Decibel #044 - June 2008 by Red Flag Media

CANNIBAL CORPSE

e xt r e m e ly e xt r e m e

d ec i b e l m ag a z i n e .c o m

DEATH METAL LEGENDS DEFILE THE HALL OF FAME WITH Tomb of the Mutilated

“People don’t really like my ass” —MAX CAVALERA TESTAMENT thrash of the titans

THE SWORD heads will roll

IRON MAIDEN

l iv e a f t e r d e at h

plus witch torche withered dead child brain drill soilent green don caballero unearthly trance mourning beloveth

TsHhRoASwHdToRIwVInA OLD

SCHOOL

NEW

SCHOOL

JUNE 2008 // No. 044

ext rem ely extre me

June 2008 // No. 44

www.decibelmagazine.com

reviews 85

lead review Testament are the latest thrash gods to invoke the few good things about the ’80s, courtesy of The Formation of Damnation

album reviews Records to soundtrack five more months of waterboarding, including Deicide, Textures, Black Tide, No Age and Century

108 music dvds Check out the big brains on Profanatica 109 culture Three Shadows fall

upfront 10

letters Eau de Lardhammer

news Next best thing to a Botch reunion

studio report Withered draft 10 perfect circles

will consider trades Pacific northwasteland

cry now, cry later Courtroom gutsfuck

live reviews The DEP bug out in Prague

COVER STORY

features

Shredding like they’ve never shred before 26

torche Thirty minutes or less, guaranteed

dead child Bowing to the metal gods

call & response Don Cab drummer puts his signature on Meshuggah

the sword Irony is a dead scene

q&a: max cavalera Bros before hos

witch We talkin’ bout practice?!

testament Reformation of the Big Fifth

soilent green Survival sickness

thrash metal trivia showdown

Number 22? Iron Maiden’s Live After Death is the number one extreme concert experience of all time

What a wicked game to play 68

the decibel hall of fame Cannibal Corpse’s Tomb of the Mutilated weaved a tapestry of obscenities that, as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Erie

firewind

brain drill Reefer madness

veil of maya Uncommon sense

mourning beloveth Irish eyes are bleeding

russian circles Easy on the hard stuff

unearthly trance This is their last resort

COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS: ROSS HALFIN

hennes siste høst If Norwegian would, could you?

eternal lord Metalcore no more

Decibel (ISSN 1550-6614) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $19.95. 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© 2008 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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PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

EDITOR -IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

MANAGING EDITOR

ART D IR ECTOR

Tattoo outline by Patrick Haney

just words

SENIOR EDITOR

I have a confession: I have no tat-

toos. Hell, I’ve never even had any piercings either—though I came from the editor dangerously close to getting a nose ring hoop my freshman year of college (hey, it looked cool on Lee Dorrian and Barney Greenway!). Anyway, the truth is I could never find a design that I imagined I could be satisfied with for the rest my life. Or maybe I’m just a huge pussy. Thankfully, Decibel’s customer service guru and resident human canvas Mark Evans has no such aversions to ink. In fact, he’s long threatened to actually get a Decibel tattoo. Crazy, right? After causally mentioning this desire to our good neighbors down the street at Philadelphia Eddie’s Chinatown Tattoo, artists David Steele and Patrick Haney proposed to ink an old dB logo on him for free. Without the support of drugs or alcohol, Mark took them Philadelphia Eddie’s Chinatown Tattoo up on the offer. 904 Arch St., “Now it totally makes it difficult for you Philadelphia, PA 19107 guys to fire me,” he said, showing it off the 215.440.9997 next day. www.myspace.com/ I guess he’s smarter than I thought. chinatowntattoo —Albert Mudrian, Editor-In-Chief Tattoo shading by David Steele

June 2008 // No. 44 CONTRIBUTING W RITERS

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Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Shawn Bosler Brent Burton Damien John Darnielle Jerry A. Deathburger Chris Dick Jeanne Fury Nick Green Joe Gross Jess Harvell Chauncey Kosciuszko Cosmo Lee Daniel Lukes David McNamee Shane Mehling Kirk Miller Andrew Parks Eugene Robinson Scott Seward Mookie Singerman Rod Smith Zach Smith Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Nick Terry Christopher Weingarten

albert@redflagmedia.com

Andrew Bonazelli

andrew@redflagmedia.com

Jamie Leary

jamie@redflagmedia.com

Patty Moran

patty@redflagmedia.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Chris Kaye

CO NTRIBUTING ARTIST

Paul Romano

DESIGNER

Bruno Guerreiro

PRODUCTIO N

Lucas Hardison, Megan Hughes

ADVER TISING MANAGE R

extremely extreme

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212.490.2079 INDIE LABEL ADVER TISING

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CONTRIBUTING PH OTOGR APHE RS

CUSTOMER SERVICE

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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 $19.95. 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© 2008 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA

8 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

ISSN 1557-2137

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letterbombs *

Decibel Readers Sound Off

THE STENCH OF BIXLER-ZAVALA

SLAYER RULEZ! BENNETT DROOLZ!

First, hats off for the informative, intelligent and thoughtful interview with Glen Benton [April ’08, #42]. Benton is a figure who’s so commonly blown off as crazy and stupid—yet people take Gaahl so seriously!—that it’s refreshing to read someone asking him good questions about real band issues. Second, in response to the young lady in the [April] issue regarding the new Mars Volta: Fuck off. The fact that you haven’t heard something this good since Hypnotize and Mesmerize is telling, as both of those albums are mediocre at best. The Mars Volta have become complacent and self-indulgent, and just because it’s “psychedelic” doesn’t make it original. Finally, this is arguably the best metal magazine on the rack these days, even if you guys really don’t need to suck Genghis Tron’s cock a bit. Stay metal! —Christopher Krovatin

Thanks for publishing D.X. Ferris’ excellent story on the first two legs of Slayer’s Reign in Blood U.S. Tour [April ’08, #42]. The brilliant piece rounded out a kickass issue with great articles about Meshuggah and Mastodon that was heavier than a lunch line at Burger King. Except for J. Bennett’s usual irrelevant, self-aggrandizing, ego-stroking bullshit, the issue was perfect. Ferris’ insight into the most important album from the greatest American metal band of the last 25 years was exceptional. I can’t wait to read to read his book, 33 1/3: Reign in Blood, from which this story was a leftover chapter. —Matt Gorey Brunswick, OH

Got something to say? Email your letters to info@decibelmagazine.com

PROOF YOU CAN ENJOY DECIBEL AND J. BENNETT I want to thank you for your continuing coverage on the various facets of metal(lic) music. Your recent Hall of Fame entries (Converge’s Jane Doe, Opeth’s Orchid and Mastodon’s Remission) have made me nearly piss myself in delight. However, the main focus of my letter is to point out the good job by your writers, particularly one J. Bennett. I am the editor of my

READER OF THE

MONTH Luke Physioc

Do you see any evidence of metal fans living in that part of the world? No. My job actually deals with talking to the Iraqis a great deal. They are always showing me videos on their cell phones of them dancing around to their music, and it’s the traditional type of Arabic music. However, they are very big into European MTV. So you get a lot of super lame European techno crap and top 40 type stuff on MTV. You don’t see a lot of the traditional Arabian dress over here in the cities either, they are more Westernized.

Are the listening tastes of your comrades on the heavy and aggressive side? The immediate guys I work with are not fans of metal at all. However, the dudes I roll out of the gate with are totally into it. It’s not uncommon to walk past a truck and hear some Metallica or Slayer playing. I am working on getting them to the more extreme side of the genre, too. So far At the Gates and Carcass are really big hits, but a lot of people have a very difficult time with the vocals. And for some reason High on Fire and Baroness are loved by some of the guys, which really brings a smile to my face.

What are you Top Five records for entering battle? Oh man, we are in a veritable heyday for awesome metal right now. I tend to go to opposite ends of the fence with the more chaotic grind, and then sludgy doom. Every Pig Destroyer record is on blast quite a bit, and I am also playing a ton of Plague Bringer and Insect Warfare as well. As for the slower end of the spectrum, I have been playing a lot of older Eyehategod and Graves at Sea. I have to thank my wife Rachelle and Mark Evans and the rest of the people at the Decibel forum for sending some very thoughtful care packages that are stocked with some excellent records; thanks for keeping me up to date guys!

Would Serj Tankian last one minute over there? The dude from Syndrome of a Down? No, I am glad you bring him up though. I am so tired of him and the rest of the musicians who talk about Iraq like their opinion matters and they have the “responsibility as an artist” to “open peoples’ eyes.” Whatever, man. Not that I like your music at all, but why aren’t you over here doing a USO show? If you wanna speak so loudly about your opinion of activities going on over here, why not come over and talk to us? If we could get someone like Henry Rollins over here, I am sure we could set up something for a guy who does a semi-decent impersonation of Jello Biafra. Hell, even Yellowcard was here.

Baghdad, IRAQ via Ft. Polk, LA

You’re in the military. Exactly how metal is Iraq? Remember Mad Max? Mad Max lives here. Sweeping deserts of nothing, and then the absolute nastiest metropolis you could ever imagine. This place is covered in garbage, corruption and other bits of nastiness. That being said, there is the other side of the Mad Max aesthetic. We drive around a city in armored vehicles, however we please, and we are wearing about 80 extra lbs of armor and firepower. I am basically living in the music video that Bolt Thrower never made.

10 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

campus newspaper and constantly find myself looking to writers in the newspaper, magazine and literary worlds as inspirations. Much like music, the best writers (and bands) mine their influences and create something all their own. However, the spirit of Bennett’s writing has led him to become one of my most endearing influences. I occasionally get to write music reviews for my own publication and try to highlight metal and/or experimental music as much as possible. But lately I have found myself surrounded by an “aura of Bennett” as my writing has become more caustic and acerbic. I don’t try to ape anyone on your staff, but rather allow myself to become more carefree and open in thinking. Likewise, the other writers on the Decibel staff express creative muscles that keep me reading month after month. Some could argue the entertaining personalities and stories you find in the metal world almost write the stories themselves, but other publications prove to me that this is just not true. It seems more thought goes into Decibel’s words. I started reading your publications years ago because you provided the best coverage of heavy music, but columns like “Cry Now, Cry Later” are what makes the magazine stand above everyone else for me. Keep up the good work, you talented bastards. —Marty Finley Richmond, KY

news

new releases 36 CRAZYFISTS The Tide and Its Takers (FERRET) 5/28

ANNIHILATOR Metal (SPV) 1/15 A BREATH BEFORE SURFACING Death Is Swallowed in Victory (MEDIASKARE) 5/27 ABYSMAL DAWN Programmed to Consume (RELAPSE) 5/13

ALETHEIAN Dying Vine (IRONCLAD/METAL BLADE) 5/13

THE ANALYST Summoning the Wretched (INNERSTRENGTH) 5/20

THE BAKERTON GROUP The Bakerton Group (SEASON OF MIST) 5/27

BURNING SKIES Greed.Filth.Abuse. Corruption (LIFEFORCE) 5/13 BURZUM Anthology (CANDLELIGHT) 5/13

COLDWORKER Rotting Paradise (RELAPSE) 5/13

Strait Edge Botch barker Dave Verellen’s Roman holiday ends with the rise of Narrows

COMMUNIC Payment of Existence (NUCLEAR BLAST) 5/30 DARK FUNERAL Attera Totus Sanctus Part 2 DVD (REGAIN) 5/22 DEAD SHAPE FIGURE The Grand Karoshi (SEASON OF MIST) 5/19

EMMURE The Respect Issue (VICTORY) 5/13 ENCLAVE Paradise of Putrefaction (INFERNA PROFUNDUS) 5/1

ENGEL Absolute Design (SPV/STEAMHAMMER) 5/20

In perhaps the only cliché they willfully

embraced over an almost decade-long career, Botch left it all out on the stage in their final show. Members of opening acts Harkonen and Playing Enemy joined the quartet to form a guerrilla guitarmy, hammering away at We Are the Romans closing dirge “Man the Ramparts” (“Ram the Man Parts” if you’re nasty), sealing the deal on the Seattle mathcore titans’ unprolific but influential lifespan. Since then, guitarist Dave Knudson and bassist Brian Cook have lent their talents to popular offshoots Minus the Bear and These Arms Are Snakes, respectively, but mouthpiece Dave Verellen has been sadly mute the last six years, drumming in country-folk oddity Roy with brother Ben (Harkonen’s mastermind), getting hitched and serving six Western Washington communities as a firefighter/paramedic for Central Pierce Fire and Rescue. Well, thank the fuck Christ, the muzzle is off, courtesy of bona fide Seattle/London supergroup Narrows. “I missed singing in a band,” Verellen reasons via email, “and I guess Botch has been in the ground long enough for me to feel OK about finding another wife in heavy music.” The hell with infidelity: Based on the snippet of “Life Vests Float, Kids Don’t” from the quintet’s forthcoming Deathwish 7-inch, Verellen’s “rebound” from Botch to Narrows may resemble Brad Pitt’s from Aniston to Jolie. Narrows were born last fall when Verellen, drummer Sam Stothers (Quarantine, Makeout Boys) 12 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

and Unbroken/Some Girls bassist Rob Moran experimented with other extreme Seattle luminaries until Ryan Frederiksen (These Arms Are Snakes) and Londonite Jodie Cox (Tropics/Bullet Union) filled in the blanks. Although most of the players have full-time gigs, they diligently traded ideas via email for Narrows’ as yet untitled full-length Deathwish debut (“Life Vests Float” is exclusive to the 7-inch teaser). Despite their geographic limitations—Moran is moving back to San Diego, further complicating that “Seattle/London” MySpace tag—all parties think that one-off shows and short tours may be a reality. Although the project will surely resemble the sum of its parts, Narrows will inevitably be hailed as Verellen’s overdue triumphant return, a boot in the face to an armada of imitators. Yet the frontman has no resentment about Botch worship. “How can you be annoyed with praise and acceptance?” he asks. “I love Botch fans because they usually aren’t flavor-of-the-month hipster dudes who want to impress their girlfriends; they’re music fans. I think Narrows is for music fans, too.” Just don’t expect any world tours. Homeboy still has lives to save, after all. “I’ll never compromise my career for something else unless it can surpass it in every way, which isn’t possible. I have had the two best jobs in the world, and to get to do them at the same time is just the best.” —ANDREW BONAZELLI

D E C I B E L’ S

CLIPS OF THE MONTH

[ VIDEO-ON-DEMAND: GET YOUR FIX ]

KINGDOM OF SORROW

LEAD US INTO DEMISE

THE SWORD

FIRE LANCES OF THE ANCIENT HYPERZEPHYRIAN

ANIMOSITY

TEETH GRINDER

IRON MAIDEN

ACES HIGH (LIVE)

Visit the official Decibel channel at Metal Injection http://www.metalinjection.tv/decibel

news

now slaying Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records we spun the most while accepting softball game challenges from Relapse Records (Those hillbillies from Upper Darby are so dead):

Closet Metalheads Hip-hop satirist MC Lars puts black metal on blast (beat)

Andrew Nielsen—a.k.a. MC Lars—is like an

army of giant teddy bears at an all-you-can-eat sundae bar in a restaurant constructed entirely out of Lego blocks: Everything about this guy is good, friendly, G-rated fun. On his self-released 2006 full-length The Graduate, the 26-year-old “post-punk laptop rapper” updated “Weird” Al Yankovic-style parody for the MySpace set with a series of willfully dorky and erudite rhymes about Hot Topic fashion, emo and illegal music downloads. He books his own tours and self-releases his records, and he’d probably be solid boyfriend material for your sister. And when he’s not rescuing kittens from trees, he fills his time by lighting candles and listening to black metal. At least, that’s what Nielsen did in 2006 when he moved to Brooklyn and shared an apartment with Mike Kennedy, the guitarist for Bloodsimple and Vision of Disorder. “After reading Lords of Chaos, I got stuck on the idea of making a song about religion and hypocrisy,” he explains. “We were listening to Mayhem, Emperor and Gorgoroth and I loved the sound of those records—that giant sonic wall. I even picked out a title— ‘Church Burner’—but haven’t had a chance to finish the song yet. It’ll probably end up having a straight-

up beat, though. I just can’t figure out a way to put rap and black metal together without it sounding 100% corny.” Anyone who’s heard Nielsen rattling off his list of metal favorites (Anthrax, Slayer, Bile) on his duet with Ill Bill on The Graduate shouldn’t be completely surprised by his hesh influences. According to Nielsen, he listened to nothing but Metallica and Pantera for years and never paid attention to rap until he got hip to Onyx through Biohazard. “It goes without saying that RunD.M.C.’s Raising Hell is the epitome of rap and rock coming together,” he notes. “But rap-metal really seemed to have its day in the mid ’90s, didn’t it? There was actually tons of cool stuff going on: the Judgment Night soundtrack, Rage Against the Machine, Gravediggaz. It was proof that hip-hop could be every bit as dark and heavy as metal.” Still, fans hoping for the perfect MC Lars rapmetal hybrid will have to wait. “I was hoping to unlock the secret when I ran into Scott Ian at a party and started asking him about working with Public Enemy,” he laughs. So did the Anthrax axeman have any advice to share? “Yeah! He told me it would be a good idea if I stopped bothering him.” —NICK GREEN

I just can’t figure out a way to put rap and black metal together without it sounding 100% corny.

