However, this appears to actually be the easiest part of the process. “People are always looking for work,” notes Therion’s Johnsson. “I had to start small and it just kept growing and growing until [2001’s] Secret of the Runes when I had a full-scale orchestra. If you know one classical musician, they know 10 others and you form connections. When we did [2004’s] Lemuria, we hired a full orchestra that usually performed Wagner. For them it wasn’t a big deal, because they do film and The Ocean session work all the time.” Drowned in sound Most recently, Therion worked with two choirs and a 28-member orchestra on newest album, Sitra Ahra. “Actually, everything started when I was talking with my girlfriend about who could arrange it and would know interested musicians,” explains Celesty’s Luokkamäki. “My girlfriend knew Kalevi Olli, a very famous Finnish opera singer, composer and arranger who’s won awards in Germany, Russia and Finland. Every [Finnish] classical musician knows him; they know he’s very professional and won’t start anything if there isn’t some sense to it.” “It’s difficult to find really good people and to motivate them if you can’t afford to pay them,” reasons Robin Staps. “We started out mainly [4]
with friends keen on trying something outside of their normal realms. Most of the time, classical players are professionally conditioned to play what they read. I have to say, though, that I usually mute the vocals when I record them, in order not to scare them away.” Also, like Dimmu Borgir’s Sven Atle “Silenoz” Kopperud says, “If this had been 15 years ago, it would have been a lot harder.” As Comrade Bennett’s November 2010 (#73) cover story explains, the band’s new album, Abrahadabra, has them collaborating with Norwegian composer Gaute Storaas, KORK (the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) and the Schola Cantorum Choir. Silenoz laughs: “In Norway, we’re seen as almost like a big band, so it helps. And the KORK Orchestra is known for playing different types of music.”
USELESS PIECES OF SHIT A host of challenges present themselves once participants are nailed down. Some of the roadblocks to orchestral metal nirvana pertain to the personalities, attitudes and opinions of those involved. So, the next time some holier-than-thou dandy starts on about the sophistication of classical performers/fans versus a gang of headbangers, earth dogs, hellrats and rivetheads, have ’em sit down with Christofer Johnsson for a chat. “The first time we did ‘Therion Goes Classical’ in Romania, there were three groups [of performers]. One group didn’t like it. They thought they were supposed to be playing the works of the masters, not this shit from some heavy metal band. Two, it wasn’t their cup of tea, but it was interesting and they’re being paid. Third, those who thought it really cool and were enthusiastic. And you’d really notice the difference in the playing. Like the tympani player; he was really a useless piece of shit. We had to complain [to the conductor] about him and he smartened up a bit. There was one guy in the choir when we recorded Lemuria and Sirius B—we’d be listening and something would sound fucked up or out of key or something. We realized he was singing terribly on purpose. We sent him home.” But, as they say, nothing worth doing is ever easy, and if the vast numbers of classical musicians who’ve contributed to Therion’s vision over the years is any indication, they’ve emerged relatively unscathed against musical prejudice and Romanian shitboxes attempting to hijack the proceedings. Others who have followed in their wake have been as lucky. “We knew that we had different musical styles and philosophies, but we still shared mutual respect for each other,” says Luokkamäki about working with the Tampere Philharmonic. “This is the only way collaboration is possible. You have to be able to appreciate what different musicians bring to the table. They were very supportive, many said how great they thought our songs were and no one was really intimidated.” “The feedback I’ve received [from classical musicians] has always been very positive,”
Dimmu Borgir Winter classics
reports Staps. “I don’t conceive my writing as ‘metal’ in the first place. I write music with heavy guitars and classical instruments; it’s all part of it, and these people don’t have any problems understanding that, usually.” But for all the talk of metal being “not real music” and “shit” that’s not “the work of the masters,” when the two styles meet, certain musical hallmarks challenge the rules and conventions each have adhered to their entire musical lives, sometimes making things difficult for everyone involved. “You write [metal] songs in different keys, and classical keys are very inconvenient for guitar,” explains Johnsson. “The keys we’re used to are either E or A minor, which aren’t good keys for singers or horn players. We’ll have odd keys, change keys in the middle of song, use different time signatures and tempos and play with a click track, [none of] which they’re used to. It’s most difficult for our bass player because the bass plays in a range with the cello or double bass and it’s hard because you tune the cello differently,
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and what’s convenient for the cello ends up being a lot of string jumping and inconvenience on the electric bass.” “There are always a few spots that will be in question,” says Staps. “That’s normal, so we check all the harmonies from a theoretical and acoustic perspective and modify the part, if needed. The most difficult thing is the groove, usually. Most classical players aren’t used to playing with a click. Playing a steady beat without gradual tempo changes strikes them as boring and unusual. They are used to more freedom in the interpretation of tempo.”
THE 150-PERSON LEAKAGE CONUNDRUM “Over the years, we’ve found you can record them all at once or record them in different sections,” says Johnsson, about recording and mixing a metal band alongside an umpteen-piece orchestra. While the trend towards home recording has exploded with computer software developments, there’s a snowball’s chance in Hades of being able to adequately capture an orchestra without
Celesty (top) and Therion orchestrate a symphonic metal coup
expect (venue size, sound system capabilities, organizing rehearsals…) to the sorts of things that would slip—and supposedly have slipped— the mind of even the most experienced promoters and stage managers. “We did The Miskolc Experience concert, and just feeding 150 people and having enough toilet facilities is hard enough. But where are we going to get 150 pairs of headphones? And not the regular kind, but those in-ear ones. You just can’t go to a store and say, ‘I need 150 pairs of in-ear earphones.’ Then, how do you plug in all this stuff? A lot of technical solutions have to be built from the start. The first rehearsals are nightmares. Sometimes we don’t even rehearse; we just talk about what’s going on and work on tech stuff. Also, in a place like Romania, no one challenges the conductor. We were rehearsing and the choir was really off and we couldn’t understand why. I asked one of the singers and he said they rehearsed at half-speed even though it had the tempo on the score. He knew that, but they still practiced it wrong. I asked him why and he was like, ‘Oh, you don’t understand.’ People don’t challenge the big boss, which is a cultural remnant of communism: not questioning.”
TERRITORIAL PISSINGS
We did The Miskolc Experience concert, and just feeding 150 people and having enough toilet facilities is hard enough. But where are we going to get 150 pairs of headphones? You just can’t go to a store and say, “I need 150 pairs of in-ear earphones.” — Christofer Johnsson, Therion going into an actual studio, sometimes with an extra console to mix the multitude of tracks so the result isn’t a disappointing sonic slop. “It’s best to do it section-by-section and mix it, but you need a lot of channels,” continues Johnsson. “But you have more control because if you record the whole orchestra at once, there’s a lot of leakage of instruments into other channels and tracks. Like horns—they penetrate everything. Plus, you’re paying these people by the hour and if a fucking flute player plays a little part out of key or wrong, then you have to re-record the whole thing.” “This time, the orchestra only got the sheet music and the click track,” explains Silenoz
about the process of completing Abrahadabra. “They didn’t even hear the drum and guitar tracks. They would practice on their own, then run through it as a full orchestra. The challenge is what you want to have come through in the mix; what you want the essence of the song to be. There’s quite a lot of stuff to consider, especially since we already have symphonic keyboards and because we really couldn’t compare it to any album we’ve done in the past.” Once adequately recorded, should you wish to create a flesh-and-blood live experience… well, Johnsson sums it up, laughing: “This is much worse than people think.” What follows are excruciating details about everything you might d e c i b e l : m a r c h 2 0 11 : 47
One thing that came to light in doing this piece is how, aside from Metallica’s S&M and KISS’s Kiss Symphony: Alive IV (the former’s management ignored our interview requests; we didn’t even bother with the latter), the idea of bands working alongside orchestras is one with more legs in Europe than North America, where such an undertaking is more of a novelty. Most Old World-ers believe this based in tradition, though Johnsson offers an attitude component as well. “First, my impression is that a lot of musicians in the States play music to be famous, whereas Europeans do it for the sake of the music itself. Maybe this has to do with the American mentality, that if you don’t [achieve success] you’ll be seen as a failure, and if you take chances as a musician, it’s harder to get that American dream. In Europe, it’s more grayscale; we’re fine saying, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t the best, but we did alright.’ The second point would be that this symphonic stuff is massive in Europe, but still a very underground phenomenon in America. Classical music is very much a European phenomenon. There are American composers, but they’re mostly contemporary, and if you speak of the 50 big masters, it’s not an Anglo-Saxon tradition at all. There are no Americans and maybe one or two from Britain.” “It’s weird,” surmises Staps. “You can’t really say that American bands are less willing to experiment or incorporate other influences into their music—but you’re right, I can’t think of any American band that pairs heavy music with classical instruments. Maybe it’s because most American kids get electric guitars for their seventh birthday, while Euro kiddies still get a cello or a trumpet.” A
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installment No.____in a series exploring landmark albums in the badass pantheon of extreme metal
story by nick green
Billy Club
A
the making of The Jesus Lizard’s Goat
legend was born the first time david yow disrobed on stage. In the run leading up to 1991’s Goat, “Tight N Shiny”—a corrosive instrumental from the band’s transitional LP Head—offered a regular excuse for Yow to take a much-needed smoke break and introduce the unsuspecting audience to the art of genital origami. On a typical evening, Yow would adjust his microphone stand down to crotch height, cup his balls with a Vulcan death grip for two minutes while the rest of the band raged on, and cap off the whole sordid exercise by diving into the audience with his pants down around his ankles. This is only the first of at least 1,000 reasons that the Jesus Lizard were the best live act of the 1990s. Critics didn’t know what to make of the Jesus Lizard. Yow, bassist David Wm. Sims and guitarist Duane Denison had spent time in industrial/hardcore hybrids Scratch Acid, Rapeman and Cargo Cult. Drummer Mac McNeilly—who joined the band in Chicago after the release of 1989’s Pure EP—previously played bass in the noise-oriented trio Phantom 309. Aside from Nick Cave’s notoriously unhinged pre-Bad Seeds combo the Birthday Party, the Jesus Lizard didn’t really have any musical antecedents. The Chicago quartet simply approached grinding noise with a Charles Mingus-esque rhythmic complexity the way they imagined their mutual heroes Led Zeppelin would play it. Over the course of a stunning five-year run from 1990-1994, the Jesus Lizard recorded four full-length albums with staccato titles (Head, Goat, Liar, Down) with producer—er, engineer—Steve Albini for the Chicago noise-rock label Touch & Go. Picking a favorite from the group is nigh impossible: Liar features some of the best songs (“Puss” and “Boilermaker”) the band ever recorded, while Down is an oft-overlooked and underrated gem. But we give the edge to dBHoF73 Goat, for what Decibel writer Joe Gross describes as “one of the best album openers ever” (“Then Comes Dudley”) and because—to hear the band tell it—it’s where the beguiling and confrontational sound of the Jesus Lizard truly started to coalesce. Ultimately, the enduring legacy of Goat is that it draws you into Goat Touch & go, 1991 a perverted world of prison rapists and phantom limbs and completely, utterly envelops you. An overflowing toilet spells catastroThe naked, noisy truth phe on “Mouthbreather.” Yow transforms nausea into an anthem with his muffled vocals on “Seasick” (“I can swim! I can’t swim!”) and taps a profane and hilarious Bukowski vein on “Lady Shoes.” Denison—who put together some equally depraved lyrics for “Karpis”—offers the album’s highlight with his vertiginous slide guitar licks on “Nub.” And the rhythm section of Sims and McNeilly add a palpable heartbeat to the brutalist poems with a series of surgically-precise cuts and incisions. As Denison reminded the U.K. weekly Melody Maker after the release of Goat, “Good music’s not supposed to be easy to digest—or easy to listen to.” Hear, hear. [4]
The Jesus Lizard,
No. 73
The Jesus Lizard goat
Goat features longer songs than its predecessor Head and seems to flow together seamlessly. What precipitated that shift?
time; if inspiration struck or we had to discuss band business, it wasn’t difficult to get everyone together. david wm . sims : On Head, we were still cleaning up a lot of the things that Duane Denison and I had written by ourselves—things we originally wrote for other projects or songs we demoed after David Yow and I moved to Chicago and Duane was still living in Austin. Goat was the first record that we all wrote together. Living together allowed us to get into some more involved arrangements and songwriting, which is why there’s a few longer songs like “Then Comes Dudley,” “Monkey Trick” and “Rodeo in Joliet.” It was actually the longest record I had made at the point—and it’s barely over 30 minutes. How much of an influence was jazz on the Jesus Lizard’s sound? mcneilly : I don’t know how direct an influence jazz was, but I’m sure that everything we had listened to prior to playing in the band was subconscious input. I think I ultimately relate to rock music a bit more. But I recognize that jazz is a style of music that is very difficult to play well, and that part of jazz definitely appeals to me. Many people have brought up the idea of “swing” with the Jesus Lizard and I’m happy for that—I’d much rather play in a band that is rhythmically swinging, as opposed to something nailed-down and dry. I think rock music can move and swing and transport you to another place. John Bonham knew how to do that, and that was certainly an influence on my playing.
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denison : There are touches of it here and there, like some of the guitar lines. Not avant jazz, though. Stuff like Miles Davis, maybe, or some more traditional bebop. I knew some jazzbos who liked the Jesus Lizard, and humorously enough, what they liked more than anything was the vocals. There’d be these rigidly structured guitar-bass-drums arrangements with these distorted, freely-floating vocals coming in and out of time and in and out of tune. The vocals went against the bar lines of the music, which is what, like, a saxophone would do. We used to joke that David Yow’s vocals were a beacon of hope to the flailing avant sax players of the world. yow : I do think that we all liked swing, stuff like Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Duane, David Sims and Mac are all such good players that when they do something that’s mildly complicated, it might come off as being jazzy. If you listen to Lust for Life and The Idiot, there was a lot of swing in that. You know, hip-shaking stuff. But I wouldn’t call what Iggy Pop was doing there “jazz,” and it’s probably nothing we thought about when we were making Goat. sims : At the time we were recording Goat, jazz wasn’t much of a factor. Some of us—particularly Duane Denison—got more interested in jazz later. There is a lot of rock music that swings, as well. All of the members of the Jesus Lizard came from punk rock, but a more pervasive influence was probably the big arena rock
Four lettermen
(l-r) David Yow, Duane Denison, Mac McNeilly, David Wm. Sims
Steve gullick
mac mcneilly : From Goat onward, it was a much more collaborative process. We trusted each other to come up with parts and felt good about each other’s playing. We were all living together, too, so we were very much a family, a gang, a tightknit bunch. I don’t know why the songs were longer—I think it was just a natural progression. The album isn’t very long, as I recall. There are some songs, like “Then Comes Dudley” and “Monkey Trick,” that are set at a slower tempo and take a little longer to unfold. What we aimed to do was remove extraneous bits and keep the songs as lean and concentrated as possible. We wanted it to be really hard-hitting and extreme. That was the kind of music we liked to listen to, and that’s what we wanted to play. duane denison : I think Goat is where we started to find our own voice. We had played together more—we probably had 100 or so shows under our belts by that time and we had burned off that layer of unoriginality that most groups have when they start out. We had run out of preconceived ideas and had to come up with new stuff. When we made Goat, all four of us lived together in a three-bedroom place in a not-very-nice neighborhood. We’d go on tour, where it would obviously be all four of us in a van together, and we’d come home and we’d still all be together. Whenever someone would come up with an idea, everyone else knew about it pretty quick. You could literally hear whatever anyone was doing in that apartment. david yow : None of us really knew Mac when we recorded Head. Spending more time with each other gave us a better feel for what we were all capable of, and we had gotten better at bouncing ideas back and forth. I really enjoyed spending all of that time with the guys, particularly Mac—we were much more serious about our drinking than Duane and David Sims were. Mac didn’t have a job, so he was always game to hang out on the couch and drink beer. It was also convenient that we were around each other all the
in Chicago, but I definitely strongly identified with living there. David Sims, Duane and I started this band in Texas, but the Jesus Lizard didn’t really gel until Mac joined—everything came together when we were living in Chicago. mcneilly : Chicago was a great place to be. We didn’t feel like there was a lot of backstabbing or gossiping or any of that poisonous stuff. Everybody was really supportive. We’d go out and see each other’s bands and hang out at a bar or club when we weren’t playing. There was this real sense of “We’re all doing something different, but we’re doing it together.” Plus, there was an endless supply of cheap apartments and equally inexpensive places you could rehearse. We had a room in an abandoned warehouse that we were practicing in—I think it used to belong to a tool and die manufacturing company. That’s
For years, I never used a pedal board–between David Yow and the audience, I couldn’t. We had to adopt a three-second rule, like in basketball, just to deal with stage-diving: Do your thing and get off the stage. You had exactly three seconds, or one of us was going to get you.
Dua n e Den is o n bands of the ’70s—Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. I think that’s where the “swing” on Goat comes from. That type of music is really the common ground for the four of us. I can think of numerous hardcore punk bands that I liked, but I’ve never heard anything from Mac that would indicate that he’s a fan of that type of music. I think Duane likes some Bad Brains records, but those two guys weren’t as interested in punk rock as David Yow and I were. The song “Rodeo in Joliet” makes some specific lyrical references to the Chicago suburbs. What was Chicago like before the post-Nirvana major label feeding frenzy of ’92-’95? yow : Chicago’s such a big place. In a town like Austin, it was easier to talk about the notion of a “scene.” The community was small enough that there was a good chance that almost everybody in it knew almost everyone else. I don’t really think of myself as [being] part of the “scene”
where we came up with most of the material for Head and Goat. sims : Duane Denison found our apartment through a classified ad in the [Chicago] Reader. The ad suggested that it was located in a neighborhood that was “popular with artists and musicians.” That might have been a stretch. But being in that neighborhood—a working class Puerto Rican community called Humboldt Park— provided a good, stable situation that we stayed in for years. It was a three-bedroom apartment, and David, Duane and I moved in there first. Mac moved up to Chicago shortly afterwards, and slept on the couch until David Yow moved out to live with his girlfriend. He was a really good sport about it. The rent was $575 a month for a three-bedroom place. The landlord would raise the rent by exactly $5 every year. By the time I moved out, 10 years later, the rent was only $625 a month. It was a big adjustment moving to a 450 square foot studio in New York. d e c i b e l : 5 1 : m a r c h 2 0 11
denison : We used to joke that Chicago was a world-class city where important things happened every day. We weren’t jaded. When you live in a place like that, there’s a sense of expectancy. In the ’90s, a lot of people felt that way about Chicago—you really could make something happen. If you did good work, it would get noticed. You felt like you had a chance. We were definitely happy to be part of the Chicago scene— our label was based there and it was our biggest town, in terms of drawing audiences. Maybe London became bigger after Goat. But we definitely benefited from being in Chicago, because a lot of attention came that way eventually.