14 : JUNE 0 8 : DECIBEL

Albert Mudrian : E D I T O R I N C H I E F Nachtmystium, Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1 Entombed, Clandestine Portishead, Third Anathema, Serenades Witch, Paralyzed ------------------------------ ---Andrew Bonazelli : M A N A G I N G E D I T O R Down, III: Over the Under Opeth, Deliverance/Damnation Ulver, Blood Inside Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts I-IV Gadget, The Funeral March ------------------------------ ---Patty Moran : S E N I O R E D I T O R Gary Numan, Replicas Jimmy Smith, Cool Blues The Amps, Pacer Dee Dee Sharp, Cameo Parkway 1962-1966: The Best of Built to Spill, Keep It Like a Secret ---------------------------------Mark Evans : C U S T O M E R S E R V I C E Lions of Tsavo, Firelung Howl, Howl Black Tusk, The Fallen Kingdom Nachtmystium, Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1 Tombs, 3-track Demo ---------------------------------Alex Mulcahy : P U B L I S H E R Panda Bear, Person Pitch Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam The Kinks, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society Serge Gainsbourg, Comic Strip John Prine, Bruised Orange ---------------------------------Doug Sabolick : A L I F E O N C E L O S T Torche, Meanderthal AC/DC, Let There Be Rock Saviours, Into Abaddon Crowbar, Sonic Excess in Its Purest Form Zimmer’s Hole, When You Were Shouting at the Devil, We Were in League with Satan

GUEST SLAYER

in the studio

*withered

ARTIST

WITHERED TITLE PRO DUCER STUDIO

RECO RDIN G DATES RELEASE DATE LABEL

Folie Circulaire Phillip Cope The Jam Room, Columbia, SC Feb 23 - Mar 2 June 24 Prosthetic

Withered’s 2005 debut, Memento Mori, was the kind of unforeseen gem that makes this job so much goddamn fun. Eventually landing at #4 in that year’s Top 40 Albums list, its equal parts early ’90s Swedish death metal and southern sludge (with just a splash of Paradise Lost circa Gothic) were impeccably crafted, fully realized

and perfectly captured in the studio by its creators. Or not. “We actually recorded that album in our rehearsal space,” laughs guitarist/vocalist Mike Thompson. “We had to record each part independently with separate layers and just add them on. And on top of that, three of the songs we recorded for Memento Mori were brand new, so we didn’t have any rehearsals under our belts for them. We just didn’t have the attention to detail on it. I mean, it was just gonna be a demo and then it snowballed from there.” In the three years since Memento Mori, the Atlanta-based death/black/doom quartet has, er, weathered a storm of changes, swapping out half of their lineup (Wes Kever and Greg Hess are out, bassist Mike Langoria and drummer Beau Brandon are in) and moving from Lifeforce Records to new home Prosthetic. Add producer Phillip Cope (Kylesa, Baroness, Black Tusk) to that growing list of amendments. After spending

seven full days (and nights sleeping on the floor) with Cope at Jam Room Studio, the resulting Folie Circulaire is decidedly darker than its already bleak processor. “Phillip was pushing us really hard to set a mood and get a really good vibe going,” Thompson offers. “We got it real dim, set up some candles and discussed the topics of every song before tracking them to really get in the mindset. I think it worked really well. Phillip has done an amazing job of getting in our heads.” To that end, Folie Circulaire’s incredibly diverse shades of black, death and doom (which even feature a guest vocal spot by legendary Napalm Death barker Barney Greenway) kinda illustrate the record’s peculiar title. “It’s a French term that was coined in the late 1800s by a psychologist to describe bi-polar disease,” Thompson says. “But, literally, it translates into ‘cycling madness’ or ‘circles of madness.’ So what we really wanted to do was apply that term to ‘the human condition.’ That whole everything-we-create-is-to-destroy kinda thing.” —ALBERT MUDRIAN

Neuraxis Complete Prosthetic Debut While it might be grammatically incorrect, we’re pretty sure there’s a deeper meaning behind the title of the new ( ) Neuraxis record, The Thin Line Between. The album—which marks the band’s first for Prosthetic—will feature 10 cuts and is set to drop on July 22. Commented guitarist Rob Milley on the band’s website, “The writing and recording process for [this album] was probably the most intense I’ve ever experienced. Sound-wise, this is going to be our best so far. Song-wise, it’s our most complete album to date.” It will also be the first Neuraxis record featuring 16 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

vocalist Alex Leblanc and guitarist William Seghers. As if playing a bundle of shows with the recently “reunited” At the Gates wasn’t enough to keep the brothers Björler busy, the pair has just finished pre-production with the Haunted for the band’s sixth studio album. The group—which has over 20 songs in the bank and plans for 11 or 12 to make the final cut—will work at PUK Studio in Denmark and has once again enlisted the services of Tue Madsen. Surprisingly, frontman Peter Dolving had no comment. —ZACH SMITH

ramblings THIS MONTH:

1988

The Decibel Mix Tape

Dunno if it was going off to college in a hyper-liberal city like Eugene, OR, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a hippie, or just the fact that metal was in kind of a weird transition (hello, major labels!), but in 1988 my undying love for all things heavy wavered. Grunge and “alternative” metal proved to be a distraction, and before long the mullet I’d cultivated since high school was replaced by a sweet Stone Gossard-style bob. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

TITLE:

Anti-Hippie Machine

1. Tad, “Sex God Missy” | “Missy’s got a car in her garage.” Get it? Me neither.

Smile, You’re Traveling Life is a highway. And each month, Genghis Tron frontman Mookie Singerman files this report from behind the wheel 3/21/08: Nothing puts hair on your balls quite

like a car accident—and Genghis Tron are quickly acquiring the hairiest balls in America. Yesterday at around 1 p.m. I woke up screaming in the passenger seat of our van as we skidded backwards across three lanes of traffic. Apparently the rear right wheel of our van decided that the area of I-71 halfway between Cleveland and Columbus was so beautiful that it wanted to retire there. The entire wheel came off the axle and sent our van and trailer spinning out of control towards the median. GT had wrecked. Again. Plenty of “What! The! Fucccccck!” and “Why have you forsaken us?!” was screamed as we surveyed the damage. Miraculously, no one was injured, but our van was clearly in need of some TLC. We called AAA, who sent a tow truck entirely incapable of pulling both the van and trailer out of the mud-filled median. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though—the towing genius hooked his cable under our van and pulled, immediately snapping his cable. He hemmed and hawed for a bit, then called his boss, who showed up and hemmed and hawed for another hour or so before declaring that they couldn’t help us. They gave us the number of some heavier-duty towing companies and drove off. We called up Bear’s Towing and Bear himself appeared a half hour later with a much bigger rig. He was an older stocky dude with plenty of 18 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

2. Green River, “Rehab Doll” | Dirge about AIDS. Sexual revolution officially over. 3. Mudhoney, “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” | “Rehab Doll Pt. II” 4. Jane’s Addiction, “Mountain Song” | I blame the hippies. 5 Danzig, “Mother” | Yes, Glenn, I would like to find hell with you. 6. Swallow, “Guts” | Actually about decapitation, not guts. 7. Megadeth, “Hook in Mouth” | Yeah, fuck the PMRC! 8. Sacred Reich, “Surf Nicaragua” | Back when thrash had a conscience. 9. Slayer, “South of Heaven” | Just wanted to write “cunting daughters.” 10. Testament, “Nobody’s Fault” | Best Aerosmith cover ever. 11. Death Angel, “Bored” | Funky thrash. Genius. 12. Wehrmacht, “Drink Beer, Be Free” | So true, so true.

hair everywhere but his head, who, despite his company’s name, didn’t seem to have an affinity for other older stocky dudes with plenty of body hair (his wife was the receptionist). Bear got us out of the mud relatively quickly and drove us to the nearest town, where we regrouped and figured out what we were going to do. It was decided that everything needed to be towed 100 miles to Columbus the next morning, but seeing as only two passengers could fit in a tow truck, we needed to split up. Michael and myself would stay in town overnight while the other three members hitched a ride with Hamilton’s sister (who attends school nearby) to Columbus. The next morning, Bear told us he couldn’t take the vehicles to Columbus, so we called AAA for a third towing company. They told us

Gimpy’s would be there shortly. Unlike Bear’s Towing, Gimpy’s proved to be an apt company name. Within 30 minutes, Gimpy limped through the door, holding a cigarette in his gnarled halfarm. He quickly loaded our car and trailer onto his flatbed as Michael and I shook our heads in disbelief. It felt like we had fallen into a Farrelly Brothers nightmare. Gimpy, as it turns out, was the man. We cruised down I-71 blasting Master of Puppets as he dished on all the Ohio Valley towing gossip. By the time we arrived in Columbus, the thought of Gimpy as GT roadie extraordinaire had crossed my mind several times, but he clearly had a good thing going with the towing business and I kept my thoughts to myself. After he unloaded our car onto the mechanic’s lot, we said our goodbyes. I gave him a little army salute as he hopped back in his car. Gimpy waved his normal arm and drove off into the Ohio horizon. A

ramblings

er * cry nobyw j.crybelat nnett

illustration by bruno guerreiro

Verdict:

Vikernes prop him up as a celebrity arbiter, Judge Judystyle? Of course, it’s no fun unless the decisions are legally binding, so all litigants are required to sign a waiver agreeing that the Count’s verdicts are final. And now we take you to today’s hearings, already in progress… What you are witnessing is real. The participants ARE NOT actors. They are actual litigants with a case pending in a Norwegian municipal court. Both parties have agreed to dismiss their court cases and have their disputes settled here, in our forum: Count Grishnackh’s Court.

fter several sad, unsuccessful

forays into reality programming, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) finally stumbles upon the winning formula in late 2008, shortly after Burzum mastermind and convicted murderer Varg “Count Grishnackh” Vikernes is released on parole. It’s a stroke of pure, unmitigated genius from the otherwise morose producers at the NRK: Why not give the national bogeyman his own TV show, complete with pretentious rhetoric, full-costume Tolkien readings and ultra-nationalist high jinks? Better yet, why not give him a gavel and a robe and 20 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

Count Grishnackh: Mr. Tiegs, am I to understand that your Lhasa Apso micturated upon the plaintiff’s Persian rug? Roger Tiegs: Infernus, your honor. Grishnackh: Come again? Tiegs: That’s my stage name, your honor—you know, my nom de guerre? I figure if you get to use yours, then… Grishnackh: Silence! I will suffer neither fools nor insubordination in my courtroom. Especially from someone who runs around calling himself “Satan’s Minister on Earth” and has the audacity to show up with all that shit on his face. You’re lucky I don’t hold you in contempt. So, pretty please—with sugar on top—just answer the question, Mr. Tiegs. Tiegs: [Rolls eyes] Your honor, Snickers—the dog, I mean—didn’t do anything to Gaahl’s… I mean, Mr. Espedal’s… I mean, the plaintiff’s rug. Gaahl: That’s bullshit, your honor! Snickers blew a hot, smelly piss all over my new Persian and then left a steaming dump at the end of the driveway. My mother stepped in it when she was bringing me my blankie and a bottle of warm breast milk, your honor.

Grishnackh: I’ll ask you to wait your turn before

opening your goddamn piehole, Mr. Espedal. But tell me more about this “blankie” of which you speak. And, uh, the breast milk… Gaahl: Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry, your honor. Grishnackh: You’ve been in this courtroom before, haven’t you, Mr. Espedal? Gaahl: Not this particular courtroom, your honor, but one very similar to it, yes. It went badly. Grishnackh: So I’m told, Mr. Espedal; so I’m told. And what about these damages you’re seeking from the defendant? 190,000 kroner seems like a lot for a rug. Mighty Jewish of you, isn’t that, Mr. Espedal? And it says here [puts on eyeglasses, which are around his neck on a tasteful silver chain] that you also want Mr. Tiegs to be crucified “for as long as the court will legally allow.” There’s also something about the blood of his firstborn. Isn’t this a bit excessive—even for you, Mr. Espedal? Gaahl: Well, you see, this rug, your honor… Grishnackh: I know, I know—I read the complaint, Mr. Espedal. “It really tied the room together.” We’ve all seen the film. But the question I have is one of motive: Why would Snickers urinate on your rug in the first place? Gaahl: Infernus told him to do it, your honor. He’s a dog whisperer. Grishnackh: Can you prove this, Mr. Espedal? Gaahl: [Begins fingering his Mjolnir pendant compulsively] Well… no, your honor. But I know it to be true! Grishnackh: [Sighs] Mr. Tiegs, are you a dog whisperer? Tiegs: Puh-lease, your honor. I can’t even get him to listen to me when I’m talking out loud. Grishnackh: Right. Well, just the same, I’m finding in favor of the plaintiff. As we all know, the Lhasa Apso is an inferior Oriental breed incapable of advanced Aryan aptitudes like bladder control. But 190,000 kroner for a rug is ridiculous. The defendant is ordered to pay damages in the amount of 75,000 and… oh, let’s say a pint of blood from his firstborn. [Bangs gavel] Next case! A

live reviews The Dillinger Escape Plan WHEN: March 9

Witch After spending just five minutes scanning

the crowd at Philly’s preeminent hipster bar, I had 50% of this review written in my head before anyone actually took the stage. See, Johnny Brenda’s is the kind of place where young women are encouraged to experiment with their sexuality and young men are encouraged to experiment with their facial hair. But don’t sound that false alarm just yet, because tonight the bar is actually bursting with underground cred: Alex Bouks from legendary Philly death metallers Goreaphobia is here long enough to dork out with yours truly about Nihilist demos and, of course, J Mascis, who drummed for proto-grinders Deep Wound back in the early ’80s, is laying down beats for tonight’s headliner. But right now, he’s standing three feet from me watching Swedish doom rock revivalists Graveyard play their first ever non-South by Southwest U.S. show. Sure, early Witchcraft is an obvious comparison for the 22 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

WHEN: March 18 WHERE: Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA WITH: Graveyard

young quartet, but tracks like “Thin Line” and self-titled album/set opener “Evil Ways” sacrifice Witchcraft’s occasional penchant for fruitiness in favor of Pentagram’s bloozedrenched buzz. Their headlining labelmates Witch splash a few more colors on the same basic sonic palette. However, the Maiden-isms (circa Iron Maiden and Killers) and psychedelics are a little lost on freshly recruited touring guitarist Antoine Guerlain, who is certainly still—to be polite— “finding his way.” Thankfully, frontman Kyle Thomas compensates with one of the clearest and heaviest live guitar sounds I’ve ever heard. And by the time he and his bandmates close with debut LP standout “Seer,” I’m transfixed on a front-row Beardy McBearderson who isn’t just sheepishly headbobbing, but rather going full-on headbanging apeshit through Witch’s entire set. Maybe this place ain’t so bad after all. —ALBERT MUDRIAN

One week from now, Greg Puciato will be going ape in a Spanish club, doing the whole Iron Monkey routine on the heads of audience members as he takes out his frustrations on a disco ball. But the power-squatting Patton keeps it all in check during the Dillinger Escape Plan’s first performance in the Czech Republic. Is it the surroundings? This place reeks of stale sweat and cheap Pilsner, the longhairs are out in force and it looks like the perfect setting for a violent uprising—former President Václav Havel plotted a different kind of revolution in a café right down the street. Maybe the band has too much invested in this tour to piss it all away: An 11th hour cancellation by planned co-headliners Meshuggah already forced them to spin the globe and plot a whole new course. By DEP standards, it is a relatively sedate affair—17 songs in 50 minutes, a minimum of stage banter and no encores. When the band plays the closing notes of “Sunshine the Werewolf,” the house lights go up immediately and Gil Sharone lingers just long enough to toss his sticks into the crowd. But no crazy circus sideshow shenanigans, unless you count pulsating strobe lights and guitarist Ben Weinman’s striptease. Maybe the Czech Republic isn’t ready for it: Here’s a nation that’s only been out from under the thumb of communism for less than two decades and, judging by the weak stage-diving during “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants,” they still haven’t learned how to make a proper pit. Globalization is a beautiful thing, though: It means that everyone has access to everything instantly and everyone already knows the words to the really raging shit from Calculating Infinity (“43% Burnt” and “Sugar Coated Sour”) and Miss Machine (“Baby’s First Coffin”). Of course, the presence of the world’s most annoying smoke machine makes it nearly impossible to see what DEP are actually doing onstage except for a brief 15-second interval in the middle of “When Good Dogs Do Bad Things.” But, whatever, there is plenty to savor and assimilate in the crowd—like the chick in front of me with the full-back jailhouse tattoo of demon wings. During the chorus of “Black Bubblegum,” when everyone in the crowd is bobbing simultaneously, it looks like she might actually take flight. No wonder Puciato left the fire-breathing implements at home—that’d be a tough act to follow. —NICK GREEN

WITCH: LORI BAILEY

WHERE: Rock Café, Prague

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* firewind

FIREWIND

was rushing from downtown to my house to be on time, but apparently the taxis are on strike today and I had to take a frickin’ bus.” Calling from his hometown of Thessaloniki, Greece, Gus G. is a bit out of breath, sounding like he’d just sprinted home and picked up the phone, apologizing profusely for being late. No biggie, I assure the Firewind guitarist, as yours truly was just killing time watching that clip of Bert and Ernie playing goregrind on the Deciblog. ¶ It doesn’t take long for the charismatic Kostas Karamitroudis, who wisely goes by the more economical Gus G., to catch his breath, touting his band’s contagious fifth album, The Premonition, with contagious enthusiasm. Even more contagious, though, are the actual tunes on the record. Although Firewind base their music in the similar, highly compressed, modern power metal style of Arch Enemy and DragonForce, they’ve always brought a healthy dose of early ’80s metal/hard rock influences into the songs, and the follow-up to last year’s 24 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

Allegiance has the quintet coming as close to perfecting that balance between the new and old schools as they ever have, best heard on the terrific “Mercenary Man” and “Into the Fire.” “Firewind has always been about the guitar, but it’s also been about making great songs that will stick into people’s minds,” says Mr. G. “It’s not about how many fast licks I can play to one song. I just play what the song calls for. If there ever was a secret recipe to sound great and sound like somebody who will stand out, I think that’s kind of the way to go. Look at players like Michael Schenker—he’s always played the perfect notes for the song, and that’s what I’ve tried to do. And so far it’s worked; we don’t have songs with boring, two-minute solos.” Just how much do these fine Greek fellas dig the ’80s? So much

that they toss in a spirited, ironyfree cover of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac.” “That was an idea from our keyboard player Bob [Katsionis],” Gus elaborates. “We didn’t really know what kind of cover to do, because we’d been talking about so many songs, and instead of doing a hard rock song or something, Bob said, ‘Why don’t you guys listen to this song?’ It has a great melody, great chords, but it’s like a keyboards/’80s pop song. And the verse, it actually has some jazzy chords. But the melody, the whole hook was very strong, and everybody knew that song, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we do a hard rock version of that?’ It came out pretty good, I think.” That it did, Gus. That it did. www. youtube.com... flashdance beals opening dance sequence…*search* —ADRIEN BEGRAND

PATRIC ULLAEUS / WWW.REVOLVER.SE

Gus G. can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire

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* brain drill

ylan Ruskin isn’t your average 23-year-old. For one, his musical influences include Yngwie Malmsteen and Michael Angelo Batio—and he names them with a straight face. When pressed, he disclaims knowledge of later Yngwie: “I pretty much just listen to his first few, like Rising Force and some of his live stuff. It’s been a while, actually, since I’ve listened to him. But I just remember that it was gnarly shredding. I had those instructional videos.” ¶ Growing up in the age of grunge makes Ruskin an unlikely mastermind behind Apocalyptic Feasting, one of the most head-meltingly technical records since Shrapnel’s heyday. However, an older brother and Slayer are to credit (older brothers and Slayer are always to credit). “Ever since I heard Slayer, I’ve been into metal and shredding,” Ruskin says. “And I just got more into metal, evolving genres like death metal and technical death metal.” ¶ Obviously, Ruskin is into shredding. He also begins nearly every sentence with “Dude.” In other words, he’s part of the fertile Santa Cruz death metal scene that’s yielded Decrepit Birth and Odious Mortem. Before becoming a peer with these bands, he was a fan. Toiling away nights in a liquor store, 26 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

BRAIN DRILL

Santa Cruz death metallers cum shred

he passed the days in a melodic thrash outfit called Burn at the Stake. Evidently, no one but Ruskin was into it. In fact, he would bring in Brain Drill songs to practice. “I would have all these Brain Drill songs, and I’d just be messing around with them with our drummer. I didn’t know if Burn at the Stake was going anywhere, but I wanted to at least make a little side project recording of my Brain Drill stuff. I didn’t even think it was going to be a band.” Ruskin found Brain Drill drummer Marco Pitruzzella through MySpace: “My friend was, like, ‘Dude, you gotta see this drummer. He has the gnarliest videos ever!’” Together with vocalist Steve Rathjen, Brain Drill recorded a demo so gnarly and shredding that it landed them a gig opening for Cannibal Corpse—and a record

deal with Metal Blade. In fact, the demo is so good that Apocalyptic Feasting used its guitar and drum tracks unaltered. After some time as a trio, Pitruzzella suggested that Jeff Hughell (ex-Vile) join the band. Ruskin, naturally, says that Hughell is “the gnarliest bass shredder I’ve ever seen.” With more and more tour offers coming in, Ruskin’s future at the liquor store is uncertain. “They’ve told me that if I’m going on the road for longer than two or three months, they’ll probably have to let me go. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes with the music thing, you know?” On March 20, Ruskin announced the departure of his bandmates due to tour complications. As of March 23, one unspecified member had rejoined. As of April 8, the entire band had reformed. Go figure. —COSMO LEE

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veil of maya

hen Veil of Maya were first starting out,” Marc Okubo relays by phone from his Chicago home, “we were heavily influenced by At the Gates, In Flames, the Haunted—a ton of Gothenburg melodic death metal bands. But way too many metalcore bands were aping that sound, and we naturally moved in a more progressive direction. I really don’t think there’s much Gothenburg at all in what we’re doing now. And we certainly don’t consider ourselves a metalcore band in any sense.” ¶ Exhibit A—The Common Man’s Collapse—indicates the guitar player is telling the truth. Indeed, the only member of the Chicagobased progressive death metal quartet to test positive for hardcore influence on the band’s second album and first for Sumerian is Iscariot veteran Brandon Butler. The band’s new singer might just still be shaking off the effects of having lived close enough to Gary, IN—where you can walk blocks without encountering a single living organism—to accidentally get some of the city’s air in his lungs. ¶ Thanks to Okubo—who’s clearly been honing his chops since shortly after conception—melody is another matter. “I played in jazz band in high school,” he explains, “then went to music

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VEIL OF MAYA Death metallers slaughter time signatures, not souls

school for a year. In the end, ing more changes into any given I found jazz to be way too linear, too encumbered with rules. But I still love a lot of it, especially the stuff Chick Corea and John McLaughlin did in the ’70s. What I learned definitely finds its way into what I’m doing now.” “It’s Not Safe to Swim” opens with one of the guitarist’s signature glassy arpeggios, then slides into a stuttering, giant insect waltz before stopping cold. “I knew this would be hell / But this is not living,” Butler screeches over skeletal lockstep backing, his last syllable coiling like saliva around a serpentine instrumental ascent that heralds yet another shift. Escalating convolution is the rule for both song and album, but the band shuns long-windedness, pack-

four minutes than Sunn O))) have managed in their entire career. “I sometimes write an entire song in an hour,” says Okubo. “But most of the time, I tend to get bursts of inspiration that last for 15 seconds and vanish. One thing my formal education did for me was give me the ability to play anything in my head pretty much immediately. So I record whatever comes in any given burst, then eventually tie all the snippets together into songs, as if I were putting together a puzzle. I’d never want to write for any given set of expectations—you know, the ‘let’s put a breakdown here’ mindset. People need a little challenge in their lives, whether they realize it or not.” —ROD SMITH

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mourning beloveth

ike every metal scene, Ireland’s has a band for every occasion. Black, death, thrash, power—you name it, they’ve got it. But perhaps no genre captures the personality of the country quite like doom. Ireland today is generally a youthful, optimistic place and the old adage “There are just two types of people in the world: the Irish and those that want to be” is borne out by statistical curiosities such as the 36 million Americans claiming Irish ancestry set against the population of Ireland itself, which stands at just six million. And yet the country’s cultural history is characterized by an aching melancholy that permeates everything. From U2 to Thin Lizzy, from Damien Rice to Primordial, it’s there. Mourning Beloveth’s gothic doom/death classicism gives voice to the hidden misery and introspection in perhaps its most blatant incarnation, and their latest offering, A Disease for the Ages, is their most succinct to date. ¶ “It’s the sound of a universe imploding on itself,” muses bassist Brendan Roche. ¶ Characterized by crawling tempos, funereal atmospheres and clean/extreme vocal interplay, comparisons with certain northern English bands invite themselves immediately, 30 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

MOURNING BELOVETH

iling

Irish doomsters’ eyes decidedly unsm but make them at your peril. “Every band who plays within our ‘genre’ has endured comparisons,” says Roche, “[but] I think to most people with an ear for our type of music, these comparisons are now at best pretty redundant, at worst downright lazy.” Veterans of some four albums and over 15 years of existence, the band is adept at shutting themselves off from the vicissitudes of metal in general and the doom scene in particular. “Anything that happens outside our world has little to no impact,” Roche reveals. “We’ve enough problems with our own head space. Doom in its many guises seems to be enjoying its 15 minutes in the limelight again, but it has little impact on what MB does as a band.” They do, however, play the game

when it comes to gigging, hitting the road when they can and bucking the trend of doom as a studio entity. “Playing in the live setting is absolutely essential for us,” agrees Roche. “At the end of the dreary day we are a metal band and nothing can replicate the buzz and ecstasy of playing to a good crowd.” The bassist is, however, dismissive of the specter of his native land when it comes to his band’s music. “Our location is something that never enters our head,” he concludes. “It’s neither a help nor a hindrance. We’re Irish and that’s that; we wouldn’t want to leave and I doubt anywhere would want us. If our music never left our rehearsal studio, we would still make music, share a drink and slag the fuck out of each other.” —DAMIEN

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russian circles

RUSSIAN CIRCLES Chicago instrumentalists wonder why you haven’t downloaded their new album yet

t may not be patently obvious, but life for Russian Circles is a never-ending rollercoaster of surprise. For an instrumental band that takes cues from head-in-atextbook artsy-metal, swirling psychedelia and a host of math rock—think Pelican, Slint, Isis, Pink Floyd, Tool— you’d think every detail of drummer Dave Turncrantz and guitarist Mike Sullivan’s everything would be meticulously planned, with no room for the unexpected. But something strange happened during the creation of their latest album, Station. And it started with the departure of bassist Colin DeKupier. ¶ “Writing became a roadblock,” discloses Sullivan. “We weren’t seeing eye-to-eye and certain parts weren’t flowing as naturally. From there, we stepped back, looked at where we wanted to go and ultimately we had different ideas of where the band was headed.” ¶ The duo finished Station with the post-metal thunder of their debut, Enter, lurking in background and the ire of a lineup change stoking their creative fire. Next, a trip from their Chicago home to Seattle,

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topping off the album with a week of intensive rehearsals with bassist Brian Cook (These Arms are Snakes, ex-Botch) before recording with Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Isis). “Initially, we started writing intense music and planning out heavier songs,” says Sullivan. “With Brian and Matt on board, we were expecting something quite intense, but it came out totally different.” The result? An album that’s nowhere near as heavy as their debut, but easily twice as dynamic and three times as cinematic. “A lot of people haven’t heard it yet,” notes Sullivan, somewhat surprised Station isn’t all over the internet yet, “but those who have are saying it’s lighter and mellower. After we wrote with Brian, it got a lot prettier because the focus wasn’t so much the riffs, but hearing into the song, its melodies and transitions. We left for Seattle thinking it was going to be totally heavy and came home without a brutal and intense album.”

And the surprises aren’t limited to rehearsal rooms and recording studios. Just ask Sullivan about the time Russian Circles found themselves opening for Tool in England. “Justin [Chancellor]’s brother released Enter on his label in the U.K. There’s a connection, but it wasn’t something we saw coming; we’re huge fans and just getting to play with them was awesome. On the second night in London, I was having amp problems during soundcheck and Adam [Jones] had his guitar tech set up another head for me—something worth more than my whole rig combined. I was like, ‘I’m not even going to plug this in. If I break it, it’s the end of our band.’ Then, Herman Li [DragonForce] came out and did a huge, awesome solo with us. I was wondering how it was going to work, but he surprised me by starting cautiously and very tastefully. But before you know it, he was shredding and it sounded fucking cool!” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

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* unearthly trance

sk any Syracuse University alum what they think of Long Island and they’ll probably make some joke about the absurdity of “Long Island girls,” a privileged and prissy lot who won’t think twice about invoking the phrase “but my daddy’s a lawyer” when they’re underage and simply want to get into a bar. (It’s true—I saw it happen in Orange Town myself. Students talked about the incident for a week and the girl even made her way into a campus comic strip.) ¶ “The stereotypical Long Island girl is true, but there’s also a lot of depravity and fucked-up people here,” reasons Unearthly Trance frontman Ryan Lipynsky. “Like with Montauk—there’s a lot going on with that place under the surface.” ¶ The surface of Montauk, for most people, is probably a vague image of lighthouses and that scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet do snow angels on the frozen bay. A simple search for “Camp Hero” or “The Montauk Project” will turn up something far more sinister, however: a series of secret government projects that allegedly involved psychological weapons, human experiments and possibly an alien or two. The amount of conspiracy theories surrounding the area is actually quite astounding once you start digging. Enough that you’re left wondering what it’s like to really live there—what a place 34 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

UNEARTHLY TRANCE Nothing’s shocking for Long Island experimental doomsters

like that might do to you. “I’ve always felt linked to the metaphysical side of things,” confesses Lipynsky. “My mother didn’t teach me about Christianity; she taught me about a doorway into this other world. Fortunately, [bassist] Jay [Newman] and [drummer] Darren [Verni] have the same interests, so we were on the same level from the start.” That start came in the year 2000. Back then, Sunn O))) guitarist/Southern Lord overlord Greg Anderson was so impressed with the trio’s demo that he pressed their first 7-inch as part of his “7-Inches of Doom” series. If only Anderson could hear them now, on the eve of releasing Electrocution. While the record still snorkels through plenty of sludge, glimpses of arty noise compositions (stemming from a ’shroomaided jam session, one that may or may not end up on a 12-inch) and

muddled melodies also peek through the mix. As Lipynsky puts it, “We went for the same morbid feeling as our last couple records, but we didn’t limit ourselves. Like if singing clean is good enough for Black Sabbath, it’s good enough for me.” As for the frontman’s cryptic sense of storytelling, that hasn’t changed, and neither has his willingness to explain it all for you. Although we know one thing now: Electrocution derives a lot of its brash thinking from Nikola Tesla. “There are a lot of esoteric ideas—feelings that can’t be stated simply—that go into our lyrics and are a common bond between the three of us,” assures Lipynsky. “It’s not even something we can define clearly because we’ve known each other for so long. It’s just this feeling… it’s more like bloodletting than anything else.” —ANDREW PARKS

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hennes siste høst

ou don’t hear much about the teeming black metal scene in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area, and with good reason: There isn’t one. But between the frostbitten climate, the large Scandinavian population and what we can only presume is an all-out cultural quarantine when the Internet goes down, you’d think the North Dakota-Minnesota border would be the obvious place for American corpsepaint enthusiasts to thrive. Not so, says Zander Ness, the mastermind behind Fargo’s own Hennes Siste Høst and the latest contender on the isolationist USBM front. “Surprisingly, the black metal population—both bands and listeners—is sparse,” he offers. “I would estimate that there are maybe 10 active bands in the surrounding local scenes. Few play concerts regularly, and very few stay around. Actually, Høst has played more concerts alongside punk and hard rock bands than any type of metal bands.” ¶ But it’s not like Ness and his brace of session warriors—currently, ringer/drummer Fordervelse from Norwegian malcontents Koldbrann and guitarist Evan Bullinger—leave the local hard rock herd completely bewildered. “With Høst, I was not thinking of what combinations I could get away with and still be considered black metal; I simply combined my two favorite genres of music—grunge rock and black metal.” ¶ Before you cry false, consider this, Grasshopper: Ness has 36 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

HENNES SISTE HØST

Into the proverbial wood chipper with Fargo’s blackest been teaching himself Norwegian for the last five years. “I am not fluent yet, but can comprehend most of what I read, and can write fairly well,” he reveals. Hence the band name (which translates to “Her Last/Final Autumn,” according to its founder), the title of an unreleased Høst 7-inch, Når Vi Døde Våkner (which translates to “When We Dead Awaken”) and the first batch of lyrics to “November,” the fifth track on the band’s almostself-titled full-length debut. Released on Sioux Falls-based indie Init Records, Høst sways both gracefully and mercilessly through Burzumic soundscapes, elephantine power dirges, and obsidian death marches while plumbing the most infectious trenches of black ‘n’ roll. But where Ness really carves out Høst’s aesthetic identity is in the lyrics—there’s nary a Tolkien reference or pseudo-satanic hail to be found. In fact, every song on the album

seemingly references a woman or a sex act—or both. “Here is where Høst is the most misunderstood,” Ness claims. “Although it is not apparent [from] the initial skim through, every time I use the words ‘her,’ ‘she,’ et cetera, I am referencing either the season of autumn or the earth. All of the sexual innuendos are not to be taken literally, either.” To would-be dissenters, those self-appointed defenders of the anti-faith who are as essential to the increasingly cheap fabric of black metal as a band’s ever-defiant statement of intent/declaration of war, Ness offers his own, uh, ever-defiant statement of intent: “If anybody questions the message of Høst, or is desperately trying to decide which subdivision of black metal Høst should be associated with, do not bother. Høst is freedom personified and will never have to do with anything human-made besides music itself.” —J. BENNETT

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* eternal lord

guess everyone has been fucked over and felt anger toward the opposite sex,” Eternal Lord frontman Edward Butcher muses via email from the his home in Swindon, a town in southwestern England roughly the size of Sioux Falls, SD. “This comes across a lot in my lyrics. But misogynist? I don’t think so. I get people coming up to me all the time, saying, ‘Whoa, you really hate girls, huh?’ But, in all honesty, I don’t. I have the utmost respect for women.” ¶ Indeed, the singer’s accusers (male trolls mostly, judging by their message board posts) might well be dedicated asexualists too green in the wiener to comprehend contemporary mating protocols. Or maybe they’re just jumping to conclusions based on Butcher’s tenure in Australia’s I Killed the Prom Queen, much like Yanks who, without having ever heard them, assume Death Cab for Cutie is a Whitehouse tribute band. ¶ In either case, Butcher’s healthy interest in ladyland’s deepest recesses plays distant second diddle to his protean vocals on Eternal Lord’s second album and first for Ferret Music: Blessed Be This Nightmare. “No looking back,” he screams over telegraphed blast beats at the onset of “Get to Fuck,” slipping from screech to growl and back as the song’s closet-jazzbo central riff shifts, subsides and

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ETERNAL LORD Limey howler aims to shake sketchy metalcore past

returns, eventually giving way to a shockingly beautiful interlude. More instrument than lyrical delivery system, Butcher’s voice assumes dozens of textures, seemingly gleaned from pretty much every point on heavy music’s map. He might just be the best hisser in the business. “I listen very widely, and try to learn as much as possible from everything I hear,” he writes. “There are tons of great bands in this world, so many great vocalists. I’ve been seriously working on my vocals since I started a couple years back in the Hunt for Ida Wave, which Eternal Lord’s Chris Gregory and Shaun Zerebecki played in as well. But I think I found myself in Australia. I can play show after show now and not

lose my voice. It’s one of those things that takes time.” While Butcher was building his chops down under, guitarists Gregory and Zerebecki, drummer Stuart MacKay, bassist Nick Gardner and singer Samuel Ricketts began slaking off their old metalcore orientations in favor of a purer agenda. When Ricketts quit, Butcher leapt valiantly into the fray, just in time to luxuriate in a relatively breakdown-free situation. Plus, he got to return to the homeland… Swindon, that is. “Swindon is a pretty small town,” he writes. “Nothing much has come out of here apart from XTC, Billy Piper and model Melinda Messenger. Fingers crossed Eternal Lord can make it onto the list of things people notice from here.” —ROD SMITH

BE QUIET

AND DRIVE TORCHE mainman Steve Brooks just wants to take his thunder-pop show on the road by Kevin Stewart-Panko

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eventeen years ago, Metallica penned “Wherever I May Roam,” an explanation of/homage to the nomadic touring musician. While the song explored the trials and tribulations of those for whom the road becomes home, the lyrics, tone and accompanying video had an air of dissatisfied whining about this life choice. And considering the personalities exposed in Some Kind of Monster, hindsight makes it a safe bet that Hetfield and Ulrich probably had “bitching” as a subtext to the song’s emotional theme. Of course, the grass is always greener over yonder as thousands from across the workaday spectrum—from suitand-tie stockbrokers continually cursing their stuffy profession to dudes in bands not making a living playing music—wish they could be as unlucky as James and Lars.