Who is the song “Mouthbreather” about? denison : A “mouthbreather” is basically just a dummy or a dullard, right? It may or may not have been about Britt Walford and some of his slacker shenanigans. He was the drummer in Slint and was kind of a legendary fuck-up. yow : Britt Walford was housesitting for Steve Albini and came home really blotto one night and discovered that he had misplaced his keys. So, he broke down the front door to get in the house. And instead of fixing it, he just sort of boarded it up with two-by-fours. There was another instance where something went wrong with the plumbing, and water was pouring down through the ceiling tiles in the basement, where Steve had his studio and some expensive gear. The song suggests that it was toilet water, but I don’t remember if it was a clogged drain in the kitchen or an overflowing toilet in the bathroom that actually triggered it. sims : The song is written from Steve’s perspective and captures his shock at coming home to an overflowing toilet and a broken door with boards nailed onto the frame from the inside. I’m sure Britt has heard the song many times, and I’m positive that he knows it’s about him. I don’t know him all that well, and it has been many years now since I’ve seen him, but it actually doesn’t seem like something he’d mind all that much.
What’s the story behind the album cover? mcneilly : I recall that we were all happy with it. We weren’t in town a whole lot and we needed to make decisions fairly quickly—some of these decisions may have even been made while we were on tour. The art for Goat looks very different than Head. It’s simple and direct, a good parallel for the music on the record. yow : David Sims did the photography for it, with the help from a fellow named James Crump. I think David liked the idea of projecting slides onto a naked girl’s body and then taking photographs of that. I had laid out all of the artwork for Scratch Acid and done the covers for Pure and Head, so I had a little more experience with design. I remember that he had put the words “The Jesus Lizard” and “Goat” on top of the [4]
No. 73
the jesus lizard goat
art with a solid font. I think we got a proof back of the record cover and you couldn’t see through the letters, so [Touch & Go owner] Corey Rusk and I had to figure out how to make it look like an outline font. This was before computers made it so easy to fix that kind of stuff, so we had to fake it; if you look at the album cover closely, you can see that it’s not a real outline font. This was something that really came together at the last minute, which is also why Goat doesn’t include any lyrics. We left on tour without ever even seeing a final proof of the record cover. sims : I shot a number of photos of objects—stuff like nails and studio cables—on slide film and developed them. Then I shot some pictures of a model with the slides projected on her body. I had this idea that it was going to be a picture of a female figure, but I wanted it to be a little more abstract. The slides helped me do that. The model was a friend of a friend, who didn’t have any prior experience modeling. Part of the deal was that we would never reveal her identity. Her face is never shown in the images, so I think that kept things comfortably anonymous. A freelance photographer from Canada named James Crump helped me out with some of the technical details. At the time, he was an illegal alien living in Chicago. I think he loaned me some of the light meters and stands I needed to make it work. I hadn’t done a lot of photography at that point; I was kind of faking my way through it.
I found [the Mouse on Bomb image] in a book that I still have about World War II aircraft. It’s a Luftwaffe squadron insignia. Everybody thought it was a striking design and we figured that the Luftwaffe wasn’t going to come and sue us.
Dav id Wm. Sims was available in the studio. Goat is pretty barebones; it’s nothing “producerly.” Playing live was always much more about the visual performance than being a stickler for details on the sound and arrangements. Well, it was for me, at least. sims : We primarily wrote the songs with live performance in mind. That was such a big part of what we were doing. We toured so much that we tended to write the songs as we would play
What was the origin of the “Mouse on Bomb” mascot that was featured on the “Mouthbreather” 7-inch and some of the T-shirt designs of this era? sims :
I found that in a book that I still have about World War II aircraft. It’s a Luftwaffe squadron insignia. I was flipping through the book and it struck me. It’s kind of funny in a way. It’s very eye-catching. Everybody thought it was a striking design and we figured that the Luftwaffe wasn’t going to come and sue us. So, we put it on the shirt first, and ended up using it on the single, as well. It did become an iconic image for the band. It was, by far, our bestselling T-shirt design. People still use it if they’re looking to throw together a poster for a Jesus Lizard show—we even saw it pop up on a couple of posters for the dates we did in Europe in 2009.
them live and recorded them the same way we would play them in concert. The best Jesus Lizard records are the ones where we wrote the songs and went out and tested them on tour before recording them in the studio. That’s something that definitely happened with Goat. We had played most of those songs live many times and had really internalized them. mcneilly : The studio has such a controlled, calm atmosphere that you have to really look within yourself to find that fire. You have to know how the songs need to be in order to translate that on to tape to where you feel like you captured some of that energy. Unfortunately, when you’re working with a limited budget, you have to be OK with whatever take you pick—that will become the most widely-recognized version of that song that you’re going to get out there. During this era, we’d basically play live right up until we’d go to the studio. We’d literally come off a tour and go right in. With Goat, there were very few overdubs or multiple takes. We got all of these songs on the first or second take. There wasn’t a lot of doubt or indecision when it came to the songs that we were going to record, either. We had honed those songs through the live process and we knew what worked and what didn’t. denison : Those early Jesus Lizard albums were some very fast, low-budget recordings. We got in there, got set up, got the levels. We were usually laying tracks by the end of the first day—we were going for keepers. This was also pre-digital. We’d try to buy a limited number of reels of tape and try not to use more than that, because it cost money. We got used to working quickly and efficiently and just knocking songs out. That was more what the recordings were about than trying to recreate the live sound. Did you get the sense that there was a subset of fans that would show up just to see what wacky thing David Yow would do next? mcneilly : There was an unpredictability in what David Yow would do… within the predictability that he was going to be nutty. The question was really: how crazy is he going to be tonight? To his credit, none of what he did on stage was premeditated. He was always very much in the moment. I’m not sure what made one performance more crazy than another—there was a lot of randomness to it. I don’t know how to describe it in words, but there’s no one quite like David Yow. denison : People went to Black Flag shows to see Henry Rollins freak out. Same with the Cramps and Iggy Pop and the Birthday Party. David Yow was definitely in that tradition. Jesus Lizard shows were extremely chaotic in this era. For years, I Balls-out never used a pedal board— Live and lewd on 45 between David Yow and the audience, I couldn’t. We had to adopt a three-second rule, like in basketball, just
Around this time, the Jesus Lizard were accruing a reputation as a dangerous and ferocious live act. Were any considerations made towards channeling the intensity of the live act into the record, or was performing considered an extension of making records? yow : I think we were pretty aware of the differences between playing live and recording. We were into the idea of making a recording as good as possible and using whatever trickery
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Goat springs
to deal with stage-diving: Do your thing and get off the stage. Don’t hang out. Don’t wave to your friends. You had exactly three seconds, or one of us was going to get you. yow : People expected me to jump in the crowd, lose my clothes and be at least a couple of sheets to the wind. I don’t know how much of that was due to our fan base, or if it was from the media attention we had gotten. People did seem focused on my, ahem, antics. I always think of stage-diving as something that predated us. When Southern California punk rock was really taking off in the early ’80s, it was an essential part of that experience. Black Flag had us beat by at least a decade.
eternal Hellbent for leather, circa early ’90s
Steve gullick
All songwriting credits are attributed to “the Jesus Lizard.” Was the songwriting process a communal affair? mcneilly : It often started with Duane Denison or David Sims coming in with a melody or an idea. We were all involved with every song, very early on in any song’s process. David Yow would be there for a song’s gestation phase even before he had started to write lyrics. We would all tape songs on cassette players so we could evaluate our own parts and come up with ideas on our own time. It was a very democratic process, and we trusted that each other would come up with the right parts. yow : Always. We all had a say in how long our part went on, or how they would change. We’d all put our two cents in on everybody’s part, like: “Hey, that was really cool. You should do that two times.” David Sims or Duane would typically show up at practice with a riff or an idea or maybe even a drum beat. Mac would occasionally show up with something concrete. Then we would just stir things up and take it from there. Duane wrote the lyrics to “Karpis.” But 98 percent of the lyrics throughout were my doing. sims : Duane and I both spent a fair amount of time working by ourselves, in our own rooms. When we had something that we were interested in, we’d come out and show it to the other guys. We’d typically work on songs at our apartment or at our rehearsal space—or both. Sometimes we’d work on stuff with acoustic guitars in the apartment and then try it out with the amplifiers at the rehearsal space and work on it at performance volume. Early on, we rehearsed at the house that Corey and Lisa Rusk lived in. After that, we had a room in an industrial building that we shared with US Maple and some other bands.
denison : It didn’t matter to us who wrote the bulk of what. We were working really hard together. When we toured, we weren’t making much money and it was rough. It didn’t seem right that someone would go through that experience and not get a share of the album sales. So, we just made it a four-way thing. Everybody got the same cut. It was simple and easy. It worked then, and it works now. If you’re going to endure hardships together, you should share the bounty, as well—it’s as socialist as you can get.
What was it like recording at the Chicago Recording Company with Steve Albini? denison :
I always liked working at CRC—it was a great studio that was mainly used to record jingles. Steve could get deals so that it was discounted on evenings and weekends. We’d set up on a Friday evening, then come in on a Saturday morning and work all day Saturday and Sunday. The studio had nice rooms, great quality microphones and a great soundboard. It always seemed like a much nicer studio than we should have been in. But it was very affordable. It was right in the Loop in downtown Chicago—you’d go outside to take a break and you’d be surrounded by businesspeople. It wasn’t your typical sleazy rock and roll studio—it had more of a “plan your work, work your plan” vibe. mcneilly : Most of the stuff we did at Chicago Recording Company was very quick. We would order takeout from Boston Blackie’s or have d e c i b e l : 5 3 : m a r c h 2 0 11
food delivered and record straight through the night. It was like, “Are you ready? Let’s go!” We’d do a take and come back and listen to it. Then we’d go back and do another take, but the second one was rarely better than the first. There wasn’t a lot of wasted time. It was a very workmanlike approach to doing the songs. David Yow would do scratch vocals so we could always know where we were with the songs. It was cool to be able to look over Steve Albini’s shoulder and observe a little bit of his process, but my favorite times were always when we had gotten the tracks down and I got to sit around and watch David Yow redo his vocals. yow : Steve Albini was always interested in cool and novel recording techniques. He had these really long, slender microphones that were only a little bit wider than a pencil. He had one pointing directly up, attached to a mic stand. And he suspended another one from the ceiling directly above it. There was only 1/16 or 1/8 of an inch between the two. When we were tracking “Nub,” I would set the hanging mic in motion and it would create this weird phase-shifting effect as it would swing back and forth. There’s a part where I sing “You’re taking this extremely well” but it came out sounding like “we-eh-eh-elll.” That effect was basically supplied by the microphones. How did the Trio cover “Sunday You Need Love” from the “Mouthbreather” 7-inch come about, and was it originally intended to be on Goat? mcneilly : There was a curiosity factor with it. David Sims and Duane Denison both had some knowledge of Trio and thought that there was enough going on underneath the surface to merit further scrutiny. The Trio songs we did stuck to the original arrangements and didn’t alter too much. I don’t know what the Trio fixation was all about, but I was happy to go along with it because it seemed like a kooky idea. denison : We liked to do covers for singles, and that was just another one. No particular significance there—we just thought it was an amusing, odd, left-field choice. Trio had an EP that I had on cassette that I loved. I thought they had such simple, great songs. We had extra tape when we were finished recording Goat, so we elected to record Trio songs for b-sides. We never intended for this cover to be included on the album. yow : I suspect that it was Duane’s idea—he [4]
No. 73
the jesus lizard goat
Google search
Yow and his mouthbreathers cross it up
and David Sims both liked the Trio stuff more than I did. They also wanted to do “Da Da Da,” which I thought was a terrible idea, because I didn’t care for the band that much. They wanted to do a trio of Trio songs, which sounded great in theory, and was thankfully never put into action. sims : Most people who were aware of Trio at the time probably only knew their hit “Da Da Da,” which is not one of the more interesting songs on the album. We also did a cover of the Trio song “Anna” during the same recording session with Santiago Durango of Big Black on vocals, but I think we didn’t end up using it because David Yow wasn’t on it. Speaking of Santiago Durango, he has an uncredited cameo on “Monkey Trick.” There’s a scream at about the 1:06 mark. Everybody assumes that it’s David Yow, but it’s actually Santiago Durango. Do you have a favorite song on Goat? denison : “Then Comes Dudley” or “Monkey Trick.” One of those two—although I like “Nub,” too. It seems like there were a number of songs from Goat that remained popular. I never had a problem playing these songs for the rest of the band’s lifespan; we’d change things slightly, like adding extra licks or flourishes, just to keep things interesting for ourselves. yow : My favorite song we ever did was “Monkey Trick,” but I don’t think it ever got recorded the way it should. It would have been cool to spend a week on that song. “Monkey Trick” represented us better than any song—it had everything we did well wrapped up in one package and it spoke to what we were capable of. I love the really cool breakdown parts, where it’s just bass and drums. I was really proud of the lyrics, too. sims : If I had to pick one, it would probably be “Monkey Trick.” That may be my favorite Jesus Lizard song, period. I like the way it develops. I love Duane’s guitar playing on this song. It’s a tour
de force—he covers a lot of ground. It’s sort of a good illustration of everything we did really well: it’s loud and it’s heavy, but also dynamic. When we were doing the reunion shows in 2009, I broke out all of our CDs to refamiliarize myself with the songs and I got a little choked up listening to it. How was this record received upon its release? denison : It wasn’t a blockbuster, slam-dunk, smash hit. But this is the album that started opening doors and helped to give us an international profile. We did our first overseas tour right after Goat came out. It seems to be the record that people noticed. Personally, I think I like Liar the best, but I know a lot of people who consider Goat the go-to. It’s a pretty good little slice of what that part of the world sounded like back then. sims : As I recall, it was received pretty well by people who were probably predisposed to like that sort of thing. It got good reviews in the publications that would review Touch & Go releases. I don’t think it got any sort of mainstream attention—it didn’t get reviewed in Spin or Rolling Stone. We never really had a song that received radio airplay. I don’t think we did much press for any outlet bigger than Alternative Press. This wasn’t the focus, though. We tried to stay out on tour a lot, and we needed to regularly release records to be able to do that. mcneilly : The way it strikes me now is that there is some strong support for Goat as one of the landmark records of the ’90s. At the time Goat came out, the band was on an ascent. We were getting a lot of good press and a lot of college radio airplay. We’d hit a club two or three times, then we’d have to bump up to a larger venue next time we came through that town. We were getting paid more and starting to draw bigger crowds. There was this definite sense that there was something going on. I think people
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were quick to embrace the record when it came out, but it’s hard not to look back through the lens of how people respond to it today. In hindsight, is there anything you would change about this record? mcneilly : I think we believed in what we were doing and felt confident that other people would agree. We liked it ourselves, and felt that the record was strong. Of course, you could always pick apart anything. But sometimes there’s a virtue in being constrained by time and money—it forces you to shoot a bit higher. sims : Nobody’s ever really finished with an album—you kind of just reach a point where there’s a deadline to meet or you’ve already spent all of the allotted budget. If I had to do it all over again, I think there’s some things that I would’ve mixed differently. But there’s nothing I agonize over, nothing that particularly needs to be addressed. Side A still sounds pretty good to my ears. I could stand to hear a little more bass on the songs on Side B, but that’s something that went on a lot back then. All in all, I think it’s a pretty good-sounding record, particularly considering its budget and when it was made. yow : Back then, we were more focused on sequencing an album the way you would if it was on vinyl—with two distinct sides. One point that Steve Albini always used to make is that people generally have a favorite side of a record, so it’s not a bad strategy to load up one side with stronger material. I am most proud of the first five songs on Goat. I don’t dislike any of those other songs, but they weren’t as strong or ass-kicking. Something like “Rodeo in Joliet” or “South Mouth”—I don’t even remember how those go. Of course, you can’t expect everything you do to be indelible. I don’t think I’d change anything now, and I don’t think I would’ve wanted to back then—but that’s mainly due to my own laziness. A
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An Oral History of Chuck Schuldiner’s
Death by
chris dick
story to tell: Death Oral History Cast Scott Burns
Producer of Spiritual Healing, Human and Individual Thought Patterns, engineer of Leprosy.
Terry Butler
Death bassist 1987–90. Current bassist for Six Feet Under.
Scott Carlson
Death bassist 1985. Presently active in grindcore Hall of Famers Repulsion.
Richard Christy
Death drummer 1996–01. Current drummer for Charred Walls of the Damned and Howard Stern radio personality.
Kelly Conlon
Wynterborne.
Death bassist 1994–95. Current bassist for death metallers
Frederick “Rick Rozz” DeLillo
Death guitarist 1984–85, 1987–89. Current guitarist for death metallers M. Inc.
Steve DiGiorgio
There are leaders and followers.