Steve Brooks wants to kick James and Lars’ complaining asses. OK, maybe not, but even if he wanted to, he’s just woken up when Decibel calls and barely wants to bother answering questions about Torche’s new album, Meanderthal, let alone get tagged five minutes for fighting. Brooks, guitarist/vocalist for the Miami/Atlanta-based (he’s the Atlanta part) quartet, wants you to know that being able to lay your head anywhere but home is pretty sweet. “Right now, we’re not touring and I’m working at a pizza place. It does feel kinda…”—he pauses thoughtfully—“Sometimes I ask myself, ‘What have I accomplished? What do I have to show for everything I’ve done?’ when friends of mine own houses and are doing well financially and I’m still struggling. But, this is the choice I’ve made. “Music has always been a part of my life,” he continues. “I’ve been doing music since I was 11. It’s always been a hobby, but I didn’t start taking it seriously and asking, ‘Why can’t I try and do this for the rest of my life?’ until I was in my mid-20s. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. Like I said, I’m working at a pizza place and it’s kind of rough when you’re trying to pay your bills. I can’t wait to get back on the road and be able to come home with enough so I can live.” So, it’s safe to say Torche won’t be covering the Metallica classic anytime soon? “Yeah, money’s not that important [to me] and when you’re on the road you get a dinner buy-out and only have to worry about one gas tank. Sure, it’s a lot of work and there are a completely different set of issues to deal with, but you get to see the world and meet a lot of different people. There are a lot of good times.” Including the eight weeks Torche shared with

Baroness in Europe last year where the bands eschewed the services of a booking agency-provided driver, purchased international drivers’ licenses [for $10, you can drive anywhere in the world], a GPS, and a wing and a prayer. Good times, indeed. “Well, John [Baizley], Summer [Welch] and Allan [Blickle] from Baroness did most of the driving,” Brooks laughs, “and they knew what they were doing. Once in a while there would be a problem with the GPS, but it worked out. When we go back over there, we’re going to use a driver, because nobody in our band could have done that.” Attention drivers looking for work: Torche have a new album out on Hydra Head and judging by the number of “Oh my fucking God!” reactions insiders have given its 13 songs, the quartet is likely to be fielding tour offers for their ever-improving “thunder-pop” for a long while. Brooks’ nonchalance about songs like the sunshine-y brutality of “Fat Waves,” the sludgy thrash of “Triumph of Venus” or the 35-second “Little Champion,” which leaves you wanting at least 35 more seconds, is in direct opposition to the life-affirming excitement Meanderthal provides. “I don’t know… I hate overanalyzing this stuff,” Brooks sighs. “The new record has some more rock-sounding stuff; we’re not so concerned with being this heavy band, even if some of it is just crushing. We’re just trying to write better songs. One thing, though, is we all have short attention spans and get really bored when things start sounding the same.” Recorded at Kurt Ballou’s GodCity and coming on the heels of last year’s In Return 10-inch/EP, Meanderthal is the musical equivalent of that plate of artery-clogging, greasy food you still

wolf down because it tastes so good. Or that girl with the “I have the pussy, so I make the rules” tramp stamp you bought chocolate hearts for last Valentine’s Day: attractive and alluring, but dangerous and deadly. “After recording our first records ourselves, we just wanted to get this done in two weeks and use Kurt as an outside set of ears. It was fun, but a little stressful because when we got there, two songs weren’t totally finished and a lot of vocals hadn’t been planned out yet. Um, yeah, it came out good; we’re all happy with it,” Brooks deadpans. What about the title? One visualizes a hirsute rock ‘n’ roll caveman aimlessly crushing, killing and destroying. But this is Torche and apparently, vocal lines and songs weren’t the only things conjured up at GodCity.

I’m working at a pizza place and it’s kind of rough when you’re trying to pay your bills. I can’t wait to get back on the road and be able to come home with enough so I can live. —STEVE BROOKS— “When we were in the studio, Kurt mentioned something about us meandering so much with our sound and stuff and someone said, ‘Meanderthal.’ It took me a second, but I was like, ‘Dude, that’s a great title!’ and everyone agreed because we do have the tendency to be all over the place… not just musically.” A D E C I B E L : J U N E 0 8 : 41

CHILDREN OF THE

CHORDS David Pajo’s new metal project DEAD CHILD is certified false metal-free story by Andrew Parks | photo by Selena Salfen 42 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

ou’ll have to excuse David Pajo for Zwan. The former Slint guitarist and all-around indie rock hero (see his stints in Tortoise, Royal Trux, the For Carnation, Stereolab, etc.) wasn’t that into Billy Corgan’s bloated alt-rock supergroup, either, despite having the chance to play with two smashed Pumpkins and former members of Chavez and A Perfect Circle. ¶ “The thing about Zwan is nobody liked one another,” admits Pajo. “We had to pretend we did in public. It was just really grim, and not in a good way.” ¶ No wonder the band went down in flames two years after its formation, disbanding at the end of a world tour in 2003 and leaving Pajo with time to pursue his usual string of never-ending solo releases (under the aliases of Aerial M, Papa M and—as of 2005—Pajo). At the same time, Corgan was playing up the group’s problems in the press, blaming their breakup on “sex and drugs and junk” in an Entertainment Weekly story. Never mind the more likely culprit of “crap songs that’ll never live up to Siamese Dream or the pretentious but pleasing half of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” Not that Pajo was mourning Zwan’s passing. While he was busy working on the band’s selftitled debut, the perfect reunion offer (curating the 2005 edition of England’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival) also brought the guitarist back together with Slint for the first time in nearly 15 years. And unlike Zwan, the band’s chemistry was so strong they actually talked about recording a new album. “I was surprised how well we did at our first practice despite not playing together in a while,” says Pajo. “It was a reminder of what it’s like interacting with other actual humans in the room. It’s so much more alive and real.” A one-off show turned into sporadic dates throughout Europe and North America, and the band even started playing a new song called “King’s Approach.” Songwriting for a new record never got started, though.

Cross, Breather Resist, Coliseum and countless others), Dead Child grew out of “reconnecting to our roots” talks between Pajo and Slint’s touring members, bassist Todd Cook and guitarist Michael McMahan. Basically, everyone couldn’t stop talking about how much they still love listening to the holy trinity of Sabbath, Priest and Maiden. Not to mention the real deal-sealer: Meshuggah. “Metal is empowering in a lot of ways,” says Pajo. “You know, that ‘just be a man and stand up!’ attitude. There’s not a lot of sentimentality to it. It’s a universal language, too. “It’s like with Johnny Cash. You could be a farmer or someone covered head to toe in tattoos… anyone can relate to him.” It only takes a few minutes of talking to Pajo to realize just how into metal he is, from the way he nonchalantly talks about a recent Rotting

metal, I hated poseurs, too—especially the guys at guitar stores with bleached, spiked hair. I understand people being protective of their genre, but I don’t know if that’s so much of an issue nowadays.” It won’t be once people hear Dead Child’s debut, the decidedly classic-sounding Attack (Quarterstick/Touch & Go). Thankfully free of the stoner rock tropes that seem to be seeping into all indie rock-related metal bands these days, Dead Child play ball-hugging Priest songs for the old guys in the crowd—you know, guys like Pajo, who actually spent most of the ’80s playing in Minor Threat/Metallica-cribbing bands like Maurice and Solution Unknown. “There was a really vibrant hardcore scene in Louisville during the ’80s,” notes Cook, “pushing the idea that anyone can do this if they put their mind to it. I didn’t know Pajo back then, but I saw his bands. They were absolutely great.” He continues, “[Dead Child] is coming from what we listened to while growing up. It’s just a matter of turning up the amps and seeing what happens.” If Dead Child have one secret weapon that answers Pajo’s question of how they can “contribute” to today’s music, it’d have to be their singer Dahm. A scale-climber with the ability to hit high notes and manipulate melodies with the greatest of ease, he (according to Pajo) thinks, “Rob Halford is one of the greatest singers alive.” Which says a lot about his style. He wasn’t the band’s first choice, though. “We were originally of the opinion that we really needed an aggressive singer—a screamer/ shouter type that was a lot less artful,” explains Cook. “When I heard Dahm, it changed the idea of what this band could be for me with how melodic it was.”

When I was into thrash metal, I hated poseurs, too—especially the guys at guitar stores with bleached, spiked hair. I understand people being protective of their genre, but I don’t know if that’s so much of an issue nowadays. —David Pajo “At some point—halfway through the 2007 tour—that fell through,” explains Pajo. “Slint is not a normal band where one person does most of the decision making. Everything has to go through the three of us, so it ends up being a bigger commitment than any of us can do.” Surprisingly enough, Pajo says he was “relieved the Slint thing didn’t happen” because it meant he could focus on his self-proclaimed “midlife crisis band.” A Louisville-based project that doesn’t involve the Patterson brothers (Evan and Ryan, who’ve played in Black Widows, Black

Christ show (“by the time Rotting Christ came on, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can listen to another blast beat…’”) to his honest assessment of where Dead Child might fit into the whole extreme music pantheon, especially given its tendency (Decibel included) to freely toss the “false metal” tag around. “Watching these [black metal and death metal] bands, I had to wonder what Dead Child can contribute [to metal],” says Pajo. “A lot of these bands could eat us alive, you know?” He laughs and adds, “When I was into thrash

Of course, it helps that Dead Child have one of indie rock’s most notorious guitarists churning out chords alongside McMahan. “The Coldest Hands,” for one, is strong enough to convert quite a few potential fans, as it holds the listener captive with seven minutes of lumbering mountain-climber metal. “I guess we’re old-fashioned, but we’re more interested in the craft of songwriting than brutality,” says Pajo. “We just don’t want to be boring. Oh, and the songs should make you kick out your windows.” A DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 43

CALL&RESPONSE

Don Caballero

Because we think he’s pretty funny, we

sent Don Caballero mainman Damon Che a link containing eight MP3s, each identified only by title. Here’s what he had to say about our selections.

TRACK

Torche, “Across the Shields” from: Meanderthal [THE SKINNY] Thunder-pop, ho! Well, I don’t know this band from a can of paint, but I could tell immediately that they didn’t rot and actually found them enjoyable. I definitely can’t say that about the majority of most new music out there. Solid, tuneful, extended rock. Congratulations are in order and if you never had to listen to an artist worse than this for the rest of your life, you’d be one lucky son of a bitch. Incidentally, if any of these cats were to ever tell you they’re not massively influenced by Naked Raygun and Superchunk, they’re lying.

TRACK

Nortt, “Af Døde” from: Galgenfrist [THE SKINNY] Sad songs don’t say so much

OK, look, I know how this stuff works, alright? Some dude in, like, Germany or Denmark or somewhere looked up from his laptop to receive a nod of approval from his mindshearingly drop-dead gorgeous wife or girlfriend, and the rest is history. I’ve seen it countless times and no one’s ever impressed. How come nobody ever asked me to review a track by, say, Christoph De Babalon, like, 10 years ago when it could have made a difference? If you think you could even vaguely get off on whatever this is, there’s a record on Digital Hardcore Records, If You’re Into It I’m Out of It, by the aforementioned that will scare the shit out of you. Go find that guy’s music and buy it if it’s still even available. Not this foolishness.

P O R T R A IT B Y Shawn Brackbill

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[‘American Boy’] is typically the music I get stuck listening to when I’m going out with some chickie. Right after she starts the morning coffee and jumps in the shower. What do you do? TRACK

Origin, “Algorithm” from: Antithesis [THE SKINNY] Sweep-pick the leg, Johnny!

Wearin’ the crazy pants. Wearin’ the crazy pants. Nice. Nice. Cool. Cool. It’s valid. I know there are drummers out there that really can play this fast. Almost this fast. I’ve never seen one live that didn’t play with, like, popsicle sticks at a volume slightly louder than popcorn popping. It’s all good, though. And this is just another perfect example of how it ain’t up to me. And “ain’t” ain’t even a word. Algorithm? Al-go-rith-m. Al-go. Wait a minute. Al Gore rhythm? Oh no! Sorry, Mr. Chucklehead.

TRACK

Ocrilim, “Part 3” from: Annwn [THE SKINNY] Like Origin, but not, you know, music

Reminds me of MX-80, but I’m going to take a risky guess and say this band doesn’t know who MX-80 were. I’m also going to bet that you don’t know who MX-80 were, and if you do know I’m going to bet you don’t care. Which is sad. But that’s just what it reminds me of at times. What it sounds like is what would be a 30-second snip in-between two slightly longer tracks on the first Pavement 7-inch. So having it as an eight-minute track, I think it’s safe to say these folks really like playing their tunes. Whether or not that makes for an enjoyable listening experience (something I sort of require from music I would endorse), is not clear in this case. For you.

TRACK

Estelle feat. Kanye West, “American Boy” from: Shine [THE SKINNY] Brooklyn is almost too exotic Now, see, this is when I have to wonder if Decibel is making fun of me. Why do you want to see what some underground dude, who’s been humping it in the music ghetto for, like, 20+ years, has to say about artists in the height of the music industry? I mean, why don’t you just ask me to review a George Burns movie? Or a Victor Borge concert? Oh, wait. Those guys are dead. Um, funny thing is I actually like the tune and so could you. You know you don’t want no hot tubs cold! This is typically the music I get stuck listening to when I’m going out with some chickie. Right after she starts the morning coffee and jumps in the shower. What do you do?

TRACK

Meshuggah, “Bleed” from: obZen [THE SKINNY] We can plant a polyrhythmic house, we can build a 7/8-time tree Aw, hell yeah, cousin. Probably isn’t fair to the other artists because I’m a long-time fan of this group. But you could argue it isn’t fair to any lower species on the metal ladder. I mean, how do you compete with anything existing in dimensions beyond that you were never even wired to understand? Nothing in my experience with this group ever completely prepares me for my next experience of them. Put more simply, just in this one track there are elements I could not have imagined before hearing them and still may have trouble understanding. But I really, really like when music does that. And music doesn’t do that often for me. In 1998, Meshuggah made a Rolling Stone list of the most important metal bands of all time. This is a major achievement for an underground group, and they deserve so much more.

TRACK

5ive, “Gulls” from: Hesperus [THE SKINNY] Premature adulation

TRACK

These guys are pretty good. Reminds me of Gore (the band). I’ve seen them once somewhere, too. I know I have because I totally remember when they played this song, because right when it was over I started clapping, but then it wasn’t really over and I felt stupid. So when it stopped like that again, I didn’t clap and waited, which was good because it still wasn’t over. But then I knew when it had to be over this time, but when I clapped it still wasn’t over and I felt stupid again and left. This is a problem I used to have with my own band, so I know.

Cursed, “Friends in the Music Business” from: III [THE SKINNY] You won’t hear this on the next Entourage Back in the mid ’80s, I was in a metal/punk sort of band. This one show we played with the Cro-Mags, an interesting thing happened: Their stage manager tech dude asked me if I was on drums in the support slot before them, and I was and said, “Yes.” He then asked me if I could play their drums since they were already set up and mic-ed. I reasonably examined their drums, but had to say, “Sorry, no.” The brother became incredibly angered by this and said, “Don’t ever try and get a gig in New York ever again!” The good news is even though I’m writing about this now, I never wrote a song about it. That’s right. Never wrote a song about it. But this is a good thing. If I ever run out of things to write about, I’ll still at least have this, and what’s good enough for Cursed is good enough for me. A

DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 45

New Orleans’ SOILENT G RE

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Some people like to gamble But you, you always lose Some people like to rock ‘n’ roll You’re always singin’ the blues —Social Distortion, “Bad Luck”

nd Job thought he had it hard. New Orleans’ Soilent Green have had bad luck of truly biblical proportions. While on tour in December 2001, the band’s van flipped on black ice, breaking multiple bones in guitarist Brian Patton and then-bassist Scott Williams. Four months later, the band hit the road again, only to get into a more severe accident. Their van smashed into an 18-wheeler truck, breaking both legs of vocalist Ben Falgoust and the collarbone of stand-in bassist Jonny Modell. Two years later, Williams was shot to death in an apparent murder/suicide by his roommate.

NATHANIEL SHANNON

In 2005, Soilent Green suffered their greatest setback—while on the road, of course. Hurricane Katrina hit, leveling their hometown. “We were sitting back in between shows in hotel rooms, watching it on the news like everyone else in the world,” Patton recalls. “[But] it was our family and friends it was happening to, so it was a little different. We started freaking out.” When the city opened up, the band raced back home. “The first night we came through town, my car was flooded out and I couldn’t leave. So I had to call my family to come rescue me. I stayed there overnight with no power, with Army trucks and helicopters running around. It was a state of emergency everywhere; it was insane.” The band members got what—and whom— they could, and got the hell out. Former vocalist Glenn Rambo wasn’t so fortunate. With a broken leg but no car, he was found dead in his mother’s home. “And then another hurricane followed up right after,” Patton remembers. “We were all hid out in Lafayette and Texas and the North Shore and a few other places scattered around.” To make things worse, the band was on the outs with former label Relapse. No wonder Patton’s other band is called Eyehategod. Thus, I’m shocked at how chipper Patton sounds. His Southern drawl is somehow milea-minute fast, hopscotching between thoughts and sometimes finishing sentences. It echoes his guitar playing, which tosses ripping death metal, bluesy sludge metal and all styles in between into a raging Cajun bouillabaisse. The blues underpins the “Nola sound,” but it wasn’t always so. “When we started doing that stuff, especially with Eyehategod, we were aggravated about the speed metal scene in the area at the time,” Patton says. “It’s kind of ironic that this

area is known for that [bluesy] sound when it was actually spawned from bands like Exhorder, Incubus and these faster thrash metal bands. We were tired of hearing all that, so we were like, ‘Let’s downtune and play really slow with a lot of feedback, and piss everybody off.’” Sure enough, they did. Like Patton’s heroes Black Flag and the Melvins, who similarly went from fast to sludge, the Nola sound took time to catch on. Eventually, the local scene warmed up to it. Now bands everywhere cop that Southern

was wiped out. Members of our band were dying left and right. Our friends were OD’ing left and right. Music was the way to escape from it.” Escape—or the inability to—resonates in the album’s artwork, by famed comic book artist John Van Fleet. At first, the cover seems cartoonishly carefree, with a figure seemingly leaping into the sky. Fold out the artwork, though, and it becomes much more sinister. “The cover itself is just one panel, and it continues off into the other two panels,” Patton explains. “She symbolizes the hope, but she’s grounded down by a cord on her back. The cord on her back is connected to this beast-machine thing that’s pulling her down to the ground. It’s the theme of once you achieve flight, the thing that’s giving you flight is still actually keeping you down to the ground.” Patton’s quite familiar with this theme. He attributes his improved musicianship to kicking a longtime drug habit: “When you’re writing with a clearer head, and your true self is coming across, as opposed as to some distorted one that’s clouded by drugs, you get a lot better product.”