Mostly followers. Chances are when teenagers Chuck Schuldiner, Frederick “Rick Rozz” DeLillo and Kam Lee formed Mantas in 1983, the terrible trio from Altamonte Springs, FL had absolutely no clue the journey they were about to embark on would forever change the heart and soul of heavy metal. At the time, there was no such thing as “death metal.” Not as we know it today. The heaviest bands of the day—Slayer, Venom, Bathory, Kreator, Hellhammer—sounded like Hell’s infernal army marching unopposed over God’s precious blue-green Earth. Widely reviled by all but the most curious longhair, the aforementioned acts hoofed along at speeds that defied physical limitations of the craft that first saw light in the late ’60s. The fastest and heaviest metal was a scourge unlike anything the world—particularly Europe and North America—had ever witnessed. But things were about to change for the worse. Fellow crypt kickers Possessed hurled the first dreadful volley in 1984’s Death Metal demo. Shortly thereafter, Mantas mutated into Death. []
Death bassist 1986, 1991, 1992–94. Current bassist for Charred Walls of the Damned and Soen.
Eric Greif
Former Death manager. Now oversees Perseverance Holdings Ltd, a corporation which controls the intellectual property rights of Death and Chuck Schuldiner.
Shannon Hamm
Death guitarist 1996-2001. Current guitarist for Beyond Unknown and working on as-yet-unnamed project with Deicide’s Steve Asheim.
Gene Hoglan
Death drummer 1993–95. Current drummer for Fear Factory and Dethklok.
Bobby Koelble
Death guitarist 1995. A professor of jazz guitar at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and Rollins College in Winter Park, FL.
Borivoj Krgin
Underground tape-trader and journalist from the original death metal scene. Also runs news site Blabbermouth.net.
Andy LaRocque
Death guitarist 1993. Current guitarist for King Diamond. Also runs Sonic Train Studios in Varberg, Sweden.
Paul Masvidal
Death guitarist 1990–92. Current guitarist/vocalist for progressive metal Hall of Famers Cynic.
Jim Morris
Co-owner of Morrisound Recording Studios. Producer/ engineer of Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance.
James Murphy
Death guitarist 1989–90. Music producer for SafeHouse Production in Orlando, FL.
Matt Olivo
Death guitarist 1985. Presently active in grindcore Hall of Famers Repulsion.
Chris Reifert
Death drummer 1986–87. Current drummer for death metal Hall of Famers Autopsy.
Sean Reinert
Death drummer 1990–92. Current drummer for progressive metal Hall of Famers Cynic.
Jane & Malcolm Schuldiner
Parents of Chuck Schuldiner
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Fueled by the most nefarious of fires, Death would unleash countless demos and rehearsals upon hapless heavy metallers from 1984 through 1986. Although the original Death lineup of Schuldiner, DeLillo and Lee lasted only briefly, it was axemaster Schuldiner who took Death as his own. In doing so, he unwittingly became the Father of Death Metal. Even though Possessed had issued their Seven Churches and Beyond the Gates albums before Death’s unparalleled debut, Scream Bloody Gore, saw light of day in 1987, the Californians failed to gain momentum. Death were positioned to be the heaviest, nastiest and deadliest band ever. Schuldiner, however, didn’t want to be limited by PMRC-approved superlatives. Nor did he want to be strapped down musically. When Leprosy landed in 1988, it was obvious to fans of “Zombie Ritual,” “Baptized in Blood” and “Evil Dead” that Death had lofty ambitions. With a cleaner production, a new lineup (DeLillo returned) and refined songwriting, Leprosy was the future sound of death metal before it even had a future. Leprosy’s successor, 1990’s stupendous Spiritual Healing, was even more polished. “Living Monstrosity” and the evangelically negative title track had meatier hooks than Cannibal Corpse’s Butchered at Birth cover art. Again, Death was improving. By far, Death’s greatest leap was from Spiritual Healing to 1991’s Human album. With members of Cynic and Sadus as his backing band, Schuldiner had creative license to transform death metal into whatever shapes and sounds he wanted. The edges were blurring. The (cosmic) seas expanding. It was at this point where Death emerged as death metal’s single most creative force. Subsequent albums Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance would employ a host of talented, far-sighted musicians excelling at Chuck’s behest. The result was often startling and groundbreaking. Death metal was never meant to be tuneful or progressive. Not in its original ghastly guise. But Schuldiner, unhindered by the unfathomable, thick barriers placed in front of him, made it so. Now a leader, the Father of Death Metal had, for all intents and purposes, remodeled death metal. Even though we lost Chuck Schuldiner on December 13, 2001 at the age of 34, this exclusive Decibel oral history is proof that Death will never die.
Armies of the dead Hail their leader’s head Hungry for the flesh While it’s warm and fresh
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I had known Chuck, Kam and Rick from way back in 1983. They were in Mantas. I had bought the Mantas demo from him at Ruby’s. Jane Schuldiner: The sound—and especially the lyrics—were no surprise at all in those first songs. All the pain and grief he felt at the loss of Frank [Chuck’s 16-year-old brother], and it was very cathartic at the time for Chuck to let his feelings out in his music. DeLillo: There was no scene when we first started. Even in Tampa. No death metal scene at all. You had Possessed in California. By the time Leprosy came out in ’88, the scene was still pretty small. We barely had any gigs. Most of the gigs were in Europe. The death metal scene reigned supreme in Europe at that time. Borivoj Krgin: I first made contact with Chuck after seeing a flyer for a Mantas demo in August 1984 at a Raven/Metallica/Anthrax show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. The flyer was placed there by John and Mark from the Guillotine fanzine. They were friends of Chuck’s from the Orlando area and they were visiting New York at the time. The flyer caught my Future
MANTAS & SCREAM BLOODY GORE (1984–87) jane schuldiner: Chuck was nine years old when he and I passed a yard sale and saw his first guitar. We stopped to look and I bought it for him, not realizing it needed amplifiers for sound. We went shopping and bought them that same day and that started Chuck on his career. I still have that guitar. Frederick “Rick Rozz” DeLillo: I met Chuck in late ’82 at a backyard party. We had a lot in common. We liked music and we both played guitar. We exchanged numbers. He called me the following week. Basically, we ended up dropping out of high school together two or three weeks later. We ended up in Chuck’s garage at his parents’ house seven days a week. We’d write music and tape trade. We worked with his friends, Mark [Conrad] and John [Gross] from Guillotine magazine. That was pretty much all we did. Our first official show in ’84 was with Nasty Savage at Ruby’s Pub in Tampa. We did a couple of gigs before that at ShowBiz Pizza, which is now Chuck E. Cheese. It was like a teen night. We played there as a threepiece without a bass player.
Star Child Crepuscular correspondence that caught Krgin’s eye
Terry Butler:
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Tools of the
tape trade Chuck ejects Rozz and Lee from Mantas/Death
eye because it made reference to Mantas being the “heaviest” or the “sickest” band around, and at the time I was on a quest to find the most extreme groups I could get my hands on, so this sounded like it was right up my alley. After I wrote Chuck a letter and included $5 or whatever they were selling their tape for, he wrote me back and he included a personal note with the cassette. I liked what I heard and we quickly because friends and kept in touch from that point on. DeLillo: Chuck definitely came up with Death. Mantas was taken from the guitar player from Venom. Everybody knows that. We split up for a week. The original drummer for the band, who also did a lot of the vocals, did the original Death logo. The one with the spider, the 666 and the skull. Chuck basically cleaned it up. Jane Schuldiner: I never liked it [the band name Death], of course. But with the history of Frank it made sense. Remember, the lyrics of one his first songs, “Open Coffin,” was his memory of his brother. Krgin: Death was really just a continuation of Mantas—same band, but with a new name. The differences in the band’s music were simply down
to the fact that Chuck was developing as a songwriter and he was getting better and better both as a guitar player and vocalist. Of course, Kam handled most of the lead vocals in the early days, but I think it was inevitable that Chuck would eventually just take over the vocals completely. DeLillo: We ended up parting ways around ‘85. It wasn’t because there were musical differences. Chuck had an opportunity to get a bass player, but a guitar player came along with it. Chuck made his choice. I was cool with it. Scott Carlson: He had recently lost Rick Rozz. Matt [Olivo] and I were looking for the other half of the band. At first we hooked up Sean McDonald, who played in an early incarnation of Genocide, with the gig. In the interim, I started talking to Chuck; I realized it would work out for Matt and I. So, we kind of screwed Sean out of the gig and drove down to Orlando ourselves. We were driven young men. That was it. We were in Flint, MI, but we didn’t realize how boring Orlando would be. Any place had to be better than Flint. Well, not really. Matt Olivo: Chuck was working at Del Taco. That might’ve been the last job he ever had in his life. From that point, he became very focused on his career in Death. Anyway, we get in the car and go to Del Taco to meet Chuck. We walk into Del Taco and Chuck is there. His hair, which is barely shoulder length, is tucked into a little Del
Taco cap. He’s sitting there in this Del Taco uniform. It was hilarious. We thought really highly of Chuck’s music. He thought he was the next Tom Warrior. Here he is at Del Taco. We started rehearsing the next day. Carlson: We knew the material when we got there. I have a bootleg record somewhere that has rehearsals from the garage. We did “Beyond the Unholy Grave,” “Evil Dead,” “Legion of Doom,” “Rigor Mortis,” “Curse of the Priest,” “Corpsegrinder,” “Baptized in Blood,” “Infernal Death,” “Archangel,” “Into Crypts of Rays” and a couple of heavy metal songs. Olivo: I remember talking to Chuck about the band. I told him, “I don’t think we can stay anymore.” He said, “Just go! Just go, man!” I felt, at the time, it was harsh. I felt we were good friends. I learned it wasn’t really personal. I may be presumptuous, but I think with Chuck if it’s not really working out he’d rather burn it down and start all over again. Whatever the cost. Jane Schuldiner: His father and I knew that, as much as we were concerned, Chuck had to do what was best for his music. And that included going to where he felt the opportunities were. So, we supported him in his choices. We were never disappointed in Chuck, and were fortunate that he was so focused on his music that it kept him more or less grounded. Malcolm Schuldiner: I was OK with Chuck relocating to San Francisco. He asked me for my help in getting there. He said that I always knew that I would go to college, but he didn’t want to go in that direction. He wanted to start a band. Krgin: I don’t think Chuck ever really wanted to be in Slaughter. [After a failed stint in San Francisco with ex-D.R.I. drummer Eric Brecht, Chuck relocated to Canada to join Slaughter.] I think Chuck joined Slaughter out of frustration and desperation. He was tired of not being able to find musicians to play with in Florida, and he was disappointed by what he encountered in San Francisco after his first trip there. I spoke to him one day while he was in Toronto and everything was fine. Then I called back a couple of days later and he was gone. Olivo: Can you imagine Chuck in someone else’s band? I think he felt very lost [in Slaughter]. He did call us and ask if he could come and jam with us after things got weird with Slaughter. I think he decided to go back to Florida first to think it through. But he knew what he was doing. He wanted to refocus on Death. Chris Reifert: [When Chuck returned to San Francisco a second time] I had responded to a local radio ad that was about to be placed by Chuck. He was looking for band members, and a friend of mine who worked at the station told me about it and I couldn’t believe it. I called right away, of course, and told him I liked Bathory, Artillery, Sodom and so on. He asked if I liked Slayer and Possessed also, which of course I did. [4]
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He had just recorded the Mutila- to being on the first album. tion demo. They didn’t really have a bass player. Reifert: One day we were talking on the phone Once we, the Sadus guys, started hanging out, and he told me he wanted to stay in Florida. I we’d look for some out-of-the-way place to drink was really disappointed to hear that, of course. beer. It was a big gang. When it came to band He said that I could come back to Florida and practice, they played in Chris’s bedroom at Chris’s remain in the band, but I wasn’t too keen on mom and dad’s house. Sadus also practiced in a the thought of moving. Between the humid, hot bedroom. But it was Darren [Travis]’s house. He Florida weather and the fact that my friends and lived with his dad. He was cool with us hang- family are all over here, I decided to stay and we ing there and making noise. Chris had a really officially parted ways. nice white Neil Peart Tama drum set. Jon [Allen] DeLillo: This is around Christmas ’87. I was done was really envious of it, so he said, “Set it up in with Massacre. It was like beating a dead horse. I our practice room and I’ll let you use our room mean, Chris wasn’t coming to Florida. He was 16 for your band rehearsal.” Sadus would have a or 17. I remember I told Chuck. “Hey, I got a bass rehearsal, using Chris’s Tama set, for 45 minutes, player and a drummer if you want to get together and then Chuck and Chris would rehearse for 45 and jam.” Terry [Butler], Bill [Andrews] and myself minutes. Since my bass rig was in the same room, had learned a few of the Scream songs. We ended up I’d down tune my bass and jam with Death. I was rehearsing at Padlock Mini-Storage in Tampa. part of the setup. It didn’t feel like I was in the band. Malcolm Schuldiner: Chuck was very excited to actually see the fruits of his labor. He was so passionate about his music. He was thrilled to actually be able to hold a professionally produced CD in his hands. Krgin: I thought Scream Bloody Gore was a great first album, and it was the perfect representation of Death at that stage of the band’s career—it was brutally heavy and raw, but it had a certain musicality to it as well, which was missing from bands like, say, Venom and Bathory and Hellhammer. Reifert: John [Hand, Scream Bloody Gore’s credited rhythm guitarist] was a friend of ours. Basically what happened was, the album was recorded and Chuck had gone back to Florida again, and we were talking about having John play guitar in the band. We decided to just assume it would work out to the point of having his photo put on the back of the album cover. We did specifically tell Combat to state that Chuck played all the Butler: When we first practiced, it guitars and bass, but they ignored Yard birds of prey Schuldiner and was amazing. That was my inaugurathe instructions and it ended up Reifert, circa ’86 tion into the Death lineup. Our first looking like John actually played show was three weeks later at Milon the album. Unfortunately, he didn’t work out in the band, and by the time we waukee Metalfest. We did a tour right after for figured that out, it was too late. Scream Bloody Gore. Eric Greif: I first met Charles Schuldiner at DiGiorgio: They thought about asking me to play bass on Scream Bloody Gore. I remember hearing it. I Milwaukee Metalfest in the summer of 1987. I asked, “OK, who played bass?” Chuck was like, “I was a jack-of-all-trades producer, manager and had to do it. It sucked!” I said to Chuck, “Dude, I concert promoter, and he was playing his first would’ve done it! I’ve been practicing your songs Scream Bloody Gore dates with the Leprosy lineup. for weeks!” Chuck backhanded Chris and said, “I We had a cool talk, but I didn’t get to know him told you we should’ve asked him!” I was that close properly for another half year, when I promoted Steve DiGiorgio:
Death’s Milwaukee date when they were playing some Midwestern shows with Chicago demo band Sindrome.
Pull the plug Let me pass away Pull the plug Don’t wanna live this way LEPROSY & SPIRITUAL HEALING (1988–90) Shortly after the Scream Bloody Gore tour, we started writing Leprosy. Everyone was contributing. Rick, Bill and Chuck hammered out Leprosy. I was at the beginning stages of my confidence as a writer. We were a total band. It was cool to be part of the scene. There weren’t many death metal bands touring. Maybe Possessed and Dark Angel. You could feel something was happening at the time. Greif: I thought Chuck was friendly and a bit charismatic, but he was also 20 years old and had that “I can do anything” forward-looking invincibility about him that I thought I had myself. We took one long ride in my Dodge Daytona and the next thing I knew, I was his manager. Scott Burns: I first met Chuck while working with Dan Johnson on Leprosy. I was the engineer. He was a cool guy. You could definitely tell he wanted to be taken seriously as a musician while still being brutal. But that’s true of the American scene. The musicians wanted to be known as competent. That’s what separated death metal from punk rock. Butler: We had already done some shows, but when we went to record, I was the last one. I had four hours to record the bass. Here I am—I had been playing bass for about a year at that point—and everyone is looking at me. Chuck, Bill, Rick, [producer] Dan Johnson and [engineer] Scott Burns. I had an anxiety attack. I froze up. I had already laid the bass down for four songs. They only used one of my bass tracks. So, I asked Chuck, “I need you to finish the bass. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I feel like I’m going to die!” But remember I was a finger player. Dan wanted me to play with a pick. So, using a pick and having people staring at me while I tracked contributed to my anxiety. DeLillo: We co-wrote pretty much everything. There were a lot of songs that he wrote by himself, but I had a lot of riffs on Scream Bloody Gore and even on Spiritual Healing. I wasn’t even [4]
Butler:
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Leprosy messiahs
Rozz’s ‘stache bangs out the sophomore sensation
credited for those riffs. No disrespect. I signed all that stuff away. A riff’s a riff. What am I going to do? Cry about it? Nah. Butler: When we got the first copies of Leprosy, it was like, “Wow!” My picture was on the back. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like, “I made it!” [Laughs] But it was really cool seeing my name in the songwriting credits for Spiritual Healing. DeLillo: I never had a beef with Chuck. We had one little skirmish on stage at a small club called the Electric Banana. The stage was about a foot tall. People were less than a foot from you. He said, “Did you give me a dirty look? I don’t have any room over here.” I replied, “Why would I give you a dirty look? I don’t have any room over here!” Jane Schuldiner: Like the other parents, I was very concerned [about Chuck going to Europe]. Before he left for touring, I investigated the places he was going, and there was unrest in some of them. Though it made no difference to his enthusiasm to go, knowing that his band were aware of all that meant they could be prepared. Chuck loved Europe and his fans there. DeLillo: We wrote Leprosy and recorded it with Dan Johnson, who had worked with the first Savatage and Dungeons Are Calling. We toured that and did the Ultimate Revenge II tour. That was with Dark Angel. We did the Ultimate Revenge II video. That was when musical differences came to light. Chuck was into the tech stuff. I remember he started asking me if I practiced. I didn’t. It didn’t make sense to me. Tech stuff in death metal?! So, we parted ways. We remained friends. Butler: The incident that pushed Chuck over the edge was when Death was supposed to play three or four shows up the East Coast. Rick didn’t want to do it. That was the straw that broke the
camel’s back. Chuck asked me to terminate Rick, after a few missed rehearsals, and I think I did so immediately on the phone. But that was merely a convenient excuse. The real reasons Chuck said quite a few times had to do with whammy bars, mustaches and hair brush use, and I don’t really need to elaborate on that. What I will say is that Rick took it like a gentleman and did not create any problems as a result of the sacking, and Chuck was relieved that there was no conflict. Krgin: As far as Chuck’s songwriting and vocal performance were concerned, Leprosy was absolutely the logical successor to Scream Bloody Gore. The only issue I had with it was the fact that I found Bill Andrews’ drumming too boring, lifeless and completely devoid of any imagination—he was basically nothing more than a timekeeper. I made my opinion very clear to Chuck, but he Greif:
strongly disagreed and defended Bill, which I found baffling at the time; at one point he even said to me that Bill’s performance on Leprosy was on par with Dave Lombardo’s playing on Slayer’s Reign in Blood, a comment that I found to be laughable. Butler: I had known James [Murphy] when he was in Agent Steel. I remember telling Chuck when we needed a guitar player, “I know a dude who shreds. But he’s in Atlanta now. He’s with Hallows Eve.” Chuck called him up from his bedroom and asked James to join. James was like, “Sure! Let me pack my bags and I’ll be out of here!” James slid right into the band. I don’t even think we had him learn the old songs. We just started writing Spiritual Healing. Greif: We had actually contracted with another guitar player. but that fell through. The other name that kept surfacing was James. It was entirely up to Chuck whom he would feel comfortable playing with, and he made the call to go with James. James Murphy: In 1987, I signed on with a band, Agent Steel, who needed a fill-in guitar player. I went over to Europe and the U.K. as a teenager. Once I got back, I started teaching guitar. But I’d go out to shows with my Agent Steel tour shirt. Remember, I was a fan of Death. I had Scream Bloody Gore. And I had just bought Leprosy. So, Death were playing at the Sunset Club in Tampa. I went to the show. Chuck and the guys were walking about. I walked past Chuck and he said, “Hey man! Cool shirt!” I told him I had done the tour. He was interested and started asking me a lot of questions. He eventually introduced me to Bill and Terry. After that, I headed up to Atlanta on my own. I roomed with the guitar player, Dave Stuart, from Hallows Shorts people got Eve. I got a landscaping no reason to live job and then proceeded Death with future to check out the Atlanta Obituary writer Institute of Music. [4] Murphy, 1989
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We had no idea what in the hell we were doing. We were kids. None of us were seasoned in interacting with each other. You get young guys together and there’s always more than one alpha male. There was nothing big or sinister to me leaving Death. —James Murphy It was more money than I had. So, I entertained playing with Dave and Tommy Stewart. Then out of the blue, I got a call from Chuck. He said, “Rick’s out of the band and we’re looking for a replacement. We all thought of you.” I said the dumbest thing I’ve ever said at that point. I said, “I love your band, but I want to stick to playing with the guys here in Atlanta.” We had nothing going on! A couple of days had passed and I was sitting staring at the wall in my room. I thought, “Is something wrong with me?!” I jumped up and called Chuck. He said, “Man, I’m sorry; we needed somebody and since you weren’t available we’ve already moved forward.” I remember I said to him, “Well, I have a few days off work. Let me drive down there and show you what I’ve got.” Chuck said, “OK, let’s do it!” I drove down to Terry’s mom’s house, I set up a little boom box, I had Leprosy loaded up, and played along to four or five songs. They said, “Yeah, man. That’s great! But we’ve got this Mark Carter guy.” I went back to Georgia feeling dejected. I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Out of the blue, Chuck calls me again. “Hey James, if you want the gig, it’s yours. Mark didn’t really work out.” I was like, “I’m packing now!” I ended up living with my grandmother, who was almost two hours away with traffic from Chuck’s place. Burns: The lineup had changed. Rick was out. James was definitely more melodic, and I think Chuck really liked that. Jane Schuldiner: When people came to visit, whether it was bands or others, we usually met and welcomed them into our home. James was a very nice guy, and was a pleasure to meet. I have kept in touch with James from time to time. Malcolm Schuldiner: I remember James. He and other band members were frequently invited to our house and often joined us for a meal. Murphy: We’d rehearse four or five days a week.
When they get that feeling...
Murphy (c) chows down at Casa Schuldiner
Within a three-week period, around August of 1989, I co-wrote half the songs with Chuck. He wrote all the lyrics. I wrote half the music of eight songs. It all came together so well. I don’t remember Chuck rejecting a riff. He would hear my riffs and know immediately how they would fit into his riffs. Actually, we all wrote riffs. By the end of the summer in 1989, we were in Morrisound recording Spiritual Healing. The record came out in February of 1990. Butler: Spiritual Healing was the product of our influences. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal. French metal we were really into. It was very
melodic. Spiritual Healing is the perfect blend of brutality and melody. We thought at the time, “This is different! It sounds cool!” We didn’t force anything. Krgin: Chuck definitely wanted to incorporate more melody and musicality into Death’s songwriting, but he still kept the music brutally heavy. He was also a fan of good, clean, heavy production, and I think this was reflected in the sound of that record. It also helped that James Murphy had joined the fold and really pushed the quality of the guitar solos up a couple of notches. Greif: James was indeed the odd man out. He was certainly trying his best to fit in. By that time, Bill, Terry, Chuck and I had a rather bizarre, random humor going on, with lots of in-jokes and self-references, and James awkwardly tried to pierce that shell of silliness. James did his best at the time to adopt our weird phrases and language. Musically, of course, there was no doubting his skills, and a guy like James can walk in and pull off whatever is required, and he certainly did. [4]
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I thought Scream Bloody Gore was a great first album, and it was the perfect representation of Death at that stage of the band’s career—it was brutally heavy and raw, but it had a certain musicality to it as well, which was missing from bands like, say, Venom and Bathory and Hellhammer. — B O R I VO J K R G I N Here’s the bottom line. We had no idea what in the hell we were doing. We were kids. None of us were seasoned in interacting with each other. You get young guys together and there’s always more than one alpha male. There was nothing big or sinister to me leaving Death. I left before we had a blow-up at the end of the Spiritual Healing tour. I remember calling Scott [Burns] to ask him if he knew of any bands that needed a guitar player. He said, “Matter of fact, I do. I have Obituary in the studio right now. And they need a lead guitar player.” I was in the studio the next day with Obituary recording my solos for Cause of Death. Butler: Chuck was the type of person [that] if he wanted a change, he’d turn his back on things. I think Control Denied was his response to how he felt. He had always wanted to do Control Denied. Even back then. He felt like things were stagnating. Anyway, we did a whole tour with Carcass and Pestilence, which was huge. It was amazing! We had one week off and then we were to go to Europe, co-headlining with Kreator. We had our own bus and our own crew. All we had to do is show up with our guitars. Within a few days of being home, Chuck went AWOL. Basically, he didn’t want to tour. He wanted to shut down and lay low. We had signed contracts, done tons of interviews, and so on. So, we met at Chuck’s house. His mom had power of attorney. Eric was gone at that point. We had all the paperwork drawn up that we [Bill and I] would go to Europe as Death without Chuck. And that he wouldn’t hold us accountable for anything that happens. Obviously, we signed it. We were young kids. What were we supposed to do? As crazy as it sounds, we went to Europe with the drum tech, Louie Carrisalez, singing and the guitar tech, Walter Trachsler, playing guitar. We did nine weeks. They were amazing! Looking back, I wish Chuck would’ve talked to us and told us how he was feeling. Three weeks into the tour, he called the booking agent telling him he wanted to join the tour. The booking agent told him, “There’s no way you can join the tour now. Kreator’s road crew said they’d quit if you joined the tour now.” That’s how huge it was. Those dudes would’ve been out of work for nine weeks had the tour been canceled, so they were messed up by Chuck’s actions. We never talked to Chuck after we had returned Murphy:
from Europe. It was an assumed thing that when we get home we weren’t going to be in Death. It was at this time, during the tour, that we got Massacre back together. Greif: Chucky was always striving to accelerate his game. I’ve commented to friends that the leap between Leprosy and Spiritual was only surpassed by the leap between Spiritual and Human. It boggles my mind to think he was coming up with such an evolution in complexity musically while at the same time his personal life was on the fragile side.
A mind shared by an uninvited stranger Which comes and goes as choose to appear Should we not prepare for the uncertain Mysteries of our life, of our destiny HUMAN & INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT PATTERNS (1991–93) We wrote four songs for the Human album at a practice room near my house. “Suicide Machine,” “Together as One,” and two others I forget at the moment. I have practice tapes of me, Bill and Chuck writing and rehearsing those songs. Greif: Paul [Masvidal] had done our Mexican Leprosy tour and he fit in just fine. He was approached to see if he was into doing the album, and rehearsals on the Human material picked up from where Bill and Terry had been with Chuck prior to their split from Death. Paul grew up with Sean [Reinert] and they were a powerhouse partnership that made perfect sense to Chuck. Paul Masvidal: I had about three days to learn around 20 songs. Luckily, Chuck’s music was fairly straight ahead, especially in those days, so I just buckled down and prepared. Four days later we were playing in front of 10,000 people in an arena in Mexico City. Death were like the Beatles there. People were literally throwing themselves at us as if we were some legendary act. I couldn’t believe it. Burns: You knew the drill. It was quite obvious that Chuck was Death. He was always progressing. He definitely had his sound. Death was Chuck. By then he was totally into musicianship. With Human, the style, with Sean [Reinert] and Paul [Masvidal], was a huge jump. Sean and Paul had a huge cult following in Florida at the time. People Butler:
would marvel at their playing. Especially Sean. He did stuff on drums that no one had ever thought of. At least in death metal. The drums on Human are incredible. Sean did weird things with his drums. His toms weren’t just high to low. They were all mixed up. He really did influence a lot of drummers in Florida. I think [Steve] DiGiorgio also made a big impact with his fretless bass playing. Masvidal: Eric offered me the [full-time] position each time I worked with Chuck, and once Sean and I were involved creatively with Human, the chemistry was so good that I knew he wanted it to last. We were safe people for Chuck due to our long history and friendship. DiGiorgio: I was on tour with Sadus. I think we were in Tampa or Orlando. It had been a few years since I had seen [Chuck]. I was dropping subtle hints for him to record in California. It was all about getting his ass out there to hang out like we had done when we were cruising around in my Chevy. I didn’t inquire about his lineup situation. My hint to come out to California was interpreted as, “Hey, Steve’s available.” Before the Sadus tour was over, the rumor had gotten back to me that I was in Death. I had to call him up and say, “Hey dude. What happened?!” He said, “I was going to ask you.” [Laughs] Masvidal: First, I should reiterate, the circumstances in which Human came together allowed for a much more free and experimental environment than Chuck had before. We—including Steve—had a long history with [Chuck] as a friend/colleague, and that loosened him up quite a bit. I also remember Chuck wanting to push the envelope and do something new. He was starting to appreciate more progressive and experimental forms of music, and realized that would be a good direction for Death’s music to evolve. Sean Reinert: I think we had more creative influence than he’s ever allowed pre- and post-Human, to be quite honest. I think Chuck really wanted more creative and more technically proficient players after the break with Terry, Bill and James. We all contributed to “Cosmic Sea.” We wrote it in the studio one night. DiGiorgio: I remember when we hooked up with the young guys, Paul and Sean, in Miami for the Human rehearsals. Me and Chuck would tell all these old stories. Officially, Human was the first album we had played on, but we were old buddies. I didn’t realize how high of a hill I was sitting on at the time. Only later on did I realize it’d become this legendary thing. Masvidal: [For the “Lack of Comprehension” video] we had to get up super early and shoot the entire day in this old theater in downtown Orlando. I remember we were all in good spirits and felt positive about the process. The team that shot the video were pros and super cool guys. [4]
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Family matters
Greif (l) and Masvidal bring the bunk
I remember it all because I walked around all day long with a video camera, making a general nuisance of myself! I had decided to use video director David Bellino, as he had done a decent job with my other client London’s video, and the label were supportive and kicked in the rather sizeable funding—for us, at least—needed to pull it off. We were all very excited that day and everyone was positive. I know the debut on Headbangers Ball was something indeed, and we gathered around the TV. Reinert: Steve was an immediate brother and kindred [spirit]. Even though Sadus were writing this brutal shit, Steve was into jazz and fusion, so we hit it off. The first time I met him was when he flew out for the rehearsals for Human. He actually stayed at my pad for a couple of weeks and played every day in Kendall, FL. We had some good times! DiGiorgio: I had a little of fundamental [music] training. So, whenever Sean or Paul threw out terms, Chuck was lost. I was aware, Human was different, but since I fit in with Sean and Paul it didn’t really seem that different. We were already Greif:
speaking the same language. Krgin: If I remember correctly, I put Chuck in touch with Gene [Hoglan] before Individual Thought Patterns and I recommended that they work together. I think Gene thanked me in the credits for the “impetus.” I actually found Gene and Steve’s involvement with Death less odd than Death’s pairing with Sean Reinert and Paul Masvidal. Both Sean and Paul were getting into really progressive music before and during the time they spent with Death, while Gene and Steve [DiGiorgio] came from fairly prominent extreme metal bands—Dark Angel and Sadus, respectively—and they didn’t have those progressive leanings like Paul and Sean did. Gene Hoglan: We had done the Ultimate Revenge II tour. That didn’t work out too well for anyone. Dark Angel and Death didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things. It got heated and Death walked off the tour. When Borivoj Krgin called me in September or October 1992 and said, “Hey, man, Chuck is looking for a drummer. Are you interested?” I was like, “Well, that’s weird. I thought we were enemies?” So, Borivoj gave me Chuck’s number
and bygones were bygones. Early December is when I went out to rehearse for Individual Thought Patterns. After about three weeks, we cut the record. Greif: Individual Thought Patterns is Chuck’s angry album, and I know a few guys who swear it is the greatest of Chuck’s works. Immediately following that record he started to mellow out on a personal level by the time of our final reconciliation. Burns: Chuck changed musicians. Always. You knew that. He liked to do things his way. When he wanted to use somebody else, it was OK. When he came with Gene for Individual Thought Patterns, it was cool. Gene was a legend. With Andy LaRocque—Chuck was a huge King Diamond fan—his style, the Swedish style, was something Chuck admired a lot. But you knew whoever Chuck brought in was going to be good. Andy LaRocque: I think it was back in the late ’80s when I first met Chuck. He was a big King Diamond fan. We played in Tampa in ’88. A few years later, Monte Conner called me up and asked me if wanted to record some solos for Death. That was in ’92. I didn’t have much to do. King Diamond was in-between contracts. So, I felt it would be cool to go to Florida for two weeks. Hoglan: The riff tape I got from Chuck was adorable. He didn’t have a four-track machine. He had two ghetto blasters. He’d track one guitar into one ghetto blaster. He’d then play back the one ghetto blaster and then track the second guitar into the second ghetto blaster. Harmonies and stuff like that. The first night I got to Florida, I wanted to learn Chuck’s riffs. I play a fair bit of guitar. I remember a lot of his riffs were on the high E and on the A string. I remember transposing a bunch of the riffs down to the low E. Chuck was like, “Wow! That sounds killer! Let’s use that!” Burns: With Andy LaRocque, I picked him up from the airport, dropped him off at the hotel, [4]
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we spent a weekend going shopping, he laid down his tracks, I drove him to the airport, and off he was back to Sweden. DiGiorgio: Andy came with high expectations, but a few of us were let down. Scott was unnerved. When he learned Andy hadn’t prepared anything, he lost his mind. He didn’t realize who he was dealing with. He pulled a magic solo out of his ass every time Scott hit record. [Laughs] Every threenote thing he did, we were like, “Whoa! Keep it! Keep it!” Andy was like, “I’ll play it again.” We were like, “No! No! No!” Then he’d play it again. Note for note. We were doing fucking cartwheels. High-fives every minute. Our jaws hit the floor. LaRocque: When I’m hired for a job, I’m very focused. Work comes first. If I feel I’m in control of things, I can then relax a little bit. The two weeks I was there were very relaxed. All the guys in the band were relaxed. Even Scott. I do remember me and Chuck went out to a local music store to try out some different amps. We found a Marshall Valvestate. We really liked it. I still got that amp. I use it in my studio. Craig Goldy used to play through that amp. Hoglan: I remember Scott and Steve always had a pretty witty repartee. It was my first time record-
Chuck was easy to work with. He was great. His whole attitude to my drums was like, “Go sick!” — G ene H oglan
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ing outside Dark Angel. Chuck was easy to work know where I would go with. He was great. His whole attitude to my from there. As we were drums was like, “Go sick!” I think there was only recording the record, one [off] beat on Individual Thought Patterns. I think there were some tour it was at the beginning of “Jealousy.” The beat’s dates coming up. So, Chuck asked if me and Steve just a little fruity. wanted to do some shows. We never really did DiGiorgio: When we got into the studio, Scott and I become a band, but I was with Chuck for three would have arguments. I was like, “No, Scott. Just years and two records. give it a chance! I didn’t write this to show off. Let it sink in—you’ll see where I’m coming from. It’s The journey begins with curiosity going right with the drums, it’s in key with the And evolves into soul-felt questions guitars, and it links everything together. I’m not On the stones that we walk just playing random stuff.” He’s like, “No. I’m the And choose to make our path king of cheese. I know what the cheeseheads want. They don’t want this bass doing this.” Chuck would inevitably get called in. Scott would have his arms SYMBOLIC & THE SOUND folded. I’m standing there with my bass. Biting my OF PERSEVERANCE (1995–98) nails all nervous. Scott would push play. Chuck Hoglan: In between Individual Thought Patterns would frown, analyzing it. Ask for it to be played and Symbolic, Chuck was getting into ’80s power again. Then he’d say, “Metal brother, you kick ass. metal—bands with really good vocalists. I could I love it!” He’d give me the horns and walk out. see where Control Denied was coming from. A LaRocque: Chuck asked me if I wanted to join the lot of the riffs were more traditional-sounding. band as a touring guitarist. They liked my playing, So, a lot of my drums for Symbolic were spiced I guess. But I was working on my own project at up. I wanted to bring a lot of life to the riffs. the time and I wasn’t really ready to go on the road They were very traditional-metal sounding. If we with another band. I said, “Sorry, man. I want to approached everything from a traditional standdo the solos and studio work, but I can’t commit point, it would’ve sounded like something we’ve to touring with you.” I believe they were disap- all heard before throughout the ages of metal. I thought the drums on Symbolic should be crazier pointed with my decision. Malcolm Schuldiner: I never saw [Chuck] as than the drums on Individual Thought Patterns. being stubborn. I did see him as very focused, Jim Morris: I met Chuck on the very first day and he wanted to get things done just right. He he was in the studio for the Leprosy record. He was a really nice guy with a great didn’t want to compromise his music, Perennially sense of humor. I did demos for the and that really made him drive himquesting self very hard to reach his goals. Human record; just run-throughs with The Symbolic Hoglan: It was obvious it was Chuck’s the guys from Cynic. But I didn’t lineup looks work with Chuck until the Symbolic band. I knew I was going out to play toward the end on Individual Thought Patterns, but I didn’t record. Scott and Chuck had a falling out after the Individual Thought Patterns record. But we hit it off on the Symbolic record. I had as much fun making the Symbolic record, more than any record I’ve done before. We kind of finished each others’ sentences, musically. Jane Schuldiner: Bobby [Koelble] was very respected by Chuck, as he is by many. I follow all the musicians from Chuck’s past. I cared about them then, and still do. Bobby Koelble: I’m really into jazz so I tried to incorporate some of that sort of thing into my playing. I was always trying to work in Charlie Parker and John Coltrane-type licks into my solos. If you do it right, if you disguise it well enough, I think it makes for a pretty unique sound in metal. Kelly Conlon: Everything happened pretty fast. After [I auditioned on a] Wednesday and [got] the gig on a Thursday, Chuck sent me a tape of all the scratch tracks overnight [4]