We basically had no hope of anything. We were in between labels. Our city was wiped out. Members of our band were dying left and right. Our friends were OD’ing left and right. Music was the way to escape from it. —Brian Patton

swing; see Animosity’s Empires for some rather reverent Soilent Green worship. 1998’s Sewn Mouth Secrets even led Rolling Stone to proclaim Soilent Green “one of the 10 most important hard and heavy bands,” alongside Meshuggah, Metallica and Black Sabbath. Given their history, it’s no surprise that new album Inevitable Collapse in the Presence of Conviction is about hopelessness. “It’s kind of a depressing theme, but it is what it is,” Patton states. “It’s where our minds were at when we were writing this record. We basically had no hope of anything. We were in between labels. Our city

Soilent Green have always turned musical corners; these turns are sharper and crisper than ever on Inevitable Collapse. With massive, guitarheavy production by Erik Rutan, it’s the band’s hardest-hitting record. For once, things are looking up for Soilent. With new label Metal Blade behind them, the band’s morale is the highest it’s been in years. “We’re actually getting to do stuff,” Patton enthuses. “We’re going to tour, we’re doing a record, we’ve got good quality shit.” He cites that old saw about “What doesn’t kill you,” and it rings hauntingly true. A D E C I B E L : J U N E 0 8 : 47

THE SWORD have just about had it

with the hipster metal bullshit already by Adem Tepedelen | photos by J Thompson

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ou mess with the bull, you get the horns.” It’s a simple enough maxim that, though made famous by that ball-buster Principal Vernon in The Breakfast Club, must have originated in Texas, where you can find signs on farm fences warning potential trespassers to watch their asses, lest they, you know, “get the horns” from the apparently surly local bovines. Failing to heed this prudent advice myself, I caused a certain Austin, TX, resident, the Sword drummer Trivett Wingo, to get a little prickly mere minutes into our phone interview when I questioned him about the band’s lyrics on Gods of the Earth, their second album for Kemado Records. Me Messing With the Bull:

The lyrics seem a little over-the-top with the fantasy imagery. Is this intentional? Me Getting the Horns:

“They’re just really the specific lyrics that go with the songs best and make the point that we’re trying to make,” says Wingo quite emphatically. “There’s no deliberate intention to make something over-the-top or overly fantastical. The Sword formula is incredibly simple. People ask a lot of questions all the time and there’s just one answer: We make the shit as badass as possible at all times. ‘Why do you do this, why are your songs structured like this, why do you have these kind of lyrics?’ Because that is what is most badass. Because those are the riffs we were able to come up with that were the most badass. Do you know what I’m saying? We don’t have any complex philosophy or operating mode that is based on anything super cerebral or anything like that. We’re not trying to make it more of this, that or the other. Badass, that’s all it is.” So, to summarize: Badass. And, yeah, that was where the interview started (OK, that was actually after I asked him if he was related to Trey Wingo—nope), so with that all cleared up, it was time to get into the new album that the band—rounded out by guitarist/vocalist J.D. Cronise, bassist Bryan Ritchie and guitarist Kyle Shutt—once again self-recorded and produced in Austin. I figured I’d toss out something easy to get the ball rolling. Didn’t expect this exchange: J.D.’s vocals sound better on this album than Age of Winters; what do you think of the difference?

“You know, I have not really listened to this record too critically, because generally after we make a recording, I go through a process of hating it very intensely for several months and I don’t listen to it. There will come a point in the future where I’m able to separate myself from it. I think on some deep level I hate myself very much, so I hate bands that I play in as well. But it’ll be a little while before I’ll be able to actually listen to the record in an objective way and [4] DECIBEL : JUNE 0 8 : 49

I don’t take a whole lot of journalism too seriously. —trivett wingo say anything about it. I really don’t enjoy the recording process too much. There’s something a little bit surgical about it where I become very hypercritical of a lot of things. It’s really hard to come out of recording a record and immediately comment on it, because I don’t even think I know how I feel about it.” It definitely has a warmer feel to it than Age of Winters. Was it recorded digitally or analog?

“The drums were recorded to tape. I’m not sure about the vocals and guitar. After I did the drum tracks, I left the studio. I don’t know exactly what voodoo happened after I left.” So have you even heard the final mix?

“Yeah, I have a master mix. I’ve kind of skimmed through it, but I haven’t been able to listen to it like I would another band’s album and totally enjoy it.” At this point I felt pretty confident that I’ve listened Gods of the Earth more than Wingo has and may have been better qualified to comment on it. (I also thought maybe I should send him a bill for the revealing therapy session.) However, as it turns out, the promo I’d been listening to wasn’t actually the final version. After the Sword finished recording Gods in November 2007, they embarked on a Northeast tour with Valient Thorr, Black Cobra and the Roller where they tried out the newly recorded material live. Upon their return home, they decided to re-record some of Gods and add a song, “The Frost Giant’s Daughter,” which I haven’t heard at all (though the title is a reference to a Conan the Barbarian story by Robert E. Howard). Assuming that the re-recorded version, released in April, doesn’t vary too much from the first attempt, this may well be the Sword album to 50 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

convince people that the band is the real deal. The stoner/doom elements from Age of Winters— Sabbath via Sleep—are still present, but it’s far more aggressive and up-tempo, incorporating early ’80s thrash and NWOBHM riffs fluidly. And like many bands’ sophomore releases, some of the material had previously been in the Sword’s repertoire, but for the first time, they had to write new songs under pressure. “We wrote [Gods] in a flash,” Wingo says. “About half of it had been around for awhile, but the other half we put together over the course of two months. We wrote them, demoed them and laid down the album. It was kind of a high-pressure situation, much more labor-intensive. It was exhausting.” Recording began at a home studio, but they reluctantly switched to Austin’s Folkvang Studio—with Ritchie engineering and Cronise producing—to finish it up. “The band was a little bit resistant [going into Folkvang] at first,” admitts Wingo, “because we’re always trying to do everything in our own homegrown way. We’re very insular. We just don’t really like anyone interfering with our band. Why have someone else get involved with something that’s already totally awesome? There’s no reason to tamper with the chemistry of things that already do exactly what they’re supposed to do.” Cronise, who actually started the band by himself back in 2003 and originally performed with a drum machine, seems to carry a disproportionate amount of the workload in the Sword. Along with producing, he also writes all the lyrics and vocal melodies, as well as 70 percent of the music. Strangely, he leaves the bulk of the interviews to Wingo. “He’s pretty secretive,” says Wingo, “so he doesn’t really like to answer questions about a lot of stuff.” Like maybe where he comes up with song titles like “The Sundering,” “How Heavy This Axe,” “Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians” and “Maiden, Mother & Crone”? Unfortunately, it’s those song titles and the “badass” lyrics that seem to draw ire from those eager to brand the

Sword “hipster” metal, as though what the band is doing is simply mocking the genre, with a sly wink to indie rock’s Corduroy Mafia. Granted, most current American metal bands (except maybe Manowar) aren’t delivering couplets like “How heavy this axe / burden carried from birth / wrought in Stygian visions / by the gods of the earth,” but the reality of it is that Wingo’s right: It suits the music just fine. These dudes are playing a totally retro form of metal, so why not write the same kind of lyrics Ronnie James Dio was rockin’ back in the day? Not wanting to get Wingo fired up again, I still couldn’t help wondering if the flap over the Sword’s authenticity has bothered the band. The quartet is so despised in certain circles, there are metal websites where people have actually posted reviews stating: “This is the sort of music that is a plague upon metal, a conspiracy to strip it of its pride and savagery… Death to the Sword,” and, “This band has focused more on growing facial hair and growing their hair long to fit into the metal community when they should be trying to write original material. This band will appeal to hipster fashion wannabes.” “I think [these people] have their own very limited definition of what metal bands are,” says an annoyed Wingo, “and it irritates them when they feel like we’re impinging on their genre or something. If [they’re] sitting around looking at bands and worrying about how bands look… get a fucking life. Those are the same people that probably don’t like Led Zeppelin. I don’t understand those people. They need their own planet.” You can kind of see why the Sword prefer to keep things so insular, ignoring the outside world’s opinions. Even though he admits to reading the press the band gets, Wingo doesn’t think much of it. “I don’t take a whole lot of journalism too seriously. I just can’t invest a lot in worrying about what particular individuals that happen to have the power to be published think about the record. Just as relevant as their opinions are the people that go to our shows that are the burly dudes that just got off of their nine-to-five job driving a beer truck or whatever, and are the biggest Sword fan[s] in the world. They’re not sitting around thinking about elaborate comparisons and all this crap. They just listen to the album and rock the fuck out. That’s who it’s for. That’s who we do it for: people who want to rock.” Turns out that everyone’s been way overthinking things when it comes to nailing down just what the Sword are all about. What it really boils down to, to paraphrase Wingo, is this: badass shit for people who want to rock the fuck out. “Nothing we do is in reaction to anything else,” he further explains. “It’s not like we’re tying to make a counterpoint. The things we do are completely within the Sword context. It’s really just like, what do we really like and what do we think is rad, not what do we think there’s a need for, or what can we do to be different. We don’t concern ourselves with any of that.” A

Q&A with

MAX CAVA LERA Decibel waxes Brazilian with the former Sepultura and current Cavalera Conspiracy/ Soulfly frontman ---by J. Bennett 52 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

Please,

please don’t ask us why, but we typed the words “Brazil,” “metal” and “gay” into an Interhole search the other day and were directed to an excerpt from an interview that former Sepultura/current Soulfly mainman Max Cavalera did in the February issue of Sweden’s Close Up magazine. “I went to see Lamb of God in the States and they were alright, but Killswitch Engage opened and it was the gayest show I’ve ever seen,” Cavalera told the presumably ossified Swedes. “I was like, ‘I’m not part of this scene—it’s fucking gay.’” We were in dire need of some soul-crushing honesty that particular day (hence the Interhole search in the first place), so we decided to call Cavalera up at his place in Phoenix to ask if these new jeans we just bought make our ass look fat. We also figured we might as well discuss his recent reunion with his estranged brother and former Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera under the Cavalera Conspiracy moniker, the fact that Sepultura currently exists without a Cavalera amongst their ranks, and of course his unbridled assessment of his Dio-covering, Daisy Dukes-rocking labelmates. What we got was a trip down memory lane that includes murders, cokeheads, skinheads with axes, hot whiskey, long bus rides and gallons of flying piss. Best of all, our man was actually reading a copy of Decibel (the February 2008 issue, to be exact) when we got him on the horn.

Was there any specific thing that happened that made you want to resolve your differences with your brother?

During the time you two weren’t speaking, were you keeping an eye on Sepultura to see what they were up to?

It came out of nowhere, really. I was on tour with Soulfly and Igor called [my wife/manager] Gloria’s cell phone. He talked to her for an hour, which was really good—it was good to patch things up with everybody, not just me. And then she gave me the phone and said, “It’s your brother.” My dad died of a heart attack, so I was joking to her, like, “You’re working on my heart attack.” I hadn’t talked to him for 12 years. It was a shocker, but it was killer, you know? I was really happy to get the phone call. I told him to jump on a plane and come see me in Phoenix, which he did, so it was great.

No, I didn’t, man. [Laughs] I told him that, too. I said, “Look, it’s nothing personal, but it’s so hard for me to imagine that band without me.” I never listened to any of the records they did without me. One time somebody put one of their songs on and I said, “Take it off—I don’t wanna hear it.” To me, it’s so personal. Sepultura was like my little baby, you know? I started that band with Igor when I was a teenager. I found out later that they went to the Emirates and played Saudi Arabia and places like that, which is awesome. And he jammed with a lot of cool people, too. But I didn’t follow it, you know? I just concentrated on Soulfly.

He just decided it had been too long?

Yeah, pretty much. I think Dimebag’s shooting somehow had a psychological effect on him, too. Of course, nobody knows what’s gonna happen or who’s gonna die, so for us not to talk for so long… you know, he said, “I wanted to make peace with you before something bad happened to one of us.” It was really out of nowhere. I always wanted to call him, but I never got up the courage to make the call. I thought it would make things worse.

Were you upset that they kept the band name after you left?

How close did you come to actually calling him?

Now Sepultura exists without you or Igor. How fuckin’ weird is that?

I thought about it a lot, but I also thought that things needed time to heal. Like I said, I didn’t wanna fuck it up even more. So I just waited, man, and it was a hard time for my family—my mom, my sister, my kids who didn’t even know Igor’s kids—so I’m glad we worked it out.

No, but it’s not the same, you know? And it’s not just me who feels that way—it’s a lot of the fans, too. I just felt betrayed, you know? When something is yours and it’s taken away from you… it’s just betrayal. But it was really hard, because my brother was in the band, too. Musically, I got over it really quickly because I got so busy with Soulfly that I didn’t have time to be bitter.

They might be touring under the name, but me and Igor are carrying the whole spirit under the name [Cavalera] Conspiracy. So the name Sepultura might be out there, but there’s nothing inside. What I’m doing with Igor is the clos-

est thing to a reunion, but it’s better because we’re playing new songs. I couldn’t really ask for more. Have you talked to [Sepultura guitarist] Andreas [Kisser] or [bassist] Paulo [Pinto] since you left Sepultura?

No, I haven’t talked to either of them. You know, people even thought the whole thing with Igor was made up. People in Europe would say, “Oh, you guys hang out at family reunions—you just tell the press that you don’t talk.” But no, man—I’m not making this shit up. I didn’t talk to Igor for a long fucking time, and I still haven’t talked to the other guys. It’s kinda weird, but because of the way things have worked out with Igor, there’s a possibility that we might do some shows together with those guys. I’m very open about saying I’d love to do a reunion—even with the guys from the early incarnation of Sepultura [guitarist Jairo Guedz and vocalist Wagner Lamounier], from the 10 years of what I like to call “death metal boot camp” that we did in Brazil before we even came to the States. Those were great years—we played like shit and we knew nothing, but those were fundamental years for me and Igor. That incarnation of Sepultura was very important, and I think a lot people forget that. Without those years, there never would have been a Chaos A.D. or Roots. That was the foundation; that was the beginning. So if we ever do a reunion, I’d really like to invite those guys to show people something a little deeper than the classic lineup. What was the metal scene like in Brazil during those early years?

It was very little, very underground. We’re from Belo Horizonte, between São Paulo and Rio, and we were the only death metal band in the whole state. There was Overdose, but they were more like Iron Maiden or Def Leppard. We were already pretty Hellhammer; we were disciples of Tom Warrior. There was Dorsal [Atlântica] from Rio—they were pretty kick-ass; they sounded like Venom. São Paulo had some bands that were more speed metal, more thrash metal—they sounded like Exodus or Metallica. So, in a way, we were the real first death metal band from our state. We started to get attention outside our state when we did a Kreator cover of “Living in Fear.” People saw us and thought we were good, but not because we were playing good. But then again, death metal was never about playing good at the time. Listen to a lot of the early stuff, and it’s pretty sloppy. But it was a start. And I was trading letters with people like Chuck [Schuldiner] from Death and Monte [Conner] from Roadrunner, the Dark Angel guys, the Kreator guys—I was even selling their autographs, man. We needed money so bad and I knew some kids who liked this shit, so I’d be like, “Hey, man—you wanna buy Kreator’s autograph? You wanna buy Chuck from Death’s autograph?” Igor was involved in that, too, and I guess he recently ran into one of the guys who bought [4] DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 53

mean, that’s some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit. We couldn’t play in Brazil for the whole next year because nobody would book us. Everyone thought our fans killed people with axes. Thank God we were already going to the States to do the Sepultura/Sadus/Obituary tour. Otherwise we would’ve just died because we couldn’t play anywhere. That really, really fucked us up in Brazil. I was watching old Iron Maiden footage from the first Rock in Rio back in 1985, and the Brazilian fans just seem to be going apeshit—like way beyond anything you see in this country. Is that the kind of fanaticism that drove Sepultura?

You know, there are some hungry motherfuckers down there, but I think metal has that effect on people everywhere. Maybe more so in Brazil and maybe Indonesia, but in metal there really is this kind of hunger. People who are into other kinds of music don’t really seem to share this. That’s why I love metal and that’s why I’ll never get out of it. In a weird way, Soulfly was the best thing that happened to me, because Roots was very popular and I had to go backwards—to all the clubs and shit like that. I had to go to the underground again, and that was probably the best thing for my ass. A lot of bands get big and never go back to those places, so they lose their entire sense of reality. It was hard for some of the crew guys that stuck with me—one year they’re with Sepultura at some festival with 100,000 people in Europe and the next year they’re with Soulfly at some shithole in Texas with 100 people.

“We were playing a free show in São them all those years Paulo [with Sepultura in 1991] and ago. He was like, one of our fans got killed with an “Hey, man—tell Max what up. I’ve still got axe by a skinhead. In the middle of all the autographs!” a crowd with an axe—I mean, that’s [Laughs] We did all kinds of shit like that some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit.” just to survive. Our first instruments were all robbed shit. We went to shows just to steal instruments. We’d take anything we could get. That’s really what it was about with us—there was the music side and the survival side. That’s why I call it “death metal boot camp,” ’cause that shit was fucked up. What were the first Sepultura shows like?

They were so fucked up. When we played São Paulo for the first time, the guy who put on the show lost a lot of money. We were in the dressing room afterwards, and the guy shows up with a gun. He was a total cokehead, just waving the gun around, telling us we weren’t gonna get paid. I was like, “We’re gonna fucking die here.” And then we had no place to stay, so we crashed under the stage. Whenever we had to play a different state, it was a trip. We didn’t have a van, so we’d have to ride on the commercial bus for like 60 hours, drinking hot whiskey with people who had chickens. We’d barely even make it to the show, and then there’d be no PA—a thousand kids, but no PA. [Laughs] But there was something good about it. No matter how shitty it was, we always believed in ourselves. It’s like that line, you know—“if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.” That definitely applied to us. When I watch movies like City of God… have you seen it? Yeah—awesome movie.

Yeah, and it’s based in the ’70s, but the way it shows Rio is not all that different than it was in the ’80s, during the time of Sepultura. So many times we’d get fucked up and go into the favelas to score dope, and it was just like that movie. We were so stupid—I can’t believe none of us died. 54 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

A bunch of longhairs stumbling into a favela to score weed? It’s a miracle no one got killed. I always wondered how accurate that depiction was.

Oh, I’m sure they added some attitude to it, but Rio was definitely like that. Whenever we played there, shit always went crazy. I remember one of our roadies disappeared for a week, and we thought for sure he was dead. We thought he went to buy some shit and just never came back. Turns out he got so fucking wasted that he just ended up staying in Rio for a week to do more drugs. [Laughs] But there was definitely a dangerous element. There’s a classic Sepultura photo—I think it was for the [Australian EP] Third World Posse—that was taken in a favela in São Paulo. It was me and Igor’s idea, but the photographer did not want to go there. Andreas was like, “Whatever—just give me some weed and I’ll go anywhere.” And Paulo was like, “Fuck you guys—I’m not going.” So we went and did the photo shoot, and the people were killer. They know when you’re there with respect. But, you know, people in other bands definitely got killed by favela people. What was the worst thing that happened to you guys during that time period?