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because he and Gene were already in the studio. So, needless to say, that weekend I had my work cut out for me, because on Monday I had to be at Morrisound Studios. For the next two weeks I was in the studio by day and in a hotel room by night with a boom box, the scratch track demos, an amp and my bass. Krgin: I thought Symbolic was a great album and I was glad to see the band work with a producer other than Scott Burns. To me, this really made a huge difference in the overall sound— the production was bigger, better and it really took Death’s music to another level. The songs themselves were very strong and Chuck’s vocals sounded as powerful as ever. And, of course, Gene Hoglan’s drumming on that record was absolutely amazing. Morris: There wasn’t much of a band. It was Chuck and Gene. There was nobody else. Same when we took the rhythm tracks for Symbolic. It was just Chuck and Gene. They had some issues. Gene wanted to play something this way, but Chuck wanted it played another way. We worked on guitar parts in the daytime and then we’d go
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back to the hotel room to teach the bass player the parts. Then we’d cut the bass track the next day. It wasn’t like a band mentality like in the old days. Once Gene finished his drums, he was gone. Kelly did his bass parts in four days. Bobby did all his parts in three hours. I never even got to know the guy. It was more or less Chuck’s vision and me helping him achieve that. Conlon: Even though Chuck wrote the music, I had to come up with all those bass lines. That’s what I was hired to do! Before I recorded anything, Jim Morris would come by my hotel room in the morning to see what I came up with, mainly to make sure my parts didn’t clash with anything that Chuck was doing. Whether it was vocals, harmonies or a solo. Koelble: Death was actually disbanded after the tours for Symbolic were done. Chuck had a falling out with Roadrunner and was pretty much over the whole thing, so that was that, or so we all thought. He wanted to do something different, a project where he didn’t have to sing. So, he got Control Denied going, something he had planned on doing for a while. When he started that band, he called me and asked me to do it, but I had other things going on in my personal life and respectfully declined. Hoglan: There was a definite shift in his musical mentality. He was going even more traditional. I’m not surprised a project like Control Denied
Control board
Morris (l) makes Perserverance pay
came out of Chuck at that time. R i ch a r d C h r i s t y : I moved to Orlando from Springfield, MO with my band Burning Inside. I was excited about Orlando, ’cause I knew Chuck lived there. One of my dreams was to jam with Chuck. It was a crazy dream. Shannon Hamm: I had just started playing with Chris Williams and Scott Clendenin about four or five months before Chuck had decided to begin working on Control Denied as the Symbolic tour came to an end in late 1995. Chris Williams had auditioned and secured the drummer position in Control Denied, and recommended me as the second guitarist. They had recorded three tracks together, which were given to me for reference, I was already learning them when Chuck called and invited me over for an official audition. Immediately we hit it off, and by the time I left, we had already played through them several times. However, at that time, the record labels were reluctant to sign Control Denied and wanted another Death release because of the history and solid following, it wasn’t such a gamble for them. So, to make a long story short, Chuck made a few minor changes and kept me in the lineup for The Sound of Perseverance release. Christy: A few days after I had auditioned, Chuck told me I was a member of Death. My friends back home didn’t believe me. They only believed me when they saw my name as part of Death in a magazine. Morris: I went over to some of the rehearsals for The Sound of Perseverance. That’s when I first met Richard. When we got deeply involved in Symbolic, he didn’t have to ask me to do the next record. He was going to have to fight me off. The Sound of Perseverance was a fun record, too, but we had a shorter time to work with it because they had changed record labels and the budgets had been slashed. It was done 48-track analog. The tape costs were up there. But we still had a killer time on the project. Christy: I was always at rehearsal, so I didn’t feel like I needed an apartment. That’s why I lived in a storage unit. Why not put a couch in the storage unit? I did that for eight years. I lived there from ’96 until ’04 when I moved to New York City to join the Howard Stern show. Hamm: Chuck’s rhythm technique was very aggressive. His picking was similar to a saw cutting through the strings, which was the most challenging part for me to get control of. Our leads were quite different from each other because Chuck was very structured and I was more spontaneous, which means that he was more consistent from day to day, and I could be very good one day and be not be as good the next depending on my mood. But our vibrato was almost identical, which made all of the harmony sections very fluent and natural. [4]
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We were practicing about six days a week. I was also practicing five days a week with Burning Inside. I was really in top drumming form. That really helped shape my drumming on The Sound of Perseverance. I had an electrician’s job. I’d get home from my job at 3:30 p.m. I wouldn’t finish practicing until about 10:30 p.m. We rehearsed the songs for about a year before we even recorded the album. I joined the band in July ’97. We recorded the drums in April ’98. By the time we got into Morrisound, everything was tweaked. Chuck was really open to my ideas to my drumming. It was a very creative time. I kind of went into Death thinking my playing was a homage to Sean and Gene. Krgin: When I first heard The Sound of Perseverance, I was shocked by how weak I thought Chuck’s vocals were. His voice was higher-pitched and thinner than I had ever heard it before, and he came across like a hollow shell of his former self. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t really get past that—it ruined the album for me, although I recognize that there are some killer musical ideas on there. Hamm: The Sound of Perseverance was somewhat of a turning point for Chuck, in my opinion. I believe the progressive side of his writing was more prominent on The Sound of Perseverance. It was definitely an opening for Control Denied to thrive on, which will be very obvious on the upcoming release of When Man and Machine Collide. Christy:
For granted I do not take the future To be changed by triumph Tears and pain of the past I gain wisdom
1967–2001
Come on, this beats the shit out of a Hall of Fame, right?
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN It was on the first Control Denied record where we first started to notice something was wrong. He could play all the fast stuff in the world. One of the best things I liked was his touch with his left hand. His vibrato. It was the strength of his left hand. There would be days where his touch wasn’t there. It really freaked him out. We both chalked it up to being nervous about opening a new musical chapter. Little did we know what was really happening. At the end of the Control Denied record, we thought he needed therapy on his neck. We had no idea about the tumor. We still didn’t know when we started the next Control Denied record. DiGiorgio: When I was recording with Jim doing the Control Denied album, he was up in New York getting radiation. His attitude was, “We’re moving onto a different doctor.” He was always trying new treatments. Turns out, every doctor was telling him the same thing. He had no chance to live. That’s how he fought. He fought that thing for two years. He was holding the reaper at bay. Morris:
Chuck and I didn’t end well at the end of Symbolic. I met him again at Dynamo. Bygones were bygones. Chuck had reformed, ’cause Chuck broke up Death after Symbolic. I was really wondering how our meeting would end up, but it was all water under the bridge. It was nice to have that as a final memory of Chuck. I’m happy the last time we spoke was cool. Burns: It always bothered Chuck that he was viewed as a death metal guy. At the time, death metal was treated like a redheaded stepchild. Twenty years later, it’s accepted. He’d probably be on the cover of every guitar magazine. I mean, I was at the store the other day and saw Gene Hoglan on the cover of Modern Drummer. That would’ve never happened back in the day! Reifert: I’ll say that Chuck always knew exactly what he wanted to do, and had a very clear vision for the band. Everyone who likes Death has their favorite era and album, but Chuck always did what he thought was best, whether it involved conflict with band members or not. At any rate, Chuck was a real metal pioneer who was always seeking new Hoglan:
ground to cover, starting at the beginning with Mantas. No one sounded like that at the time. He kept making music until he couldn’t anymore, and I’m glad I was a part of that mission. Christy: He had already gone through treatments. He was well for a while. When we wrote the second Control Denied record, we all thought it was behind him. Unfortunately, it came back. It was devastating to see him go through it a second time. It’s hard to even talk about it to this day. Malcolm Schuldiner: His greatest legacy might be that he was a strong example of being true to oneself. He will, of course, be known as being a groundbreaker in his genre. Jane Schuldiner: The legacy Chuck left is to be a lasting inspiration for his many fans all over the world. They write that he has inspired them to be more, to persevere through the tough times musically, but also in their personal lives. What greater legacy can a person leave, than to have that lasting impact? He would be so proud, as we are, of the love and loyalty of his fans and friends. A
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“the most extreme grind music ever.” – “an amazing band that does better grindcore than the thousands of little skirts pumping out so-called heavy music nowadays.” – Vice Magazine “maniac, vein popping, cartoonish grind.” – Terrorizer Magazine
out february 15
co-released with
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White Summer • Black Winter “riffs speak louder than words.” –
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inside ≥
78 Darkest hour Nice title 80 full blown chaos Nicer title 82 gallowbraid Neur-Agalloch? 86 inquisition Nicest title 88 The Meads of asphodel Confusing Cartman 91 primate Sharper image
The Death Oral History by the numbers
21,000
All the noise that fits reviews
Blunt Force Trauma Trap Them administer equal parts
unedited word count
9,000
final word count
23
interviews conducted
11
hours spent on phone with sources
07
off-the-record requests
requests by ex-Death members for other ex06 Death members’ contact info
I
rock ‘n’ roll and noise pollution
’ve said before that trap them’s driving force is good old rock ‘n’ roll. Strip away the grinding, grating gruesomeness, and these are the same folks who used to set pianos on fire and terrify the piss out of Ed Sullivan. Darker Handcraft is the satisfyingly logical Trap evolution, a brawny release that often puts metal and hardcore on the Them backburner and gets its filthy swagger going. ¶ But let’s be clear: Save Darker for a couple gauzy guitar melodies that peek through, this is an enraged, Handcraft sadistic record. The three opening tracks are the most frenetic and poiprosthetic son-tipped, showing more than anything that drummer Chris Maggio is a formidable monster, mixing speed, imagination and intricacy, but always with a punk sneer, as if hurting his drums is the paramount concern. And singer Ryan McKenney again hacks through each song with his strained, mutinous shriek, a bile-slinger of the first degree. [4]
Illustration by Mark Rudolph [markrudolph.com]
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While blasting flashes like “Sovereign Through the Pines” and “Saintpeelers” show that the band are still very much fearsome hard-liners when it comes to heavy music, their rock tracks end up even more bloodthirsty. “Evictionaries,” “Drag the Wounds Eternal” and the trudging closer “Scars Align” allow their talents to smolder through, but they remain understated, married more to the simple destruction of the song. Centerpiece “The Facts” contains every prerequisite for a radio hit, except that it happens to be a snarling hail of bullets that would start pile-ups on every major freeway. Rarely does a song with the chorus “I am that goddamned son of a bitch” come off instantly memorable, but there is simply too much adrenalized fuck-you underpinning every riff for mass consumption. The only questionable parts of the album have to do with those opening tracks that stray a little too close to producer Kurt Ballou’s well-known guitar sound/style. The majority of the songs show that Ballou has the perfect ear for letting the band forge their own path, but when guitarist Brian Izzi does his spastic single-note runs, it’s the only time their influences are impossible to ignore. Is it silly to compare Trap Them to a band like the Who? There’s a pretty obvious parallel with their affinity for trauma and violently appealing music. Maybe Townshend and the rest never had the guts to be this extreme, and maybe Darker Handcraft doesn’t have anything as indelible as “My Generation.” But the band’s pushing rock ‘n’ roll forward; they’re making it scary again. This record’s for a generation of kids who have no need for a scene, but want to scream along anyway. All they have to do is stay on this path and skip all that pinball opera shit. —Shane Mehling
Acid Witch
6
Stoned
Hells Headbangers
This record sorta rules
We know that Anthony Bartkewicz already proclaimed that “This Record Rules” over on the Decibel homepage, but we’d like to put our own two cents into the discussion. While we’d generally agree that there are many cool things about Stoned—all dutifully highlighted by Mr. Bartkewicz in his review—there’s a certain prevalent tunelessness that we can’t help but take issue with. To be more specific, the vocals are pretty much total crap. The whole monochromatic death grunt/growl thing is fine for the more extreme extremities of metal, but in ’70s-inspired stoner/doom like 7 8 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
this where there are melodic riffs—both guitar and Hammond organ—it’s continually at odds with, rather than enhancing, the songs. There are moments here where it’s less of an issue, such as “Thundering Hooves,” when the movie samples play a primary role and the vocals are generally pushed to the background and used more as an effect, but mostly the dude’s voice is just irritating. We get the fact that there’s a lot of humor at play here, and maybe the from-the-crypt vocals are part of that. We probably wouldn’t be making such an issue of it if we didn’t like everything else about this record so much. Musically, this is a really cool and well-put-together album with tons of great ideas and songs. But how about a vocal melody or two next time that’ll really let people see what great songwriters you are? —Adem Tepedelen
Cavus
8
Fester and Putrefy Listenable
Demolition hammer
There’s hope yet for black metal (and Listenable Records)! Just when the music has seemingly splintered into a hopeless mess of sub-sub-styles (Cascadian??? Really???) and post- and -core influences, along comes this Christcrushing hammerchainsaw. Who needs dead animals when one has actual riffs? The power of the riff compels here, absolutely. Finland’s Cavus presumably take their name from the Latin for “pit,” not the medical condition of “excessively high-arched foot.” They indeed sound like a pit, albeit a gritty yet bouncy one. The drums are like machine guns firing pebbles, and the bass is rubbery in a technical death metal sort of way (think Cryptopsy or Blood Red Throne). But nothing is technical except for the degree of ass-kicking. Guitars plow through grumbling Hellhammer marches, then splay out into grim sheets of sound. A disgusted, prophetic voice narrates the apocalypse. For once in metal, songs sound like their titles. “Death Rattle”? A clattering, lethal takedown. “Scorched Flesh, Ravaged Souls”? Stripped paint is more like it. “Possessed by the Devil’s Blood”? Hells bells and then some! As with most modern black metal, I have no clue what these guys are banging on about. Gone are the simplistic days of Hail Satan-ing and running around the forest. Now we get references to Sheol and Abaddon (Hebrew) and Akshobhya (Sanskrit!), and other mystical shit. But I don’t need a degree in comparative religion to get the gist. J.C. is the nail, and this band is the hammer. —Cosmo Lee
Darkest Hour
8
The Human Romance E1
Naturally born near-chaos
You got to hand it to DC’s Darkest Hour. For better or worse, they—particularly the core of guitarist Mike Schleibaum, drummer Ryan Parrish, and vocalist John Henry—stick to their guns. Now that Gothenburg-aped American metal has mostly faded from view, Darkest Hour have recorded their most melodic record to date in The Human Romance. Twiddled and fiddled by Soilwork guitarist/producer Peter Wichers, Darkest Hour’s seventh full-length won’t shake death metal’s foundation, but it sounds like a dream while the quintet plows—sometimes deftly, others not so much—through 12 songs of frustration, love, hate and things that hurt. The Human Romance is an urbane distillation of 2009’s vicious The Eternal Return and 2007’s yodelfriendly Deliver Us. That is to say, where the D-Boys are the most unapologetic (“Man & Swine,” “Violent by Nature”) and calculated (“Savor the Kill,” “Love Is a Weapon”), there’s balance to be found. Take the pair of “Purgatory” and “Severed Separates.” For all intents and purposes, Darkest Hour positions the former as a unbridled rager and the latter as a contemplative rocker, but midway through, the songs open up—texturally and sonically—to reveal guitarist Schleibaum and sideman Mike Carrigan as unsung tacticians. They’re absolutely awesome in 10-minute instrumental “Terra Solaris,” which might just be the guitarists’ take on In Flames’ folk instrumental “Hårgalåten.” Perhaps The Human Romance’s single point of failure is in frontman Henry. He’s a true bruiser, able to out-roar his girly-balled stateside peers, but when songs like the Soilwork-ish “Savor the Kill” demand something more, his throaty bellow lacks. Then again, few, including Killswitch Engage’s Howard Jones or All That Remains’ Philip Labonte, can actually carry a tune. When most metal bands think they’re Elton John or Bruce Springsteen, Darkest Hour, on The Human Romance, know exactly what they’re capable of and who their audience is. Horns up, dudes! —Chris Dick
DevilDriver
7
Beast
Roadrunner
Brootal truth
From 2005’s death-coated The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand onward, any concerns that DevilDriver’s musical evolution has been somewhat sluggish over the years have been offset by the fact that
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the records serve, at the very least, as bruising advertisements for both straight-ahead metalfix consistency and far more entertaining live shows. (How can you not warm to a man whose enthusiasm for oversized leather wrist-wear is matched only by the Evil Elvis himself?) Five albums in, and there’s little sense of an identity crisis to be found within the superflex riff brawn of Beast. The beats blast forth in nailgun death strikes, the guitars thresh and shudder and the volume is set to a brainbleeding constant. All of which means that the jet propulsion of “Blur” and the amp-punishing wipeouts of “Crowns of Creation” and “Shitlist” are bruising exercises in utter streamlined metal efficiency. And DD can infect their unbending onslaughts with a choice bit of discordo creepiness—a venomously fun “Coldblooded”—when the mood takes them. Fafara’s much-maligned former day job might have been long left behind, but there’s still a sinewy sense of the nü here—except that the seismic quakes of ultimate downtunery here are deployed to far better effect than C*** C******’s cartoonish gurnings ever made use of. “The Blame Game” scrapes rock bottom with a satanic slowdown, while “Black Soul Choir”’s tornado-fest abruptly stops midway for a little shuffling jazzy hi-hat interlude before coming back 10-ton hammerfold. Imaginarium moments like this might be rare, but then Beast is but a stopgap for the next time Fafara gets you running a circle pit circuit in double-time as part of his latest attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records. —Catherine Yates
Evoken/Beneath the Frozen Soil
7
Split
I H at e
The good slog
It’s easy to run out of adjectives where Evoken are concerned. How many ways can you say “vast,” and even then, is it vast enough? Conveying the overwhelming sense of isolation, anger, despair, hopelessness, grief and dread the New Jersey funeral doomsters invoke is a hopeless task—but that’s our job, so we’ll give it a go. They ply utter desolation on a galactic scale. In the past, we’ve described Evoken as “casually belittled by the term ‘epic’” and that to lose yourself in their music is to “stare into some truly terrible Lovecraftian abyss.” In lieu of further fresh epithets, let’s stick with those. Their four-track contribution to this slow-motion marathon is summed up by the, er, “vast” “Pleistocene Epoch,” an atmospheric 13-minute dirge. The nation doesn’t know it yet, but Evoken are a national treasure. 8 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Although largely ploughing the same forlorn furrow, Sweden’s Beneath the Frozen Soil are, by comparison, fairly lightweight and, unfortunately, a bit boring at times. Doom often hinges on repetition, and funeral doom in particular relishes a soporific crawl. Too much, however, and you’re into clock-watching territory. Their three tracks are (mostly) much shorter than the average Evoken composition, but they feel longer and “Monotone Black” parts one and two take their task a tad literally. But experience sometimes counts. Evoken have been around a decade longer than their Scandinavian counterparts, who have yet to release their first full-length. This titanic doom-off was only ever going to have one winner, and Evoken remain imperious. —Greg Moffitt
Full Blown Chaos
8
Full Blown Chaos I r o n c l a d / M e ta l
Blade
Explosions in the pit
Brooklyn-born Full Blown Chaos are a bluecollar metallic hardcore band that can’t seem to catch a break. They survived a near-fatal RV crash just one week into their biblically hot second stage spot on Ozzfest, an also near-fatal black widow spider bite, massive debt, dejection, bereavement, the shits (I added that, but one could only assume). Indeed, to experience a Full Blown Chaos record is to peer into the souls of the ill-fated and indomitable. But if bad luck brings good breakdowns, then the Big Apple’s best kept secret are about to unleash their most monolithic offering to date. Their first full-length since 2007’s Heavy Lies the Crown, Full Blown Chaos brims with all the auditory animosity quality hardcore is meant to exude. Featuring 13 tracks in just over 40 minutes, the band expels human struggle through the power of the riff, and a collective precision that can only come from years of concentrated commitment. Vocalist Ray Mazzola’s unapologetically vicious razor-roar commands each song, while the dual guitar work of Mike Facci and newly-recruited Mark Gumbrecht has not only thickened the band’s already chestcaving chug capabilities, but allowed for some truly epic (read: catchy) harmonies (“Silence Is Golden,” “Gravedigger,” “The Path I Walk”). That’s not to say the band has abandoned the traditional hardcore ethos their sound is so well
Ill Niño
Dead New World [victory]
...