I think the biggest blow we had in Sepultura was while we were playing a free show in São Paulo and one of our fans got killed with an axe by a skinhead. It was on the Arise tour, and that really fucked me up for a long time. He was enjoying our music when he died. And that was the first thing we heard about when the show was over. In the middle of a crowd with an axe—I

Sepultura played the second Rock in Rio in 1991. What was that like?

I remember we couldn’t go to the first one in 1985. Our family wouldn’t let us go because Ozzy was playing and they thought he was the devil. Me and Igor were banned. My family is so fucked up that they took us to a farm in the middle of nowhere to make sure we couldn’t go. And my uncle was just a bastard—he wouldn’t even let us watch it on TV. I remember telling Igor, “We’re gonna get this motherfucker.” So when we got to play the second one, we called my uncle and told him to watch. The thing I remember most about it was the brutal smell of piss when we were onstage. People were pissing everywhere and throwing bottles and cups full of piss onstage while Faith No More were playing, and I guess Mike Patton grabbed one and poured it over his head. Has there been any backlash from that interview with the Swedish magazine, the one where you called Killswitch Engage gay?

Not much, man. People haven’t really asked. It’s my opinion, man, you know? I don’t like Nickelback, either. But opinions are like assholes, and a lot of people don’t really like my ass. A

l t c E i r e c RelaxatIon WITCH offer a riff-heavy break from Vermont’s fertile noise/folk scene by Andrew Parks

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itch have a headlining gig in Brooklyn tonight, the kind most bands would consider a mustslay opportunity, what with the way it falls around the release of their second full-length, Paralyzed (Tee Pee). They don’t seem the least bit concerned about their set, though. Actually, no one even knows when Witch play, as the band’s core trio (bassist Dave Sweetapple, frontman Kyle Thomas and drummer J Mascis) and recentlyrecruited touring guitarist (Antoine Guerlain) settle into a cluster of seats at Roebling Tea Room, a popular Brooklyn café that serves frosty pints and steamy pots of premium tea.

As for what’s on the set list, well, that’s easy. “Right now, we’re just doing four old ones and four new ones,” says Thomas. “That’s all we know. I feel bad, but we haven’t had much choice because we haven’t had time to practice.” That can’t be good for Guerlain, since he just joined, right around when Asa Irons, Thomas’ songwriting partner and bandmate from the folk collective Feathers, decided he’s “not the touring type.” (Irons is still a key contributor to Witch. He just doesn’t play any shows.) I tell the new guy—who looks like a lumberjack-in-training between his thick beard and red and black flannel shirt—not to fuck up, although mistakes are inevitable given that he’s only had a couple of weeks to learn songs the rest of the band barely know either. “It’s all right if Antoine messes up,” says Thomas, smiling. “That’s just our style.” I ask Guerlain if the other guys let him put his own personal stamp on the songs, from sporadic solos to searing leads. “I’m still pretty new to the situation,” he says, “so I don’t know how I’ll fit in just yet.” “I think we’re definitely better with Antoine in the band,” adds Mascis in his trademark drawl. “He’s the only one that can play the songs solidly all the way through. The rest of us just fade in and out.” Apparently this—complete and utter go-withthe-flow chaos—is what happens when you plop a true vet behind the drum set (Mascis has fronted some band called Dinosaur Jr. since 1984) and half your band’s from Brattleboro, VT, a small town along the New Hampshire state line with a population that hovers below 15,000. Things have been this relaxed since Witch worked through their first songs in 2005, too. In fact, keeping things as casual as a true garage band was the point since the beginning, since Brattleboro’s

thriving arts scene (it was named No. 9 in a book about The 100 Best Small Art Towns in America) produces a steady stream of chin-scratchers and self-important noiseniks in the vein of nearby acts like Sunburned Hand of the Man and MV & EE With the Golden Road. “Witch was a reaction to the non-song-based music in the area—the noise/folk scene and the esoteric art aspect of it,” explains Sweetapple. “You go to a show and it’s just dead silent, so we wanted to do something you could rock to. We’re not a metal band, but we’re the only band like this in the area.” “I have a hard time at those shows where you can’t talk,” Mascis suddenly chimes in. (He does this a lot, with little rhyme or reason to his thought process.) “I can’t stand it, so I walk outside.” “Everyone’s so serious when they shouldn’t be,” concludes Thomas. Well, everyone but these guys. The way they tell it, Witch formed by osmosis, as the only area musicians who wanted to—for lack of a better term—rock found one another, beginning with Sweetapple, who stumbled upon Thomas at his record store job soon after moving from Boston to Brattleboro in 2001. “I was basically trolling the record stores for young lads and a good time and I found this guy,” jokes Sweetapple. Talk eventually turned to forming a riff-centric band, as Sweetapple spent most of the ’90s “at home with my bass, jamming along with Queen,” and Thomas was already growing tired of playing softer fare with Feathers. Irons made the jump from Feathers along with Thomas as soon as the singer/guitarist finished writing his first Witch song (the psychedelic, Sabbath-y sludge of “Rip Van Winkle”). Mascis’ role came together quite randomly as well: Sweetapple initially asked him about

something completely unrelated: reissuing Dinosaur Jr.’s first three records on vinyl through his long-running label Wabana, “a hobby gone bad” that’s been going strong since 1994, including one-off releases by Wolf Eyes, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Calexico, Goatreign (Mike Hickey of Venom/Carcass/Cathedral) and Zombi. Once the two struck up a friendship, however, Sweetapple introduced Thomas to the Dinosaur Jr. don and the idea of Mascis returning to the drum kit came up at some point. Well, “returning” isn’t quite right. While many stories have suggested that Mascis hadn’t played the drums between the brief hardcore flirtations of Deep Wound—his early ’80s high school band with Lou Barlow—and Witch, he’s bashed out competent beats for everyone from Mark Lanegan to Mike Watt, Gobblehoof to MV & EE With the Golden Road. That said, it’s amusing to watch the silver-streaked indie icon close his eyes and completely lose his inhibitions within Witch’s ragged and rickety rhythm section. “It’s cool to work out my aggressions again,” enthuses Mascis. “I still remember imagining teachers’ heads on my drums in high school. “Actually,” he adds, breaking into a rare smile, “I still think of the same teachers now.” “There’s a whole world of cover bands in Springfield [MA],” says Mascis, when I ask him if Witch is really the only rock band between Brattleboro and Northampton, MA. “Like, Staind started there as an Alice in Chains cover band.” Mascis bounced between the New England area and New York City for most of the ’90s, until finally giving up his NYC apartment soon after the September 11 attacks. He now lives in Amherst full time and has his own home studio where Witch recorded some of their second record and Thurston Moore tracked all of his recent solo disc, Trees Outside the Academy. As it turns out, Moore now does the same thing Mascis once did, splitting his time between a SoHo loft and a Northampton, MA, home because he’s so swept up in the fertile improv/noise scene of Vermont and Massachusetts. “It’s a crazy incestuous scene out here,” marvels Sweetapple. “Kids working in coffee shops will be playing with Thurston Moore in their spare time. It’s more of a family thing, you know? I don’t think you’d see that in most cities.” Thomas agrees, citing Feathers during their honeymoon period and the offhanded formation of Tomorrow’s Fucking Mayhem, a “fast punk band” he once had with Matt Johnson of the Brooklyn-based indie pop duo Matt & Kim. DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 57

“It’s cool to work out my aggressions again. I still remember imagining teachers’ heads on my drums in high school.” —J Mascis “We basically dressed up and fucked each other up on stage,” Thomas says of the brief collaboration. “Who knows if anyone will ever hear our recordings…” “That’s the thing,” continues Sweetapple. “We didn’t want Witch to be too highbrow. There’s a lot of backslapping going on in [that experimental scene], to the point where you wonder if anyone really likes what they say they like. It’s weird because we’re playing in Northampton tomorrow night and I doubt the same [noise] people are going to go just to be social. It’s gonna be kids who want to see rock music because there’s such a lack of it out there.” Lucky for Witch fans, the band has grown immensely between their self-titled 2006 debut and Paralyzed. It’s not that their first disc wasn’t a competent mix of hard rock and doom metal; it’s just that the new one stretches its wings a bit, from the unhinged flare-ups of “Psychotic Rock” (featuring Thomas’ first attempt at balls-out screaming) to the honeyed harmonies and punchy percussion of “Sweet Sue.” Surprisingly enough, most of the songs—as fleshed-out as they sound—were completed in a hurry to meet a March deadline in time for South by Southwest and the band’s first three58 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

week European tour. Basically, Thomas and Irons demoed the entire record in the latter’s garage as Mascis did the reunion dance with Dinosaur Jr, and the band then tore through all the tracks in two studios. “We didn’t even get to practice a lot of the new stuff before we recorded it,” says Thomas. “We put the album together really quickly without putting too much thought into it. J played a lot of it for the first time in the studio.” Which is exactly how Mascis likes it—loose and lo-fi. Well, sort of. Since Paralyze’s mix was done at Mascis’ studio, he made sure this album sounded tighter and fuller than the last. “The first one sounds so muddy compared to this one,” concedes Sweetapple. “It doesn’t have as many distinct things jumping out at you, either.” “Usually that’s how I like things—distorted and blown-out,” adds Thomas. “That’s just my taste, though. I’m happy when things sound like shit.” Which brings us to the simple question of “why now?” As in, why did the members of Witch feel the need to play this kind of music at this point in their lives? I bring up Dead Child, the Slint-related hard rock band that recently helped Dave Pajo and others return to their hardcore/punk roots and ask if that’s simply

what Witch are doing—Mascis revisiting his Deep Wound days, Thomas regressing to the punk bands he did as a teen in the ’90s and Sweetapple making up for the lost time of the very same decade. The band’s sage-like bassist offers an answer. “You know how classic rock kids sold all their records to buy punk rock but then regretted selling all the classics when they realized they didn’t have to be so pigeonholed?” asks Sweetapple. “I feel like that’s happened with a lot of the indie rock people from the ’90s. I wish I could name some people, but anyway, there are ‘a lot of people’ I know that won’t admit being influenced by punk or hardcore now. Instead, they’re all about naming whatever the esoteric trend is at the time. Too many people pretend they’re into everything but what they’re really into at the moment, just to retain their integrity.” That’s definitely not the case here. If anything, Witch seem oblivious to most modern music outside of other Tee Pee acts and whomever they’re touring with at the moment, like Annihilation Time, a group Sweetapple happily describes as “a Black Flag meets Thin Lizzy kind of thing.” That is, until a brusque waitress interrupts him. “I thought she was gonna knife you when you asked for coffee,” jokes Sweetapple. “I like it, though. It’s kinda challenging.” “Do you think the waitress would be impressed by the Witch set?” asks Mascis, ever so dryly. “No,” says Sweetapple, “she’d probably kill herself.” A

They may not have cracked thrash’s Big Four, but after 20 years, TE STAM EN T are having the last laugh by Shane Mehling

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hen Chuck Billy, one of the godfathers of thrash, picks up the phone, he has to turn down Loverboy. You know, the “Working for the Weekend” band. I’m not going to lie—that was unexpected. But it’s not like Billy needs to prove his cred to this young punk. After 20+ years of fronting the no-goddamn-introduction-needed Testament, he can listen to whatever he wants. And now that The Formation of Damnation, the band’s first album in almost a decade, is here, there’s little doubt that Billy’s allegiance to thrashing has only grown stronger. First, let’s take a quick look at the progress of the supposed Big Four of thrash. Metallica and Megadeth have been undeniably sucking since the ’90s. Anthrax, with another new singer, are on life support, and Slayer have been phoning it in for years. Now more than ever, it’s time to show that there’s no school like the old school. So while the wait has been excruciating, Testament have resurrected their legendary lineup to show that age hasn’t dulled one pinch harmonic or slowed a single shredding riff. Of course, not even the band was sure they’d be able to pull it off. “Our expectations were pretty high,” admits Billy. “We thought it had to be good or we may run into some problems with our career and our fans. But when we finally had a chance to sit down and hear the record, we were highfiving each other.” Fans of true thrash will find themselves doing the same, as Formation not only shows Billy and guitarist Eric Peterson as dangerous as ever, but reunites them with guitar phenom Alex Skolnick and bassist Greg Christian. This isn’t one of those Anthrax-bringing-back-Belladonna’s-perm kind of deals— Testament are a machine, oiled by the blood and sweat of musicians at the height of their talents who started out back when many of us were crying for our mommies. The Bay Area in the early ’80s, ground zero for thrash, is where a group of teens were pissed with the direction of metal. Billy recalls that “when we were first writing music, it was a lot of glam and poseur metal, and we didn’t want to be that. We saw the energy and power and attitude of Metallica, and wanted to be different. We didn’t want to be on the glam side. And that’s just what came to be. It was sort of the Bay Area vs. L.A.” But Testament earned their respected place in metal by taking their influences in a different direction. While Billy can sound like a long-haired Cthulhu, his voice and ear for melody have been one of the band’s most impressive attributes. [4] DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 61

“When I first joined, I was into singers like Dokken,” acknowledges Billy. “But Testament’s songs were more rapid-fire with straightforward vocals. When I came in, I wanted to bring heaviness with a little melody, and I think that’s what’s made us different. It couldn’t just be power all the time. It couldn’t just appeal to one audience. With a good hook and a good melody, anyone can enjoy it.” These hooks are one reason Formation will haul Testament back to the forefront of thrash. Songs like “More Than Meets the Eye” will be stuck in your head long after your bloody nose from the pit has dried up. But the nine-year formation of Formation wasn’t all caviar and palm-muting. After decapitating fans with their last record, 1999’s The Gathering, Billy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer around his heart. Coupled with Chuck Schuldiner’s cancer struggles, the Bay Area support system came together in ’01 with what is considered one of the greatest thrash fests in history, Thrash of the Titans. Acts such as Exodus, Death Angel and S.O.D performed to raise funds for both musicians’ medical bills and gave welcome migraines to most in attendance. Schuldiner’s passing is a tragic footnote to the entire event, but the silver lining was Billy’s recovery and the resuscitation of some legendary acts. “It was a real special show,” says Billy. “A lot of bands who hadn’t played for years put their differences aside and came together for the cause. It was an overwhelming feeling to me and put a spark back into a lot of those bands. I think the Bay Area sort of became energized again. It was the right time for this kind of music.” Although Billy recovered, another clump of dung hit the fan when Atlantic Records refused to allow the band to remix their early material. “I think those early records just sound terrible, but Atlantic wouldn’t let us touch them. So we decided to make them sound better by re-recording them.” First Strike Still Deadly, released in ’02, ended up not only allowing the band to polish their earlier material, but was the first opening for Skolnick to once again strap on his guitar and play classic Testament songs. “He hadn’t been with us since ’92,” Billy notes, “so it was great to have him back.” But Skolnick’s dedication to other projects kept him on the sidelines until 2005, when both he and Christian came back to the stage for the Dynamo Festival. “The reception was amazing,” Billy marvels. “Alex and Greg hadn’t played with us for 14 years. It was only supposed to be one show. And then it turned into five shows, then 10, then 30. I think Alex especially felt the love from the fans.” This brought back a camaraderie no one could ignore. “We were out there as friends. Instead of being young kids partying and missing everything, this time it was about the music and the performance. I think that’s what kept us 62 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

together. We never pushed the subject of them coming back, but after the shows we asked what they thought about doing the new record and they accepted.” The band was finally ready, but not without a few more roadblocks. “We had ideas while on tour,” says Billy, “but our old studio got condemned and we had to move all our recording gear into storage. We ended up setting up in my living room and jamming on the weekends to just get ideas out there.” The idea of Alex Skolnick soloing amongst shag carpeting and love seats is pretty hilarious, but it kept the band on task through another lineup change when immigration booted ex-Cradle of Filth/Dimmu Borgir drummer Nick Barker back to England. Instead of trying Craigslist, Testament decided to ask a former member who was more than able to meet their needs. After leaving Slayer, Paul Bostaph was ready to once again attack his kit, and rounded out a lineup that even skeptics have been drooling at. More good news came with a noticeable adjustment in the songwriting process. “Usually Eric has the idea in his head with riffs and how he wants the songs to go, and then I pick what I think I should be a verse or chorus,” explains Billy. “Then we throw it on a four-track and bring it to the band. But with Alex and Greg, it’s been more of a collaboration, like with our older records.” Though when it comes to lyrics, little has changed for a band that has always tried to get a serious point across. They named a song “Greenhouse Effect,” for God’s sake. And Billy’s always been proud of this focus on more pressing matters instead of the usual gloom and Satanic fluff of other bands. “I think after the first record we didn’t want to be categorized like most heavy metal bands, [who] write stories that aren’t real,” he says. “With [The] New Order [released in ’88], we wanted to write music that conveyed a message. I think a bit of our duty in heavy metal is to stand up and say we’re not just some dumb guys who play as fast as we can and sing about nonsense. We wanted to have some sort of message. When we were young, most kids were into sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and didn’t care about the environment. A lot of our songs talk about how we care about the planet, and if that touches one metalhead, why not?” Many would agree through the last eight years that America could use more enlightened metalheads to discuss its dubious foreign policy and failed war, and Billy has been happy to comply. “This record is a statement on how displeased I am with President Bush and the troops in Iraq. It’s an upsetting feeling to see young children in Iraq carrying guns and burning flags. It makes me think my children and grandchildren’s generations are going to deal with the people on

TV who are bringing their kids up to hate. It’s a vicious cycle. This country is creating nuclear weapons, and if you’re building weapons, you’re probably going to use them. We’re not lining ourselves up for a friendly world, and that’s the formation of damnation.” But Testament aren’t just armchair critics, as they came surprisingly close to the fracas in the Middle East with a show in Dubai. “I wasn’t sure how it was gonna be,” Billy says with a laugh. “I wasn’t sure how the fans were going to look or react, but they were amazing and pretty much every single metalhead in the world looks the same. We talked to some kids who flew in from Kuwait and they said it’s hell. It was only an hour away, but all those kids have is their metal music. They don’t really have record stores, and they have to go out of their country to enjoy it. It was really trippy.” These are the kinds of situations that keep Billy from the Lars Ulrich syndrome of criticizing the postNapster world. Billy accepts that “the Internet definitely affects record sales, but metalheads still enjoy buying CDs and supporting bands. And it’s help-