Future nerds of the world: got your hands on a C Compiler? Then Decibot has a script for you. Just cut and paste the following text for the only review of the new Ill Niño album you’ll ever need: Main ( ) { printf(“Back tha fuck up! Jump! Jump!”); } Quick l33t-to-English translation, courtesy of Google: this sucks more shiny metallic strap-ons than Decibot can possibly attach. And, believe it or not, Decibot is crushed: Decibot es loco en el coco for the group’s “lost” nü-metal “classics” Revolution Revolución and Confession. Ill Niño’s greatest hits compilation—we can debate the merits of this later over a round of delicious motor oil; all you need to know is that it actually exists—is the soundtrack to the nightly quinceañera in Decibot’s fever dreams. Decibot even pre-ordered the special edition of Dead New World that shipped in Marc Rizzo’s backpack. Not a replica of the backpack, either—his actual backpack. And now all Decibot has to show for this intense fandom is a series of rejects from Sergeant D’s Stuff You Will Hate blog—an unabashedly retro nü-metal time capsule from an era Jack Osbourne has spent years in therapy trying to forget, incubated in a giant emo vagina. Fans of elevator music will have no trouble getting behind Ill Niño’s run for the border with the flamenco guitar at the end of “Killing You, Killing Me,” but a note-for-terrible-note Smashing Pumpkins cover (“Bullet With Butterfly Wings”) has thrust Decibot into an existential rage. No mas. The rating is in decimal, not binary.
0
NEUROT RECORDINGS NEUROTRECORDINGS.COM
at Zero (reissue) / Compact Disc NEUROSIS Souls February 2011
US CHRISTMAS Run Thick in the Night / Compact Disc
Live at Roadburn 2007 / Compact Disc
NEUROSIS
Enemy of the Sun (reissue) / Compact Disc
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built upon. Full Blown Chaos still keep it more real-ly than, ahem, Healey (terrible, I know), and though they don’t necessarily do much you haven’t already heard from the likes of Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy or anything that came out of the East Coast hardcore movement in the late ’90s/ early ’00s, the sheer conviction in their delivery is enough to kick a baby down the street and punch holes through your drywall. And that, my friends, is an art that can’t be taught. —Liz Brenner
Gallowbraid
6
Ashen Eidolon
N o r t h e r n S i l en c e P r o d u c t i o ns
Invasion of the identity snatchers
Gallowbraid sound exactly like Agalloch. It’s eerie. Bands, of course, have influences that are audible to varying degrees. But this is Xerox/ carbon copy/identical twin business. The wintry feeling, the vocal rasps, the majestic eighth-note melodies, the acoustic passages—if you told me, a longtime Agalloch fan, that this was the new Agalloch record, I’d believe you. In fact, given Agalloch’s departure from their classic sound on their latest record, with raw production and a new drummer, Gallowbraid arguably sound more like Agalloch than Agalloch do. If you spend enough time with this record, differences do appear. It’s like dating identical twins (not that I’ve ever had that pleasure). They may look, feel and even smell the same. But they will have different personalities. Remember in T2 when Edward Furlong talks to his mother on the phone, except it’s the T-1000 impersonating his mother, and he figures out that it’s not her: “Something’s wrong, she’s never this nice”? Same here. Agalloch never felt so tight and professional, and I mean that in a good way. Gallowbraid know every Agalloch move to a T(-1000), but the feeling isn’t quite the same. Still, it’s a good, if mixed feeling. The Viking vocals are stirring. The songs are pretty. And there are definitely worse bands to imitate than the one that made our #1 album of 2010. But if you have all this skill, get your own identity! —Cosmo Lee
God Dethroned
7
Under the Sign of the Iron Cross Me ta l B l a d e
Is “evil in the skies” the best you can come up with?
With Bolt Thrower, Hail of Bullets and Invasion putting out enough war-themed death metal on their own, it’s not as if we need another band 8 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
serving up unflinching descriptions of harrowing battle scenes and combat camaraderie against a brutal backdrop. But God Dethroned did it so well on 2009’s Passiondale that we can make a little room for one more. Taking its inspiration from World War I, that record had guitarist/vocalist/ all-around leader Henri Sattler and his bandmates sounding creatively rejuvenated, the Dutch act delivering their most inspired record in years. So, it’s no surprise whatsoever that they’re dipping into thw well one more time. Thankfully, while the war theme is a tired one, there’s nary a touch of staleness to Under the Sign of the Iron Cross; once again it’s the kind of cleanly recorded, shattering yet highly melodic death metal that goes down easily. There are plenty of moments that play up the physicality of God Dethroned’s sound—both “Storm of Steel” and the über-catchy “Fire Storm” would be glorious live—but this album’s true strength lies in the band’s superb use of understated melodies. A mournful tone underscores “The Killing Is Faceless,” “Through Byzantine Hemispheres” is Behemoth-like in its accessibility, and the title track is dignified to the point of actually sounding elegiac. “The Red Baron” comes perilously close to self-parody in its complete inability to tell us anything new about Herr von Richthofen, but the whole experience is so much fun that we can let a little inarticulateness slide. —Adrien Begrand
Grave Desecrator
8
Insult
He l l s He a d b a n g e r s
Cover of the month in a landslide
Located at the thrash/black/death nexus that characterized much of the South American metal scene back in the ’80s, Brazilian bestialists (is that a word? It is now...) Grave Desecrator pay thoroughly authentic tribute to fellow countrymen such as Sarcófago, Vulcano, Mystifier and basically the entire cast of 1986’s Warfare Noise compilation. Toss in a deadly dose of Sodom-worship and you have an atavistic treat that really captures the unfettered spirit of thrash metal’s early days. In direct homage to Sarcófago circa 1987 (check out the sleeve of their debut album INRI), Grave Desecrator can be found grimacing in graveyards whilst rocking the studs ‘n’ leather/mirrored aviators look with considerable aplomb. The suitably blasphemous and bloody sleeve art and necro logo—complete with Sarcófago-style inverted cross—adds the finishing touches to the impressive packaging and, yes, Insult is available on vinyl. The adoption of ludicrous pseudonyms such as Butcherazor, Black Sin and Damnation (that’s one guy) and Vallakk the Necrogoat com-
plete a picture of old-school perfection. Fortunately, all this attention to detail is backed up by the sort of savage sonic mayhem that in decades past had us believing that the band was about to burst out of the speakers like an advancing army of Hades’ foulest foot soldiers. “Troops of Doom,” Sepultura once dubbed them, back when they were still fit to share such hallowed company. Buzzing guitars, Neanderthal drumming and incomprehensible, echo-laden vocals all racing to hell at a (mostly) frantic pace—if you’re tired of Hi-Tops and technicality, these guys have what you crave. —Greg Moffitt
Hate
6
Erebos L i s t en a b l e
Machine vs. Man. Machine wins this time
Poland’s number-one death metal export is no longer the legendary Vader. It’s Behemoth. Seems only natural then that bands projecting death, decay and evil stuff from population centers Warsaw, Łódź , Kraków and Wrocław would follow Nergal’s aesthetic lead instead of Father Peter’s. Maybe this Vader vs. Behemoth back and forth is unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, but to deny influence, like on Warsaw’s Hate or Wrocław’s Lost Soul, is tantamount to saying Morbid Angel haven’t swayed post-Pandemonic Incantations Behemoth. Anyway, Erebos, which means “abyss” or “shadow” in Greek, plays to Hate’s strengths. Adam the First Sinner, Hate’s formidable frontman/creative force, has slowly added nuances—mostly industrial-ish clangs (“Hexagony”) and melodic leads (“Wrists”)—to his version of authoritative death. The result, particularly over the course of the group’s previous two full-lengths, is a mature, song-oriented Hate, one bent on proving that Poland, unlike those Nordic countries, is Europe’s death metal epicenter. The complaint, however efficient and professional Adam and company actually are, is that Erebos pivots only on one, albeit highly precise, axis. There are two reasons songs like opener “Lux Aeterna,” “Quintessence of Hinger Suffering” and “Luminous Horizon” don’t lord over Morphosis gems “The Evangelistic Pain,” “Resurrection Machine” and “Catharsis.” Hate’s swing has been reduced on Erebos. The songs, while powerful, are less flexible. Combined with the computerized Hertz Studio production (Hexen’s drums are very clicky) and the Wieslawski Bros.’ pristine mix and master, Hate’s seventh fulllength feels sterile. True, Hate are superlative to most blasters the world over, but without a human soul they might as well fake the follow-up. —Chris Dick
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Imbroglio
8
Sleep Deprivation T h e P at h L e ss T r a v e l e d
Wake, bake, eradicate
With 2009’s The Oncoming Swarm, Imbroglio tackled the problem of how to frame surging, pissed-off grind with a more unique musical vocabulary. Half of that album played well with fans of the inspired ugliness and take-no-prisoners approach perfected by bands like Gaza, though Decibel’s Cosmo Lee—in a post on his site Invisible Oranges—questioned the inclusion of the comparatively solemn interludes and the noisy framing sequence. How you react to the group’s latest full-length, Sleep Deprivation, hinges on whether or not you get (and moreover, enjoy) what the Syracuse trio was attempting to articulate on The Oncoming Swarm’s meandering 11+ minute album closer “Excavating the… Killing Fields.” There are plenty of grind bands out there that can capture the surface tensions of “anger,” but on Sleep Deprivation, Imbroglio distill the five stages of grief into one breathtaking package. Sleep Deprivation immediately addresses the flaws of its predecessor with improved sequencing—the album flows end-to-end seamlessly. “Cement Shoes” capably recalls the short, spikier compositions on The Oncoming Swarm with a torrent of blast beats, but the rest of the album suggests a warmer climate. “Cellar Door”—which opens with a series of electronic blips—is probably the closest any band has come to capturing the sound of Touch & Go-era Jesus Lizard over the last 20 years. Devon Robillard hints at the framework of Goat’s opener “Then Comes Dudley” with a lurching bassline, while D.J. Gilbert recalls Duane Denison’s angular guitar attack. It’s not grind, but it swings. And the rest of Sleep Deprivation, which is much more easily classified as grind, nonetheless features an eye-opening and very subtle approach to incorporating electronic elements. Not flashy or ostentatious enough to grab headlines, just really fucking great. —Nick Green
Impaled Nazarene
6
Road to the Octagon O s m os e
Serving Satan since the days the squared circle reigned supreme
Finland’s most perverse musical exports have been torching guitars, pounding drums into kindling, flipping the world the bird, licking bound girls’ faces, anally raping goats and doling out deliberately offensive high-fives to fellow 8 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Scott Seward brings all the noise gloriously unfit for conventional review Horaflora/Secret Boyfriend Thousands of years after our hairy ancestors started experimenting with the sounds of rocks against skulls, this split LP from Hot Releases (hot-releases. org) serves as a good example of how experimental sound art can be just as vital and interesting on the planet that we now inhabit. It also makes me wonder why so many people are afraid of or intimidated by “weird” music. Sound is cool! People are cool! The possibilities are infinite! This album displays at least 433 of those possibilities in very intriguing ways. Z’ev, As/If/When A crucial live historical document of one of the founders of modern industrial sound. The list of people influenced by Z’ev and his mesmerizing trash can improv is endless. Taken from performances from 1978, 1982 and 1983, this disc will no doubt inspire a new legion of malletswinging hooligans. Or one can hope anyway. (www.subrosa.net) Mamiffer/House of Low Culture OK, it’s the 21st century, so, what’s Z’ev up to these days? How about an awesome collaboration of dark and heavy stuff with Isis dude Aaron Turner? I’ll take it. As House of Low Culture, Turner, Z’ev and Faith Coloccia have a meeting of the minds, and they have determined that the local organic weed I’ve been buying is indeed worth every penny I spend on it. Buy this now, please. (The Mamiffer piece on here, also featuring Coloccia, is equally groovy.) And while I’m here, RUN to your computer and buy the new album by Tetragrammaton on Utech. You won’t regret it. So fucking great I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It’s called Point of Convergence. Remember that. (www.utechrecords.com) --------------------------If you make, sell or distribute noise, deep drone/psych, experimental electronic and/or nuclear industrial crazy-ass gunk, and want to be featured in a future edition of The Wages of Din, email me at skotrok@earthlink.net. ---------------------------
The Guilt Of… Mike Williams is a hero to me. Same with Eyehategod. So, when I got the chance to hear Mike IX’s new noise duo project with Ryan McKern, I was ready for deranged goodness. I wasn’t disappointed. I knew Mike was a huge early hardcore fan, but I didn’t know that he was a devotee of early ’80s homemade bedroom noise. Low frequencies, distortion, sound samples and a general eerie bad mood vibe make The Guilt Of... a project worth following. Their split LP with Merzbow (chromepeeler. com) is a good place to start. You get lo-fi ambience and some scuzzy riffs submerged in crud. Their CD on Bloodlust! (bloodlust.blogspot.com) is also worth tracking down. Mike wailing over fucked beats is worth most of your Wax Trax collection. Long may he rage. Christoph Heemann Heemann was a part of the longrunning German experimental music group H.N.A.S., and their music was as incredible as it was hard to find. So, I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard any of it. Since H.N.A.S. ceased operations, Heemann has worked with tons of like-minded freaks such as Edward KaSpel, Steve Stapleton and David Tibet, and he even did a Melvins remix! I was lucky enough to catch him in a rare live performance in 2010, and it was a blissful evening of found sound samples, ambient synth drift, and a bucolic electronic energy that was both relaxing and riveting. Heemann’s latest vinyl release (a mix of material that goes back years) is much like that night. Pretty, spacey and sprawling, the samples and sounds on The Rings of Saturn (on the amazing Robot Records label: robotrecords.com) range from hushed to actual marching band field recordings, and somehow it is all a seamless whole that works its majik on many levels, depending on your mood. Can someone get on those deluxe H.N.A.S. album reissues that need to be heard by the masses! Please? I’d do it, but I have to clean the house today.
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record reviews
nutjobs ever since the actual Nazarene was being impaled. Or thereabouts. So, you’d figure they should know a thing or two about infusing black metal chromatics into rabble-rousing fast punk and grind (or vice versa). But even veteran soldiers in the war against good and good taste like ImpNaz aren’t totally immune from letting autopilot sneak in and man the controls. Overall, the Fucking Finns’ 11th studio album sports a bit more of black metal’s rapid fire atonality, though much of it gets smoothed out by the pervasive metalpunk blower bass and bluecollar power chords. There are moments hearkening back to vintage Destruction; the entirety of “Rhetoric Infernal” summons the outro to Eternal Devastation’s “Confused Mind” while Sir Luttinen massages his inner Schmier on “Gag Reflex” with vocal leaps into the stratosphere. Otherwise, for a worrying majority of Road to the Octagon, Sir Sluti666 is the weak link; his voice occasionally downtrodden, his vocal lines uninspired and out of sync on “Enlightenment” and “Reflect on This.” It’s almost like the band wrote the songs (warranting mention are the improved skin-bashing of Repe Misanthrope and the dynamic scald of Tomi UG’s leads) before Luttinen stumbled into the studio, deciding he was going to put forth a minimum amount of effort. And when your most dynamic feature phones in a muted performance, the whole ship goes down with the captain. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
Inquisition
8
Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm Hells Headbangers
Saddest Kermits
Washington (by way of Colombia) grim clowns Inquisition have grabbed Satan by his tail and will not let go. They’ve been necromancing raw fucking black metal since the late ’80s, and as recent albums testify, they keep refining their witchy brew. This new one, release number seven (?), is a solid cloven-hoof kick right to the privates—and probably their hardest kick yet. A din of gnarly, mega-distorted guitars somehow manages to maintain a filthy, gritty feel without comprising any clarity. It’s heartening to hear more and more bands pledging simultaneous allegiance to noisy, gunky tones and crystal clear production values. Most tunes found within Ominous roll along stealthily at mid-tempo speeds like shadows dashing in and out of the corners of the mind. The overall effect is trance-y (take the doomy psychonautical “Desolate Funeral Chant”) and all-consuming, due in large parts to the exceptional melodically contagious riffs. 8 6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Adding to all of the arcane-bliss is Dagon (guitars, bass, vocals) and his gurgling, Golem-like voice that is 1/4 Tuvan throat-singing and 3/4 Abbath-worship. Hey, if you’re going for the evil frog vibe, Abbath’s Kermit/Lemmy mash-up is totally Tsathogga! (Come on posers: “Tsathogga”! The archfiend, slime-ridden “Demon Frog God” from D&D fame. Anybody? Anybody?) For a reference point, undoubtedly, Immortal are huge influences. However, Ominous is overall creepier, dronier and lying just that much closer to Beelzebub’s bosom than our favorite sons of northern darkness do. When you add in the old-school blast beat burners (“Upon the Fire Winged Demon”), the Satanic Hammer film samples (“Command of the Dark Crown”) and the ubiquitous miasma of evil, you have Inquisition at their finest, not just another Immortal clone. —Shawn Bosler
Lazarus A.D.
7
Black Rivers Flow M e ta l B l a d e
Just don’t emulate The Burning Red on the next one, boys.
A young band’s second album is always a crucial one, but when it comes to acts that specialize in the whole retro thrash thing, it’s especially important. Which direction are they going to head in? A stubborn refusal to change, like Municipal Waste and Bonded by Blood, or a more daring attempt at musical growth, or even (gasp) reinvention? Much to our surprise, Lazarus A.D. have chosen the latter. With the bulk of their spirited debut album written years before they even signed with Metal Blade, the Kenosha, WI band has had plenty of time to refine their instrumental chops and songwriting skills, and they show plenty of ambition on Black Rivers Flow. Clearly modeled off the post-thrash groove of Testament’s The Ritual and Machine Head’s Burn My Eyes, Lazarus A.D. focus more on midtempo grooves than the straight-ahead exercises in thrash that permeated The Onslaught. Sure, we still get impressive moments of speed, but the guys wisely mix things up throughout the record, focusing more on contagious, melodic riffs and the odd tuneful, Chuck Billy-inspired chorus. The results are pleasantly surprising. “American Dreams,” “The Ultimate Sacrifice” and “Beneath the Waves of Hatred” all stick in your head immediately upon first listen, and “The Strong Prevail” and the title track offer well-timed doses of physicality while remaining accessible. Clearly not content with complacently repeating themselves on each record, Lazarus A.D. have shown a lot of savvy on Black Rivers Flow, and consequently appear poised to make a serious breakthrough. —Adrien Begrand
Macabre
8
Grim Scary Tales W i l l owt i p
Blood & Guts v.2.0
Twenty-five years into a career of “murder metal,” Macabre face the David Fincher/Alien 3 conundrum: How to follow up apotheosis? What more could the band that penned “Albert Was Worse Than Any Fish in the Sea,” “What the Heck Richard Speck (Eight Nurses You Wrecked),” the Unabomber EP, and a 26-track 2000 concept record exploring the life of Jeffery Dahmer (sample chapters: “Drill Bit Lobotomy,” “McDahmers,” “Into the Toilet With You”) possibly have to say regarding serial slaughter? On Grim Scary Tales, Macabre reply with 14 demented visits from the Ghost of Bloodbaths Past in sundry guises: the murderer of Emperor Claudius (“Locusta paid for her crimes in a manner that was typical / She was raped by trained giraffes then torn apart by animals”); 15th century Joan of Arc pal and child murderer Gilles De Rais (“Mostly boys, but girls as well / Rais would… cut them open and masturbate on entrails”); “The Ripper Tramp From France”; an enterprising World War I Berlin “sweet tender meat vender” (“He claimed the meat was beef or pork, butchered just for them / But it came from the prostitutes murdered by Grossman”); Lizzie Borden; Countess Bathory; assorted other legends of garrote and guillotine. Grim Scary Tales is not only a grotesque history lesson, however: It’s also an impressively eclectic slab of bizzaro metal, dealing out everything from solid metallic browbeatings and driving Sabbath riffage to insanely effective operatic epics (“Nero’s Inferno”), swirling proggy leads and raucous, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-with-geetars hillbilly rock (“The Bloody Benders”). There are missteps—“Big Bad Wolf” is a little too close to Green Jelly for comfort—but, overall, this odd, transgressive, audacious record will be like manna from the drill-hole in the head of a Dahmer acid zombie for those who can abide a healthy dose of absurdity in their brutality. —Shawn Macomber
Manuscripts Don’t Burn
6
The Breathing House Aural
Milk + toast
A trio rarely gets attention. And a duo—the White Stripes, the Black Keys, Jucifer, Black Cobra—seems to have a novelty value that starts even before they play. Yet a oneman band is a whole other thing. It’s a term longreserved for a guy (like Dick Van Dyke) who could play a whole bunch of shit at once. Those guys
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weren’t selling albums, though. Today, the studio enables a one-man band to strip away the cheesy harnesses and homemade rigs to get the sounds of a full band without having to jump around like a jackass-in-the-box. But even more, a guy like Davide Tiso, a.k.a. Manuscripts Don’t Burn, doesn’t have to be restricted. The founder of Italy’s Ephel Duath goes solo here, tackling the sounds of a full band on his Breathing House EP: a short collection of instrumental, slightly heavy, very similarsounding tracks. It’s a quick trip full of long, ambling guitar parts: a package of songs with no hooks, no choruses, nothing to grab onto, nothing to rock out to, and nothing to differentiate one track from those before and after it. It’s just heavy enough to not be atmospheric, and yet just ambient enough to fade into the walls. Maybe if Tiso had a bandmate around—someone to push it from average to exceptional—this would be a truly interesting contribution to the melodic post-rock genre. But as it is right now, there’s something big missing. —Leah Sottile
The Meads of Asphodel
9
The Murder of Jesus the Jew Candlelight
Can of worms, meet can opener
We’re going to wager there will be as many “commoners” offended by the title of these eclectic Brits’ fifth album as there will be heshers offended at the band’s disregard for convention—namely, but hardly limited to, the application of show tunes, psychedelic rock and horns to black metal. We’ve got better things to ponder, such as why, after listening to intro “Boiled in Hell Broth and Grave Dust,” which sounds like a buckshot-aerated calliope, the members of Meads are wearing medieval battle armor and not silk smoking jackets and monocles. If you’re really concerned, vocalist Metatron offers a 60,000+ word explanation of the album’s concept on their website (summary: it explores and chronicles the life and times of the man who has had his existence glorified into religion and culture by self-serving individuals). Meads, as an entity, appear designed to threaten the sensibilities of the faithful as well as those who like their music on the straight and narrow. They’re a pastiche of countless eras, sounds, genres and guest appearances, and fucking love Hawkwind way more than Alabamans love football and church on Sunday. The Murder of Jesus the Jew sounds like someone hired a drunk hummingbird to Slap Chop a record store specializing in prog metal and a religious studies library 8 8 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
together. It’s a pointless endeavor to quantitatively list the disparate mishmash of sounds and influences, just as it’s impossible to authoritatively conclude how Meads make their kitchen sink functional. This is an album that fist-fucks all the rules and boundaries, and that we’re able to mention show tunes, psychedelic rock, horns and black metal in the same sentence without vomiting on our shoes is an indicator of the successful irreverence of this beast. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
Neuraxis
7
Asylon
Prosthetic
Fed through the teeth machine
Pretzel riffs that break off from each other, turn at right angles, loop around like Tron light cycles. A growling beast so unintelligible that, while the words are most likely about killing technology and missing sequences and other subjects that have been around since Korgull the Exterminator roamed the earth, it’s reaching back to a pre-language communication that makes words entirely irrelevant. All that crammed into an exoskeleton that, even if it isn’t quite as shiny as the 2008 model, is so far advanced that it leaves other manufacturers of this style behind in the wasteland Sometimes I wonder if modern technical death metal is a genre devoted to going so far into the post-Skynet future and the pre-Mastodon past that it removes humanity from the equation entirely. Moreso than even industrial, this sounds like art created by brains welded inside steel bodies, an attempt to map the evolutionary tree growing into the nervous system branching into circuitry paths. While Neuraxis do it better than most, there’s something frightening about how little there is to connect with—triggered drums and precision guitar lasers blur by without even acknowledging the idea that music can be used to access an emotional database. It’s a beautiful machine, slick and gleaming and perfect, but it’s sort of like admiring an internal combustion engine that’s powering a construct that only exists to grind you between its gears until there’s nothing left. It succeeds at its task, but at what cost? —Jeff Treppel
Noisear
7
Subvert the Dominant Paradigm Relapse
Bryan Fajardo drops (yet another) muthafuckin’ blast beat
When Noisear use the title of their Relapse debut to implore listeners to Subvert the Dominant Para-
digm, we’re left to infer from song titles like “Information Highway to Hell,” “Gestapolis” and “Deformed by Society” that the band is referencing the Facebook/Walmart/9-ta’-5/ modern living paradigm rather than the blast-beating grindcore paradigm. Were it the latter, after all, this album might more aptly be called, say, Exalt the Dominant Paradigm or, perhaps, Man, Doesn’t the Paradigm Established by Brutal Truth’s Sounds of the Animal Kingdom and Kill Trend Suicide Fucking Rule?! (Yep, probably a good thing this is a record review and not an interview for a job in the Relapse PR department…) Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Noisear swagger with as much brutal savviness as one would expect from a band featuring members seasoned by tours of duty in Kill the Client and (cue celestial chorus) Gridlink. And Christ knows there are hordes of grind fans who prefer to mark the end of history as the approximate date in 1997 when Assück commenced selling copies of Misery Index out of the back of their van or bartering them for toilet paper or whatever principled, unsulliedby-capitalism exchange it was that took place at your VFW hall. To each his own, caveat emptor, etc: Subvert is 29 songs wound tightly around a hammering snare, none surpassing the 90-second mark. Growls. Blur-slab-blur guitar. Grade A, extree-primal concrete sledge minus the Radio Shack four-track shit engineering of the wanna-come-back-to-the-squatand-check-out-my-vinyl-collection? crowd. Only question is: Do you want to submit to the dominant paradigm in order to subvert it? —Shawn Macomber
Nox
7
Blood, Bones and Ritual Death Listenable
Stop me if you’ve heard this before... too late
After a good number of runs through this 18-minute EP, my reactions to it remain the same. The intro and outro are really cool. They’re both just guitars and bass. The intro is a sweep-picking extravaganza that makes me marvel at why anyone would sweep-pick for 90 seconds straight (early Fucking Champs come to mind). The outro is more toned-down, sort of a death metal version of Sunn O))). These strange choices would have been interesting had Nox built an entire record around them. Instead, they made Competent Death Metal Release #420,957. You already know what’s on it. One guy plays blast beats, another growls
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and everything proceeds at the speed of windmill hair per minute. It’s all perfectly executed. These guys have connections to other top-of-thesecond-tier Dutch death metal bands like Prostitute Disfigurement and Severe Torture. Evidently their idea of a side project from death metal is to make more death metal. Nox sound a little more evil and occult than these bands—more Deicide than, say, Malevolent Creation—but that’s like the difference between strawberry yogurt and strawberry banana yogurt. It’s still strawberryflavored yogurt. I like strawberry-flavored yogurt, and I like second-tier death metal. (Give me both at the same time, and my mind might explode!) But I know their value. I enjoy this stuff, I can’t tell any of it apart after the previous 420,956 iterations, and I can live without it. —Cosmo Lee
Owen Hart
9
Earth Control Vitriol
Take the plunge
“When the Iron Sheik got pulled over and arrested on the Jersey Turnpike, his career fell harder and faster than Owen Hart.” That’s the only joke about late Canadian wrestler Owen Hart I could find on the interweb—apparently, wrestling fans lack a sense of humor. Not sure how those nose-picking masses will react to a band that, for no discernible reason, calls itself Owen Hart. We’ll take it as a joke— the Tacoma group does seem to possess a wicked sense of humor (as suggested by song titles like “Poor White Straight Guy,” “Fuck Morrissey, Fuck the Smiths, Fuck the Cure” and the sadly not on this album “My Grandma’s Fucking a Tranny From Alaska”). But maybe they’d dig the aggression—this is pull-no-punches metal/ thrash, with more than a nod to Converge and Pacific Northwest peers the Accüsed. It’s lo-fi, lacking any sort of pretension, and on tracks like “Bombay Beach” and “Methlahem,” full of a focused rage that’s downright frightening. Cool moniker notwithstanding, frontman Timm Trust’s screeches and growls occasionally enter Mustaine territory on odd little spoken lines, which may remind ring fans of that terrible Megadeth wrestling song “Crush ’Em.” Given that OH are on Vitriol, the label owned and operated by members of Graf Orlock (the ’80s-action-movie-sampling thrashers), it shouldn’t really be a surprise that the group walks a line between funny, aggressive and outspoken. But the band succeeds for the music— this is metal that’ll get the people jumping from the rafters. And now we have a second dead Owen Hart joke! —Kirk Miller 9 0 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
---by Shane Mehling ----
nge
record reviews x c E h e a l d Nee
newnoise
in which we assess the damage done on this month's filthiest vinyl Iron Lung/Walls/Pig Heart Transplant Public Humiliation 12-inch [Iron Lung]
“Public Humiliation” must be referring to everyone who was in a band and saw this show. Iron Lung are guitar and drums power grind titans, and along with two side projects, Walls and Pig Heart Transplant, they absolutely mouthfucked Seattle on Halloween in 2008. This combination of blasts, screams, hypnotic sludge, acrid electronics and a Big Black cover is just too intense to pass on. lifeironlungdeath.blogspot.com
Stone Axe I 12-inch [Ripple Music] With a member of classic rock big riffers Mos Generator, Stone Axe seem to be less concerned with cannonfire guitars and more with bluesier, melodic songs that are performed competently, polished perfectly and sound real, real bland. Real bland. If you are super into ’70s rock, please pick this up. But beforehand, take one moment and ask yourself, “Why in the hell am I still super into ’70s rock?” www.ripple-music.com
Hirax/Violator Raging Thrash 7-inch [Black Devil] In a cool generational thrash move, Hirax, the legendary band featuring Katon W. De Pena that formed in 1982, has released this split with Brazilian outfit Violator, who started in 2002. Oddly, Hirax’s track is much cleaner and betterproduced, but both bands deliver the goods with… well, you know what thrash sounds like, and this thrash is pretty killer. www.blackdevilrecords.com
Josh Lay/Teeth Collection Collaboration 12-inch/CD-R [Factotum Tapes/Husk]
If you like noise, you are in motherfucking luck. This beautiful handscreened album is both a collaboration and some solo tracks from two din experts. The LP and attached CD-R come in at over 90 minutes of rasping, knob-gyrating chaos. From shortwave radio blips to oceanic rumbles to jittery squalls of feedback, this probably isn’t the first stop for noise virgins, but there is a lot aptitude and refinement present. And there is just so goddamn much of it. huskrecords.blogspot.com/
Lose the ’Tude
Lose the ’Tude 7-inch [Sacred Plague] Take the last two sentences from the Stone Axe review and replace “’70s rock” with the words “old-school hardcore.” www.sacredplague.com/
Benoit Pioulard Little a Strongly More Grow I 7-inch [People in a Position to Know]