This record is a statement on how displeased I am with President Bush and the troops in Iraq. —chuck billy

ful to get your band out there on a worldwide level. For a kid in a small country, it’s great to hear the bands he cares about.” The corporate aspect of music also recalls the agonizing problems Testament have had with labels. They’ve suffered the slings and arrows of well-intentioned fans whose excitement at putting out a Testament record was far greater than their business savvy. “We’ve had three of them fold under us,” Billy grumbles. “We sold quite a few records and then they claimed bankruptcy. There were some years where we weren’t making anything. We were putting out a pretty good product and the fans were getting it, but the label couldn’t keep

it together. There are a lot of smaller labels that offer you a lot of money, but then they don’t set up interviews or promote the record. And when they fold, they still own your record and there’s nothing you can do about it.” These kind of royal screwjobs are the main reason the band decided to go with stalwart Nuclear Blast. “It’s probably the best move we’ve made in quite a few years,” Billy says. “We decided that to do this right, we had to go with a label that’s been around and has a track record. After nine years, we want to make sure people get to hear the record.” And with Nuclear Blast happily promoting the band (this article being a shining example), there’s already talk of

a second record that should be out long before 2018. “We’re excited to just get out there and do it,” Billy enthuses. “We’re feeling pretty good about writing and will hopefully have another record out next year. We’re in a great frame of mind and have confidence we can write another good record.” This, though, will have to wait until after the band once again sets out on a worldwide tour, hitting some new spots with a revamped set list. Billy’s mum on what songs the band will be unleashing, but he’s been excited to look through their extensive back catalog to find some forgotten gems. “We’ve been playing the same set for about five years,” he admits, “and now we’re starting from scratch. We’ve been combing through the old records and finding the ones where we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that one’s really fun to play and the fans will probably love it.’” But with a new chapter in the band’s life, there’s still the question of how Testament have remained intact through numerous (no less than 15) member changes. Billy and Peterson have been through the whole thing together, and the consistent thrashing brilliance the band has unleashed over the years is, um, testament to the creativity and drive of both musicians. “Me and Eric are basically the ones who have to pull it together all the time,” the frontman says. “We fight and argue and disagree, but we’re like brothers. After I was sick with cancer, I didn’t think there was going to be a band anymore. But even if we couldn’t tour or put out records, I think we’d still get together to write songs. Sitting back and writing a good song is the payoff for us.” This positive outlook is one reason why Billy doesn’t retain a Mustaine-esque bitterness about Testament’s position in the metal scene. “Back in the ’80s, we felt right on the edge with the Big Four, and then the bottom fell through on heavy metal and we fell through as a band. Maybe there was some bitterness and anger, but it just made Eric and I want to keep going and play harder. And we’ve always been proud and thankful to have been in the beginning of that Bay Area metal scene. We like carrying the torch.” This torch he speaks of has lit a collective fire under the asses of a new generation of thrashers who Billy is more than happy to see thriving. He considers himself a devoted fan of bands like Lamb of God, the Haunted and Soilwork. “I still love that type of music. Listening to them and seeing that kids out in the world are recognizing their type of music inspires me to make my music. We’ve inspired them in a lot of ways and they inspire us. It’s this cool circle of metal.” Next month we’ll let you know what Loverboy thinks about that. A DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 63

OLD

NEW

SCHOOL TEAM

thRASH

metal

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For a subgenre that so emphatically decries trendiness, thrash has—irony of ironies!—come to rely upon a trend not just for survival, but its astonishing resurgence of popularity. Of course, if that trend were as simple as it superficially appears—15-year-olds playing dress-up in denim and painter’s caps—true heads would smell bullshit and revolt immediately. Fact is, the new blood has skills and sincerity to spare... but do they have a concept of history? Nuclear Blast publicity queen Loana dP Valencia concocted a battery of ridiculously demanding trivia questions for two all-star teams: the Old School (featuring members of Death Angel, Exodus and Testament) and the New School (starring Hatchet, Scarecrow and Warbringer). After whittling down finalists from each squad, our own EIC Albert Mudrian strapped on his long mic, demanding not just a piece of the specifically Slayer-Centric action, but the whole thing. So let’s determine the brainiacs of a quarter century-plus of shred, courtesy of Decibel’s Big Six Thrash Trivia Showdown!

JOHN KE VI

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T HARVEY

showdown

trivia

THE

MARC

K OSEGUE

SCHOOL TEAM

CONTESTANT #2

CONTESTANT #3

GARY HOLT of

ERIC PETERSON of

Exodus

CONTESTANT #1

MARK OSEGUEDA of Death Angel

Name the debuts of these three seminal German thrash bands: Sodom, Kreator, Destruction. “Hold on, let me put on my bulletbelt! Do I get a lifeline? Destruction… Mad Butcher? No. See, I can draw you the album covers, but I just don’t know the goddamn titles!” ANSWER: Sodom, In the Sign of Evil EP (1984); Kreator, Endless Pain (1985); Destruction, Sentence of Death EP (1985)

What band did Reed St. Mark help form after his departure from Celtic Frost? “I’d just like to say that I’ve forgotten more metal than most people know. Years of substance abuse has erased much of my metal knowledge. I’m better at The Price is Right and I actually kick ass at Wheel of Fortune. Man, the name Reed St. Mark isn’t one that I’ve heard in a long time. I don’t know. Is it Mindfunk? With John Munky! I never really considered Mindfunk a thrash metal band though.” ANSWER: Mindfunk (Mindfuck, originally).

Drummer Dave Chavarri has played in many thrash metal bands (M.O.D., Laaz Rockit, Pro-Pain). What was his first band? “Oh, Dave Chavarri, I know him. I should call him! Gothic Slam? That’s right! Round two, here I come!” ANSWER: Gothic Slam.

Which two members of Forbidden appeared on Testament’s Return to the Apocalyptic City? “Let’s see, there’s Paul Bostaph. Then the other one… was it Craig? No? Shit.” ANSWER: Drummer Paul Bostaph and guitarist Glen Alvelais.

The song “Lethal Tendencies” from Hallows Eve was featured in this Micheal Keaton movie. “It’s not Beetlejuice. Got it— Pacific Heights. I used to live there!” ANSWER: Pacific Heights.

Name the thrash band formed by guitarist Juan García after Agent Steel broke up that went on to feature album artwork by Ed J. Repka. “I met them here once. Damn. Is it Evildead? Yeah!” ANSWER: Evildead. TOTALS

3/5 [60%]

Name the five bands on Combat Records’ Ultimate Revenge 2 1989 compilation. “I’ve resigned myself to a first-round defeat and an abject embarrassment. Oh man. Death. Forbidden. I’m drawing blanks.” ANSWER: Forbidden, Faith or Fear, Death, Dark Angel, Raven. Which Los Angeles-based thrash metal band lost two lead singers to Christianity? “I have no idea, was it Dark Angel?” ANSWER: Dark Angel. (Don Doty & Ron Rinehart)

Match the following bands with their demos: Exodus, Death Angel, Defiance, Heathen, Overkill, Flotsam & Jetsam— “Hypothermia,” “Pray for Death,” “Whipping Queen,” “Iron Tears,” “Heavy Metal Insanity,” “Power in Black.” “The only demo Exodus ever recorded was the ‘Whipping Queen’ demo. ‘Power in Black,’ wouldn’t that be Overkill? ‘Hypothermia,’ I’m just gonna take a stab in the dark and say that’s Defiance. I’m gonna say ‘Pray for Death’ is Heathen. And that leaves ‘Heavy Metal Insanity,’ which I’m gonna send out to my boys in Death Angel. And that leaves ‘Iron Tears’ for Flotsam & Jetsam. I had my fingers out counting and shit to get that one!” ANSWER: Exodus, “Whipping Queen.” Death Angel, “Heavy Metal Insanity.” Defiance, “Hypothermia.” Heathen, “Pray for Death.” Flotsam & Jetsam, “Iron Tears,” Overkill, “Power in Black.”

Prior to renaming their band Souls at Zero, they were called? Bonus: Their drummer would end up playing with Ugly Kid Joe, Amen, Snot and Godsmack. Name him. “Oh, Wrathchild America and Shannon Larkin!” ANSWER: Wrathchild America. Bonus: Shannon Larkin. TOTALS

4/5 [80%]

Testament

Which German thrash band went by the names of Tyrant or Tormentor before settling on their final name? “Kreator. I was thinking it might be Sodom, too.” ANSWER: Kreator

Name the two thrash bands that BOTH released EPs named Armed & Dangerous. Bonus point for whose came first. “Anthrax is one. I don’t know the second one though. Annihilator? Jeez, you guys got any American questions?” ANSWER: Canada’s Razor (1984) and New York’s Anthrax (1985).

Who are Marquis Marky, Ron Broder and Tom Vetterli better known as? “Coroner!” ANSWER: Coroner

Which Danish thrash metal band did Warbringer steal their logo from? “Um, everybody’s logo? I have no idea. To me, a lot of those logos look the same. Possessed? ANSWER: Artillery.

Name the thrash metal three-piece from Boston originally known as Overkill that featured brothers on guitar and drums. “Man, these are some really obscure questions. I figured there would be more Kreator, Destruction, Exodus or Testament questions. But that’s cool. I don’t know.” ANSWER: Wargasm (Rich Spillberg, guitar & vocals; Barry Spillberg, drums). TOTALS

2/5 [40%]

And the old-school winner is... Gary Holt! See you in the second round, Gary!

CONTESTANT #1

MARCUS KIRCHEN of Hatchet

Name the “Tonys” from Whiplash. “Damn, dude. I know there are three of them. But I can’t remember any of their names.” ANSWER: Bono, Portaro, Scaglione

Which Ultimate Revenge 2 band had a member who went on to join New York’s Overkill beginning with their 1991 album, Horrorscope? “That would be Faith or Fear.” ANSWER: Faith or Fear (guitarist Merrit [4]

DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 65

Gant replaced F.O.F.’s Bob Perna after the release of the band’s debut/only album, Punishment Area).

Name the artist who designed the album artwork for Forbidden’s Forbidden Evil and Twisted Into Form, Exodus’ Pleasures of the Flesh (banned version), Heathen’s Breaking the Silence, Exhorder’s Slaughter in the Vatican and Artillery’s By Inheritance. “Damn, that’s a hard one. Let’s see, is there like multiple choice? It’s not Ed Repka because he has a distinct style. I don’t know that one.” ANSWER: Kent Mathieu.

Sadus, Forbidden Evil, Laaz Rockit, Death Angel, Exodus, S.O.D., Anthrax, Vio-Lence, Legacy. “I better get this one because I was there. Laaz Rockit cancelled. I’m feeling a little bit better now. You threw me off there in the beginning. I didn’t think I was that bad!” ANSWER: Laaz Rockit.

Opprobrium was better known as? “Incubus. No one who is still in high school will continue on in this challenge!” ANSWER: Incubus (Damn, Francis, why didn’t you ever copyright the name? Aaaaargh!) TOTALS

What prominent thrash band did Troy Gregory leave to join Tommy Victor and Ted Parsons in Prong? “I know who it is: Flotsam & Jetsam.” ANSWER: Flotsam & Jetsam

The movie Wild at Heart, starring Willem Defoe, Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage, featured what band? “I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say… is it a very obscure band? I don’t know, man. Was it Slaughterhouse. Fuck, dude! That question sucked.” ANSWER: Powermad. TOTALS

2/5 [40%]

CONTESTANT #2

MATT HARVEY

of Scarecrow/Dekapitator

Name anyone currently in Megadeth NOT named Dave Mustaine: “Wow. [Laughs]. I suppose that counts as a thrash metal question. That’s really hard, though. There are those two dipshit brothers, but are those guys even in the band anymore? The only name I remember from recent history was Glen Drover.” ANSWER: Chris Broderick—guitar, backing vocals (2008-present); James Lomenzo— bass, backing vocals (2006–present); Shawn Drover—drums (2004–present)

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Harv, you’re up. Name the four Slayer albums that feature Testament and former Exodus drummer Paul Bostaph.

Through much controversy, what band was Metallica accused of ripping off on “Enter Sandman”? “Stone from Finland. Sounds exactly like it. It’s a complete rip off. That is from Get Stoned in 1988. It sounds exactly like ‘Enter Sandman,’ but the Stone song is better. ANSWER: Stone.

Slayer did NOT make their vinyl debut with Show No Mercy. Name the album that bears this honor and the track it featured. “Would it be Metal for the Masses? Ultimate Revenge? No, I don’t know the answer to that one.” ANSWER: Metal Massacre III compilation (Metal Blade Records, 1983) with “Aggressive Perfector.”

Which Norwegian thrash metal band features a member of DIMMU BORGIR? “Oh shit, I don’t know that one. They’re a modern band so I probably won’t know this. Is Blood Tsunami from Norway? That’s the only one I know that’s new. But that’s got the guy from Emperor, not anyone from Dimmu Borgir. Man, I should have known that one.” ANSWER: Nocturnal Breed (Dimmu guitarist Silenoz).

Which of the following bands did NOT play at the Thrash of the Titans Benefit Concert for Chuck Billy and Chuck Schuldiner on August 11th, 2001 in San Francisco? Heathen, Flotsam & Jetsam,

.5 vs HARVEY: .5

Warbringer

HOLT:

JOHN KEVILL of

What former band did members of Uncle Slam have ties to? “Oh, come on! Uncle Slam? It’s a Venice Beach band. Is it Suicidal?” ANSWER: Suicidal Tendencies.

What drummer replaced Dave Lombardo after Slayer’s 1986 tour of Reign in Blood? Holt: Aw shit, I know this one, but I don’t remember his last name. It’s Tony from Whiplash. That is correct. What do you think, Harv? Do you know the last name? Harvey: It’s Tony Scaglione You both should get partial credit for this one.

CONTESTANT #3

Which founding member of Cryptic Slaughter also plays with Rob Zombie? “Oh yeah, I forget his name. I think it’s Bill Evans. Shit, is it the bass player? Yeah, I cant remember his name. I’m striking out so far.” ANSWER: Bassist Blasko (a.k.a. Rob Nicholson).

3/5 [60%]

Which member from the first incarnation of Anthrax went on to form his own New York-based thrash band? Name the member and name the band. “Wouldn’t that be Nuclear Assault? And John Connelly.” ANSWER: John Connelly (original Anthrax singer), Nuclear Assault. What band did Chris Lykins leave so he could attend medical school? “Shit, I don’t know this one.” ANSWER: Atrophy. TOTALS

2/5 [40%]

And the new-school winner is... Matt Harvey! See you in the second round, Matt!

Harvey: There’s Divine Intervention. God, I don’t even like these albums. Divine Intervention, God Hates Us All… um… Undisputed Attitude, Diabolus in Musica. Holt: I was waiting for you to miss that one! He’s already takin’ the lead. Harvey: Those albums suck! Divine Intervention was OK. HOLT:

.5 V HARVEY: 1.5

Gary, question #3 is for you: What is the significance of the song and song title “213” from 1994’s Divine Intervention album? Holt: Oh man, I don’t know. A shooting of some sort? Some sort of serial killer, I don’t know. Harv, here’s your chance to steal one. Harvey: Gary, you’re totally on the right track. It’s Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment number. Holt: I wouldn’t know that song from other Slayer songs. This is starting to suck! Harvey: While you were actually playing metal, I was just a kid learning about metal, so I wouldn’t take it too hard. HOLT:

.5 V HARVEY: 2.5

HO Y

Back to Harv. Name two films where Slayer songs appear on the soundtrack.

video where the gorilla is playing the solo and he comes in and kicks him off. HOLT:

Harvey: River’s Edge and Less than Zero. Holt: See, man, you’re asking the wrong questions—I knew that one! I’m like the New England Patriots. Doing great in the regular season and then it gets down to the Super Bowl and I’m blowin’ it. HOLT:

.5 V HARVEY: 3.5

HOLT:

.5 V HARVEY: 3.5

OK, it’s Harv’s turn again. Which member of Slayer had a cameo appearance in Suicidal Tendencies’ video for “Institutionalized”? Harvey: Um, Tom Araya. Holt: He’s kicking my ass. You thought it would be easy with all the Slayer questions, but it happened in an era where I erased most of my mind. HOLT:

.5 V HARVEY: 4.5

We’re gonna go back to that era, but I think you’ll get this one, Gary. How is the Beastie Boys’ 1986 album Licensed to Ill connected to Slayer? Holt: I know that one. Kerry King plays the solo on “No Sleep till Brooklyn.” Harvey: I like in the

1.5 V HARVEY: 4.5

You’re up, Harv. What was the infamous release date for Slayer’s album God Hates Us All? Harvey: Uh, do I have to give the year? I know it was on 9/11. Of course, you have to give the year! Harvey: It wasn’t 2001; it was like, 2004? Holy shit, dude. Gary, your chance to steal. September 11th didn’t happen as recently as Harvey thought. Holt: I’m going to say, um… well, that came out in 2001. Correct! Thank god. Holt: I started thinking because [former Exodus vocalist] Paul [Baloff] was cranking that album all the time before he died. It had to be then. HOLT:

Alright, back to Gary: Which Pantera song did Kerry King do guest guitar work on? Holt: Oh man, I don’t know that. I probably should. I don’t know. On Reinventing the Steel? “Revolution Is My Name,” that’s the only one I can remember. Nope. Harvey, for the steal. Harvey: Don’t know much about them. I know they started as a poser band and got tough. I’ll guess it was “Electric” something or other”. Close but incorrect. It’s “Goddamn Electric.” Harvey: I’ve never owned that album. I only heard the first single.