This single song has to be mentioned because it’s a haunting harmonium piece that’s incredibly lo-fi, wonderfully understated and has been pressed onto one side of a fucking picnic plate. Yeah, like the thin red plates you throw ribs and potato salad on has been cut into some shitty octagon and is ready for your stereo. Apparently the label does a bunch of stuff like this, but right now all I can recommend is this rad piece of oddness, which is limited to a “hurry the fuck up” run of 66 copies. sota.llarian.net/PIAPTK/
newnoise Pendulum
1
Immersion
Warner Music Group
A rave error
This review was initially written in the span of the first six-and-a-half-minute song. It was like a fugue state that ended with a compendium of insult after insult that picked apart the generic, almost abusive electronica-rock rubbish that was expelling from my speakers. And this was before I heard the vocals. What can I say about Pendulum’s Immersion that hasn’t been said about shitting your pants in a restaurant? This is the kind of music that you hear in foreign movies and think, “The radio sucks, but at least I’m not in that dance club right now.” I would love to be more erudite, but the bottom line is this is music for stupid babies. I mean, would I rather listen to modern R&B? Like actually choose to listen to the new record by Maxwell instead? Actually, I think I would. Hell, I’d rather hear a mob of women laugh at my failure to maintain an erection
than plow through “Watercolour” again. The reason I’m not giving Pendulum a zero is because maybe, like certain forms of extreme music, there is a level of skill and taste that I’m just not accustomed to and can’t appreciate. Possibly if someone more versed in the genre pinpointed the highlights and explained why these are revolutionary or awe-inspiring, I’d realize that I just wasn’t giving Immersion a fair shake. But the reason I’m giving it a one is because if I’m wrong, I don’t want to be right. —Shane Mehling
Primate
7
Draw Back a Stump Scion A/V
Familiarity breeds comfort and confusion, but not contempt
This is what happens when you pay more mind to the riffs instead of where the riffs come from, and when you don’t have an autistic’s capacity for recollecting the minutiae of every recording ever recorded since 1976. In all honesty, after the first spin of Draw Back a Stump, we weren’t
so much enthralled with the all-star lineup (which includes members of Brutal Truth, Mastodon and the Despised) as we were wondering whether all these songs were covers. “Drinking and Driving,” obviously, but even the participants would be f-f-f-foolin’ themselves if they believed the scintillating, ascending riffs of “Global Division” or “Hellbound”’s rawkin’ call-and-response fury has never, in the course of extreme music’s history, been played by other four-chord-obsessed monkeys in full or in part. Seriously, “Reform” could have originally appeared on the b-side of some obscure Scandinavian D-beat comp we passed on because its cover would have meant another black-andwhite WWII atrocity photo in our collection. But whatever the origins of Draw Back a Stump’s tracks, the familiarity of Extreme Noise Terror, Raw Power, Black Flag, Disfear and Poison Idea always works. Outside the fluid soloing, there’s nothing here even your morbidly obese aunt Kathy hasn’t heard in some form or fashion. However, unlike the repetition spawned by old-school death metal, hearing a handful of two-minute hardcore punk/grind blazers like these will always get you tearing
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record reviews
along Pennsylvania Ave. at 40 mph above the limit in an airbrushed Corvette while soaking your armpits in Jim Beam and firing a paintball Uzi at every passerby wearing a necktie and carrying an attaché case. Symbolically, at least. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
Serpent Throne 8 White Summer. Black Winter
T r a n s l at i o n L o ss
Divine snakes
The teenager living in you—the one taking bong rips in your parents’ basement and blowing the smoke out the window through a dryer sheet—is so fucking stoked right now. Because Serpent Throne, the instrumental, riff-heavy Philadelphia band—to that kid—is the best band walking the planet right now. And only because Black Sabbath aren’t. Serpent Throne are unapologetic headbangers in the church of Sabbath and Judas Priest. Rip-offs? Maybe. But, honestly, if something shreds, do you really take the time to give a fuck? What Serpent Throne will get you thinking is that maybe all those other bands didn’t actually need a vocalist. Maybe the riffs could have been doing the talking all along. From the very beginning of White Summer. Black Winter, the band flips the calendar back to 1972. And it stays there, never daring to include any tool that a hard rock band during the Nixon administration couldn’t have used. But that, arguably, could be the only thing holding Serpent Throne back. Are they restricting themselves by not adding their own modern touch to a sound that has been proven successful long before their time? Perhaps. Either way, this band not only revives a sound of a bygone era; they’ve reanimated the corpse and are happily walking around in it again. —Leah Sottile
Toxaemia
7
Buried to Rise: 1990-1991 Discography Dark Descent
Moldy oldies
OK, have to admit that Dark Descent’s treatment of Toxaemia’s discography is rather unique. Divided into two discs—one unfucked-with and the other remixed and remastered by studio whiz Dan Swanö—Buried to Rise sports the Kaleidoscopic Lunacy and Buried to Rot demos, as well as the invisible orangeworthy Beyond the Realm EP. Plus, during the discovery phase, someone—presumably Mr. 9 2 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
Swanö—found five unreleased songs, of which “Force of Plague” and “The Acquisition” are the best cuts. So, old-school death heads, the kind that put dinner on Necroharmonic’s table, are treated to 68 minutes of rare Swedish death. And it’s mostly worth it. Assembled chronologically, with the newfound deathly slabs acting as between-demo/ EP buffers (“Force of Plague,” “The Acquisition”) and endcaps (“Kaleidoscopic Lunacy,” “Immolation of Justice”), Buried to Rise treats Stockholm Sound junkies like damned royalty. But here’s the thing with Toxaemia: After the group’s debut demo, they opted for an American style instead of Swedish. Beyond the Realm is undeniably informed by Death, Obituary and Incantation. As such, the Swedes transition from eerie and screechy (reference point: Cemetery’s An Evil Shade of Grey) to thick and thunderous. Can’t say which of Toxaemia’s musical “periods” are better, but, more often than not, the songs are there. And, hey, if that’s not enough, the 12-page booklet and liners by bassist Pontus Cervin provide enough insight to understand the hows and whys of Toxaemia’s short-lived jaunt from Central Sweden to Central Florida. Even though the reissue rage has, more or less, mined death metal’s most valuable assets (Evocation, Crematory, Grave, Convulse, Gorement, etc.), labels like Dark Descent continue to find more in the basement. Keep digging, dudes! —Chris Dick
Vreid
9
V
Indie Recordings
Future shock
The liner notes and lyrics of Vreid’s V are festooned with highbrow quotes from/allusions to the great works of Rousseau, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard and others. When it came to selecting an epigraph to really tie the band’s fifth album together, however, the blackened Norwegian quartet settled on a spot of sciencedropping from Alexis de Tocqueville: “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” The line perfectly encapsulates the tenor of this ambitious, audacious and, ultimately, fantastic record. Vreid hoist the essence of their earlier efforts here like a torch, not to bask in the glow of past accomplishments—insert obligatory mention of three-fourths of the band’s previous membership in the majestic and mighty Windir, which disbanded in 2004 after founder Valfar died a true black metal death walking to a cabin in a snowstorm—but, rather, to illuminate a bolder
way forward… into the darkness, natch. Black metal violence, hard rock textures and nuances, pungent abrasiveness that seamlessly segues into soaring melodic passages, primordial bludgeoning sharing space alongside clever, cerebral atmospherics—V is easily Vreid’s finest hour, an album that pulls off the rare feat of shucking away constraints while simultaneously maintaining a grip on the band’s (damned, obvs.) soul. Vreid are not alone among Northern European metal bands in their affinity for aggrandizing local history. (The 2007 album I Krig, for example, was based on the poetry of World War II Norwegian resistance fighter Gunnar Reiss-Andersen.) But on V the band sounds like the extreme metal future. —Shawn Macomber
White Arms of Athena
7
Astrodrama
S e a s o n o f M i st
Heliocomedy
I feel old when I listen to White Arms of Athena. Not so much because of the tender ages of the Mesquite, TX band’s members—that matters not, as these guys have the polished chops of lifelong shredders and a compositional sensibility that many older progressive metal musicians would gladly sell their ponytails to attain. More because the degree of influence that Between the Buried and Me have over WAOA’s debut Astrodrama suggests that the still-youthful dudes in BTBAM have become elder statesmen. Astrodrama’s producer Jamie King, who’s also twiddled knobs for most of the BTBAM records, must have noticed how the album’s 10 tracks flow into one continuous through-composed piece à la Colors. Astrodrama jitterbugs among the same tech-death churn, baptismal fusion jazz, heroic clean-sung sections and old-fashioned sweep-picking orgies as BTBAM, too. It’s slavish for sure, but Astrodrama is a hundred times more listenable than BTBAM have been since Alaska. Song lengths are short, the clean vocals are totally charismatic and, most importantly, the component parts feel smoothly integrated. In fact, they don’t even sound like component parts—it’s as if WAOA are writing in one super-colorful meta-genre. Even the alternately shredding and soothing, three-part instrumental suite during the album’s middle third feels necessary to the arc of the album. “Expressed through thoughts and rhythmic patterns, we do this for you” the vocalist screams to close out the album over a groovy stutter-riff. We can tell, and we appreciate it, guys. —Etan Rosenbloom
horror
Richard Christy’s Defiling The Gate or Ishtar? Even with a 36-year-old brain as beer-soaked
as mine, I still remember walking down Main Street in Fort Scott, KS in the early summer of 1987 like it was yesterday. I had two choices of movies to see at the old Fox Twin Cinemas, and what a tough choice it was: 1987’s horror classic The Gate, featuring a nerd who’s into heavy metal, or I could see… Ishtar. Even though I’ve made some bad decisions in my life (asking Santa Claus for Eddie Murphy’s How Could It Be, featuring “Party All the Time,” when I was 11 years old being prominent among them), I’m happy to say that the right decision was made that day, as I chose to see The Gate. I loved it. I mean, how can you not love a movie featuring heavy metal and demons when you’re 12 years old? The Gate starred
Better Off Dead
Splatterhouse is all guts, no glory by Chris Dick
Revered by gamers (and reviled by content-
concerned parents) bored of side-scrolling street brawlers like Double Dragon and Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja, the original late ’80s Splatterhouse offered the most amount of blood, body parts and spiked 2x4s for the least amount of coin. Where it was short on story, it was long on brutality. The Namco-produced title was tailored to longhairs into thrash/death metal and horror movies. What other options did the metallic faith have at arcades and at home? Tommy Lasorda Baseball and ESWAT: Cyber Police? As if. Eighteen years after the final Splatterhouse title, Splatterhouse 3, Namco Bandai resurrected the franchise to capitalize on current-gen hardware and software advancements—much to the 9 4 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
a young actor named Stephen Dorff, years before he went through puberty and turned into a young studmuffin known for being neck-deep in Hollywood snatch. I think God rewarded Stephen Dorff with fame and studliness because he felt bad about giving him such a dorky-sounding name. I wonder if he’s related to Dorf from Dorf on Golf fame? I doubt it. Sorry, back to The Gate. My favorite character in the film is Terry, who is Stephen Dorff’s nerdylooking neighbor, although there’s nothing nerdy about this kid because he’s into heavy metal! All hell breaks loose in the neighborhood after he plays a heavy metal album called The Dark Book by the fictitious satanic band Sacrifyx (whose album cover bears an uncanny resemblance to the classic metal album None Shall Defy by Infernal Majesty. I remember entering a contest to name the None Shall Defy album cover mascot in 1987 on Much Music Canada’s classic heavy metal show The Pepsi Power Hour. I think the name I entered was “Herbie,” so it’s no surprise I didn’t win).
grim delight of gore-obsessed beat ’em up fans. The carnage is more realistic, sound effects are juicier, and levels (potentially) scarier and harrier thanks to advanced graphics processors, improved physics and a myriad of design options. In short, Splatterhouse is more fantastic than the originals. But does that means it’s better? We’re going have to squish heads, rip bodies in half and pop a few eyeball pustules to find out. Like the first Splatterhouse, Rick and Jennifer are in Dr. West’s mansion. Jennifer is kidnapped by Dr. West. Rick is left for dead when suddenly a mask (voiced by Jim Cummings of Darkwing Duck fame) offers Rick life and the return of his sweetie pie. With death staring our useless protag in the face and an eternity without poon, Rick puts on the mask, only to instantly Hulkify into a killing machine. In Rick’s path are hordes of snarling, oozing, deformed humanoids. They’re dumb and deadly. Mostly dumb. On the surface, Splatterhouse is a standard beat ’em up. Rick goes room to room to find, to slight
Anyway, the little demons that crawl out from the hole in Stephen Dorff’s backyard in The Gate scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. They look similar to the creatures in the Ray Harryhausen films, and are pretty darned scary even when I watch the movie today. So, if you want to check out a Goosebumps-style horror movie that has Satanic heavy metal, scary little demon creatures and a young Stephen Dorff, then I definitely recommend The Gate! For my heavy metal pick this month, since the album The Dark Book by the band Sacrifyx from doesn’t exist (just like the album Nagelbett by the band Autobahn in The Big Lebowski), I’m picking the next best thing: the 1987 album Forward to Termination by the great Canadian band Sacrifice. Like Infernal Majesty, VoiVod, Anvil, Lee Aaron and many other great Canadian metal acts, I discovered Sacrifice thanks to my parents’ enormous satellite dish, which took up half of our front yard and enabled me to watch—again— The Pepsi Power Hour back in the 1980s. So, make sure you check out The Gate and crank up some Sacrifice with your friends next time you feel like “Raising a Little Hell”! A
Horror and metal fiends, email me at richard@richardchristy.com
dismay, nearly catatonic nasties (the enemy AI is, uh, reserved) who want Rick dead. Turn Dr. West’s necrobiological baddies into blood food (literally) using weak and strong attacks, and move on. After Rick powers up, more moves become available. Naturally, enemies become stronger and Rick must adjust his attack strategy, but really it’s a one-button mashfest. What hurts Splatterhouse isn’t the over-the-top blood ‘n’ guts stuff or the ’80s-style horror movie backdrops, but the uneven controls, level repetition, ungodly load times and frustrating camera. All of these things conspire against Splatterhouse, a game meant for everyone who bought God of War 3, but ended up exclusively for dudes who read Fangoria and troll sites like Horrorgothsluts.com. True, the in-game soundtrack—comprised of music from Goatwhore, the Haunted, Terrorizer, Mastodon, the Accüsed, and more—is a refreshing change from Papa Roach, Buckcherry and My Darkest Days, but there’s precious little in Splatterhouse to keep Deci-nerds occupied past a single play-through. That includes the unlockables in Splatterhouse, Splatterhouse 2 and Splatterhouse 3. A
makeup by Brian Spears at G&S Effects. photos Bryan haeffele
subculture
undertones
d e c i b e l : f e b r u a r y 2 0 11 : 9 5
False Wishful Thinking Edition
T
hose guys who it turned out had written the first four Megadeth albums in exchange for an 8-ball of tweak, and then they tried to make an album under their own names only nobody gave a shit, so Dave Mustaine held a televised press conference at which he tapped the Styrofoam-tipped mic twice, said something about video games, and then disappeared into a cloud of stage-magic special effects. Red smoke, blue smoke, you remember. Megadeth. Or that one guy
from Kansas who ran for Congress and won, and people were being like “I hope he represents our district and its needs or we will vote him out of office,” and then his first act as state senator was to read an entire Jon Lord B-3 solo into the Congressional record, and he was like “wowwwww-waaaoww-waaowww” on C-SPAN and then all the other Congress dudes played air guitar. Or that newscaster lady who after her co-anchor said “and now here’s Becca with more” turned toward some imaginary director in the wings and said “could we take this over to the human sacrifice camera?” and sat there very professionally smiling for a full minute, and then turned gracefully toward camera two, returning to her script (“Sad 9 6 : m a r c h 2 0 11 : d e c i b e l
news from the South Plains Mall tonight…”) while the rest of the crew exhaled collectively because everybody had been certain some shit was about to go down. Or that mini-tribe of blackened thrash dudes in Rapid City who gave themselves diphtheria and then went on tour through South Dakota and down into northern Iowa, and their live show was really good so they sold a lot of T-shirts and keychains, and every person who stopped by the merch table got infected and some of them died and it was sad. Or, you know who, what about that mechanic at the import place? Do you remember that dude? With the bodies in the rusted Volvo. Fuckin’, that guy. Or that other guy, the one who bought out the existing Wild
Rags stock and then shot a half-hour infomercial hawking the stuff, and it was totally cheap, so “Wild Rags!” became an internet thing for a week there, and by the end of it super-L7 people like your mom and shit were all trying to say “Wild Rags!” to get laughs, and all the old-school dudes were like, if I ever see that Wild Rags infomercial guy on the street, I am going to beat his ass so bad he never gets up. And they meant it. Or what about the time we all were checking out the Master’s Hammer box set, and we were kind of stoned, and Todd’s like, “Let’s just really worship Satan and see what happens!” and Billy’s like, “Todd, don’t be gay,” but then Todd starts saying some kind of chant to Satan which he was totally making up as he went along, but then the room starts to get cold and everybody shuts up and then it’s just Todd and his chanting, and then the devil actually walks in, like walking on two legs like a normal man walks in, and says, “You fucking rang?” and rips out Todd’s eyes and makes Billy eat them while everybody watches? What about that time? Miss the good old days sometimes. A
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