T HA VEY R

NEW-SCHOOL 6

GARY HOLT V MATT HARVEY 5 OLD-SCHOOL

2.5 V HARVEY: 4.5

Your turn again, Gary. A chance to make a move. You can pull within a point of Harvey. Name Slayer’s only official live album? Holt: Live Undead. Oooooh, that is incorrect. Holt: Incorrect? Oh man, fuck me. Harvey: It’s Decade of Aggression. Live Undead is a mini album and it’s not really a live album. That is correct. It is an EP and wasn’t actually recorded live. Harvey: It was recorded in Long Island or something and they got some people yelling over it. HOLT:

2.5 V HARVEY: 5.5

OK, back to you, Harvey. Which Slayer song was featured in a South Park episode? Harvey: It’s gotta be “Raining Blood,” where they drive all the hippies away. That is correct. Holt: Asshole! I’m a South Park freak. If it was a South Park discussion, I would’ve felt really confident. That’s when they have to burrow all the way to the hippie jam fest. HOLT:

2.5 V HARVEY: 6.5

Back to you now, Gary, Which member of Slayer wrote the song “Angel of Death”? Holt: Jeff Hanneman Correct! That is all the questions I have. HOLT:

3.5 V HARVEY: 6.5

Good game, gentlemen. Harvey is the winner. Holt: You got me on a bunch of trick questions. All Slayer questions, which you’d think I’d know, but there was a lot of drinking that went on in those days. Gary, you performed very well. Harvey just… Holt: I get no satisfaction out of a close second! I am a sore loser. Fuck everybody! I’m like the Bill Belichick of metal—second place means nothing to me! What does he win? Um, nothing, really. Maybe I’ll do a Scarecrow piece? Harvey: Gee, thanks. Do either of you have any post-game comments? Holt: You know, I tried my best. I think if the questions had been in reverse order I would’ve done better. I’m just gonna have to train really hard. If we tally up the overall scores from both rounds, you guys are actually pretty close. Holt: That doesn’t matter if I score a million points in the NFC Championship just to get my assed kicked in the Super Bowl. I’m a shitty loser, OK? Harvey: Well, like I said, it was during the ’80s, Gary was actually playing metal while I was learning about metal. So I have a little bit of an edge with retention. I wasn’t drinking beer yet at age 11 in 1986. Holt: You’re such a gracious winner, Matt. Yeah, he’s a classy guy. He’s clearly not the Bill Belichick of extreme music. Holt: Yeah, he actually crosses midfield to shake your hand. Me, I just walk away. A DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 67

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story by Chris Dick

The

Cryptic Stench The Making of Cannibal Corpse’s Tomb of the Mutilated

o crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women,” so said Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian when asked, “What is best in life?” The aforementioned quote could’ve come from Buffalo’s Cannibal Corpse after they released the all-powerful, superlatively offensive Tomb of the Mutilated 10 years later. See, Tomb, as lauded and reviled as it was, altered death metal forever. It was the future—immediate and long-term—and nobody saw it. To be fair, Cannibal Corpse weren’t the first to use horror movies, serial killers, the evening news and overactive imaginations to power music and image. That honor goes, in part, to Repulsion, Autopsy, Impetigo, Macabre and pre-Heartwork Carcass. What Cannibal Corpse unwittingly did, specifically on Tomb, is take disparate concepts (music, lyrics, art, touring, merchandise, distribution) and roll them into one gigantic, pus/bile-gushing machine that everyone from the record-buying public to idea-starved bands wanted a piece of. ¶ As a record, Cannibal Corpse’s third splatterplatter runs like a no-no highlight reel at PMRC and 700 Club meetings. Musically, it’s jarring, alien and nearly incomprehensible. Lyrically, well, the Germans—who enjoy scat porn and strap-on sex with animatronic dinosaurs—felt it was verboten. And artistically, as in Vincent Locke’s gut-wrenchingly good cover, it proved the Germans weren’t the only ones getting kinky in candlelight. Basically, Tomb of the Mutilated was the most grotesque, yet commercially viable, death metal album ever. It made soccer moms scream and their kids wonder if sheer possession alone could lead to marathon family counseling sessions. ¶ Of course, for every mention DBHOF40 of “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt,” what really set Cannibal Corpse, Tomb of the Mutilated Cannibal Corpse apart was album opener “Hammer Smashed Indecent DM exposure Face.” Heavy, heavy, heavy. And catchy, too. As in H5N1 RELEASED LABEL catchy. It’s the death metal equivalent of “Stayin’ Alive” with September, 1992 Metal Blade less Gibb and more grisly giblets. And then there’s the movie deal. While Slayer jammed in front of Giza, Cannibal landed an appearance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. They only got a few frames in the theatrical release, but “Hammer Smashed Face” was given worldwide exposure. Big-time stuff for a small-time band. This alone is Hall of Fame-worthy, but we must be judicious. Tomb of the Mutilated is this month’s inductee simply because it ruled. Cannibal fuckin’ Corpse, dudes! DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 69

dBHoF R40

CANNIBAL CORPSE

TOMB OF THE MUTILATED

Through the bangs of the dead (l-r) Owen, Mazurkiewicz, Barnes, Rusay, Webster

I remember a friend of mine slamming the audio cassette of Tomb on my desk in high school saying, “Dude, this makes your Bolt Thrower sound gay.” That was my first memory of Tomb of the Mutilated. What are yours?

Jack Owen: The main thing I remember was putting the album together. The final touches and seeing the song title, “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt,” and saying, “Dudes, we’ve finally gone too far!” When we got the artwork back, which was a male zombie going down on a female zombie, it’s like, “Oh, man! We’ve really gone too far!” I remember writing it in Buffalo. It went smoothly. I don’t remember [guitarist, Bob] Rusay contributing much. Well, not as much as he had on Eaten Back to Life and Butchered at Birth. By then we were a machine. We didn’t have jobs. I think it was after the first European tour in 1991, we thought, “Why go back to work? Let’s keep writing albums!” Alex Webster: For Tomb, we wrote more on our own than on previous records. The one thing for me is that the bass is more prominent. I started practicing a lot more after the first tour for Butchered. I was hanging out with a friend of mine, Greg St. John, who was friends with [jazz-infused death metallers] Cynic. He was in the band Solstice with Rob [Barrett]. Well, Greg had moved back up to Buffalo from Florida and was like, “Listen to Atheist, listen to this Cynic!” He was getting me into that stuff. I was very much into brutality, but it was around this time I started getting into the more technical side of music. Paul Mazurkiewicz: Fond memories, really. It was a critical point in the band’s career. We took it to the next level on Tomb of the Mutilated. It pushed us forward. We were a young band, too. We were formed in December ’88 and signed our contract with Metal Blade in July of ’89. We were together seven or eight months. It was over70 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

whelming. We were just kids playing music. We never set goals higher than playing a few shows. By the end of ’89, we were down in Florida recording Eaten Back to Life. Bob Rusay: It was the last album I appeared on. It was a pretty stressful time in the band. We were on the outs at the time. At least with me. It wasn’t a happy time for me, but the scene was exploding. We were having a lot of fun on tours. The European tours were huge. Writing the actual album was a little different from the first two. On the first two, everything was new and fresh. I wrote a lot of music. With Tomb, I hit a wall. I wasn’t coming up with fresh ideas. I couldn’t get inspired. Some of the guys wanted to get technical with it. Sadus was really popular at the time, and they were great musicians. None of us were anywhere near their level of playing. Your first two albums were intense, but Tomb of the Mutilated took things one step further. Why do you think the album was so strong in comparison to its predecessors?

Owen: I remember making the band more refined. Finding our identity. Eaten and Butchered are so different. Eaten is more thrashy and Butchered is just riff after riff. Some of the stuff doesn’t make much sense. Tomb was more song-oriented. Chris [Barnes, frontman] had taken over the lyrics, so we could concentrate on the music. We really wanted to write music that made sense, in the end. Webster: It’s more song-like. During Butchered at Birth, we were convinced the more unorthodox the music, the less mainstream it was. It was heavier to be off-the-wall as far as arrangements go. When you look at some of the records that really inspired us, like Reign in Blood, they’re heavy records, but they’re conventionally arranged. That was how we approached Tomb.

There’s still weird stuff, like on “Post Mortal Ejaculation.” That’s pretty far from being a mainstream arrangement. Chris Barnes: It was a natural progression. Tomb of the Mutilated was no different. Jack and Alex started getting more interested in the technical aspects of writing. We’d always been into bands like Sadus and Possessed. Cynic was also a bigtime influence. It was a natural extension from Butchered at Birth. For me, it’s hard to lyrically or vocally decide if Butchered or Tomb is the most intense. Both are lyrically obscene. And vocally they’re on the verge of alien. At the time, most bass players in death metal were basically underperforming guitarists with four strings. A few guys stand out, like Steve DiGiorgio, the late Roger Patterson, Scott Carino and Tony Choy. On Tomb, Alex made the following statement: “Hey, I’m not a guitarist! I’m a bass player!”

Webster: I definitely didn’t play guitar very much before I picked up the bass. It didn’t grab me. I started playing bass around 13 or 14. I thought, “Oh yeah! This is it!” It felt good. Bass was the right instrument for me. I could tell right away. By the time I was good enough to play in a band, bass was the only instrument I knew. I was completely fingers by the time Cannibal got going. I fooled around with a pick in my old band Beyond Death, but it always seemed more natural to play with fingers. The finger bass players are always going to sound less guitar-like. The right hand approach is entirely different. A pick-playing bass player is more like a guitar player. I definitely wanted to be a bass player. I think it’s a given you were influenced by Slayer, Possessed, the Bay Area bands, Death—the usual suspects. Were there more contemporary influences coming into Cannibal around the time you started writing Tomb of the Mutilated?

Webster: I started listening to Atheist a lot. We toured with Atheist. We also toured with Pestilence and Death. Getting to see Scott Carino and Tony [Choy] play every night was very inspiring. Those guys were fucking awesome. Right after that we toured with Atheist and Gorguts.

Éric Giguère was a great bass player and Darren McFarland, who was with Atheist at the time, was fantastic. I listened to DiGiorgio and Roger Patterson a lot as well. Roger, unfortunately, as we know, passed away by that time, so I never got to see him play. But, boy, he was a big influence. Barnes: I was never influenced by Sadus or Cynic, but I’ll say Cynic influenced a whole bunch of bands from the death metal scene. Around ’93 or ’94. They were the silent influence in a lot of players. Paul [Masvidal] and Sean [Reinert] were such amazing musicians. If you were a musician in death metal at that time, you were just in awe—with your jaw to the floor. I remember watching those guys and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The scene fed off itself. For me, I was influenced by how I was feeling inside and how heavy and erratic the music was. The music was so groove-laden and technical. That’s what inspired me to push myself, to come up with the sounds I did. I just wanted to destroy everything I thought was right. A madman’s brain on tape. One of the first reactions to Tomb of the Mutilated was that every aspect of it was shocking. Were you trying to provoke?

Barnes: No, I don’t think so. I wasn’t trying to provoke. I was trying to invoke thought in some way. Hoping someone would see the twisted dichotomy. To be sickened by it and yet entertained by it. Like watching a horror film. I was feeding off the music. I see words in the music. If I can get through the first line, it pretty much writes itself. Rusay: The name itself, Cannibal Corpse, pushed the envelope. We wanted to be on the edge. The blood, the guts and the gore—that’s what it’s all about. We always tried to translate a horror movie into reality. If you do read the lyrics and pay attention to what’s going on, a lot of it’s based on real-life events. There’s some really sick people in this world. Art sometimes imitates life. Webster: I think it was more of the same. As far as provoking, lyrically, that’s all Chris. He gets the credit. We told him nothing was off limits. Boy, he sure took our word. We concentrated on the music. I’ve always been more focused on that. For Tomb, I focused on writing and my instrument. Mazurkiewicz: We were trying to be over-thetop. I don’t know if we were trying to provoke. We thought we should have the same freedom to put out whatever we feel. If people can’t understand it’s fiction, then I don’t know what to tell them. It’s no different from movies out today like Saw, Hostel or some crazy Stephen King novel. All the bands were listening to—like, Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill, and Slayer’s Hell Awaits— had similar subject matter. Well, we took that to another level. Lyrically, Cannibal Corpse were intense, but Tomb took the whole concept to extremes. I mean, “Entrails Ripped From a Virgin’s Cunt” or

“Addicted to Vaginal Skin” aren’t exactly subtle.

Barnes: I just felt the music was so extreme and the beats Paul was putting down represented the sickness that kept creeping out of me. I had great song titles going. I was just living my life at the time. I was influenced by friends of mine. A friend of mine had a lot of drug problems, so I’d go to unsavory neighborhoods with him just to see how those types of people lived. I put myself in weird situations just to get something out of it. I was working at a warehouse and one of the delivery guys used to work at a prison. He knew I was into horror and would start telling me stories about guys who were locked up for murder. “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt” was based on two brothers, one of whom was semi-retarded, who were serving life. They captured some girl and the semi-retarded brother was talked into putting a coat hanger up her pussy to pull out her intestines. That story freaked me out. I started to think about fear at that point. To just shock someone doesn’t really work, but trying to write something that invokes an emotion, like fear, is what interests me. I put it out there raw. I felt it complemented the music, ’cause it was so far out

where I got to spend a lot more time recording. I was afforded more time. On Eaten Back to Life, I did all the bass tracks at exactly the same time as the drums. It was all one take. The second album was like that except for one or two punches. For Tomb, I played with the drums and then went back to re-record. It was the first time I got to rerecord my parts on every single song, make sure everything was right. We were just learning how to make an album tight on Tomb of the Mutilated. “Electronic Harmonizer was not used to create any vocals on Tomb of the Mutilated.” That was the statement on the inside sleeve. Was it important to tell people you didn’t pitch the vocals?

Barnes: It was out of frustration, something that stems back to Butchered at Birth. I was coming into my own—my own sounds, my own tones and my own vocal patterns. I’ve always got questions from people about my vocals. Like, “What effects do you use to get the vocals to sound like that?” I’d tell them it was natural and they wouldn’t believe me. I put it right on the record, so people who had the record knew what the story was. My vocals

I didn’t think we could get away with it. It’s like, “I can’t show this to my mom! She’ll freak!” — JAC K OW E N ON T O M B ’ S C OV E R A RT — there on all levels. “I Cum Blood” is probably my most disturbing lyric, though. Mazurkiewicz: It was the most extreme album we had done. “Necropedophile,” “Entrails,” “Post Mortal” and “I Cum Blood” were pretty extreme. “Hammer Smashed Face” is pretty mild for this album in retrospect, isn’t it? Lyrically, Barnes took over on Tomb. They were as crazy as possible. Do you remember much of your time recording Tomb of the Mutilated with Scott Burns?

Rusay: Scott Burns is a really great guy, but I’ll tell you—the three albums I worked on with him, I couldn’t find a guitar sound I liked. We got close on Tomb. Everything was monotone. There was never enough crunch for me. I think Scott did a great job on Deicide. Their guitar sound crunched. It popped. For some reason, I was never really happy with my guitar sound. Barnes: Scott was the man. From day one, I was the closest with him. I set up things for us to go down from Buffalo to Morrisound. He was the coolest guy in the world. On Tomb, it was really comfortable working with Scott. Webster: I remember it was the first album

were always raw. We’d do effects on accents and intros, but never a broad spectrum of effects throughout. No flange or reverb on a vocal throughout a song. I’ve been fighting that my whole career. Rusay: The point was: He didn’t add anything to spice up the vocals. The stranger story is if you listen to our demos before Eaten, Chris sounds like Blaine [Cook] from the Accüsed. Apparently, the singer for Morbid Angel was in the studio laying down tracks, so when he came back with our sound and the Blaine vocal style, it didn’t sound right. He went back the very next day and changed it to a barking death metal style. He was in his groove on Tomb of the Mutilated. Owen: It was important to him to let people know those were his vocals. He used a little on Tomb. Screw it! The guitars are good. Those are legit! Cannibal Corpse actually broke up for a short while before the writing of Tomb of the Mutilated commenced. It was never publicized at the time. What happened? DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 71

dBHoF R40 Owen: There were differing opinions in the band, so me, Rusay and Barnes split for a while. Paul and Alex kept it together. They wrote “Hammer Smashed Face” during that time. I was always in the middle. I didn’t really know what to do. I was with Rusay and Chris, but I think I was trying to keep the whole thing together. I think it was the recording contract and our tour obligations that eventually pushed us back together. It was too good to pass up. Webster: We never publicized it. Chris was tour managing. It was the first time he had ever managed a tour and there were questions about what was going on with the money. We argued about that. I mean, our practice space was, like, four rooms away from Cannibal’s practice space. We just moved down the hall. There was a lot of friction. Me and Paul started writing “Hammer” during a brief exodus from Cannibal Corpse. We were like, “Fuck this! We’re out.” We were so pissed at each other. Who knows what it was about now? We were a bunch of young guys doing things like touring for the first time. It lasted less than a week. Mazurkiewicz: There was inner turmoil at the time. It was mainly Chris. We had just got back from the road and all the issues from the road sort of came to a head. We felt like we didn’t want to deal with it anymore. So Alex and I quit the band. We moved down the hall. Alex and I split the cost of the space. Officially, we quit the band. We moved our stuff out, we jammed, and like two or three days later we had “Hammer.” It was written more out of anger. After a few practices, we reconciled and moved on.

How the hell did you guys get the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective gig? I can’t think of anything more random than Cannibal Corpse appearing in a Jim Carrey movie.

Barnes: It was awesome. I got a call from the record company. The president of Metal Blade, Mike Faley, called me and said, “Chris, we have this crazy offer from Morgan Creek for this movie with a comedian named Jim Carrey.” They asked for us. Jim wanted Napalm Death to do it at first. I guess we were his second-favorite band. I think Alex didn’t want to do it at first. He was concerned we’d be taken as a joke, ’cause the movie was a comedy. We talked him into it. It didn’t take much coaxing. The funnier story was after we finished Ace Ventura, we got another call from Mike two weeks later. He was like, “Hey, I got another offer from a film called Airheads.” I was like, “Awesome, dude! We’re there!” A few days later they had found out we did Ace. It worked against us, but we picked the better movie. Owen: Jim Carrey was a big fan. We didn’t believe it until we met him. I remember saying, “Who is Jim Carrey? Oh, the white guy from In Living Color.” We had a choice between Airheads with Brendan Fraser and Ace Ventura. Airheads sounded too cheesy and, of course, we couldn’t appear in two movies in the same year for some reason, so we picked Ace Ventura. I remember meeting Jim at soundcheck. He asked us to play “Rancid Amputation.” It’s like, “Dude, we don’t even play that song anymore. We’ve forgotten it.” He then rambled off a bunch of song titles.

ZOMBIEGEDDON Q&A with Tomb of the Mutilated artist Vincent Locke

A discourse on Cannibal Corpse wouldn’t be complete without descanting the group’s predilection for zombies and their unfortunate victims in various states of duress. In fact, we’d be remiss not going to the source. So, we did. Decibel talks to artist and Deadworld and Tomb of the Mutilated illustrator Vincent Locke. —CHRIS DICK How did the idea of the zombie performing cunnilingus come about? It was a long time ago, but I believe it was the band’s idea. You worked closely with Chris Barnes. Was there anything that was considered no-go territory as far as explicit material goes? This cover was a little hard for me. Not because of the subject matter, but because it was another victimized woman. We had gone pretty far with Butchered at Birth. I liked that cover a lot, but I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want there to be a pattern of covers depicting violence against women. Around that time, some female 72 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

friends were beat up by a group of frat boys. [I was] sickened by their cowardly hatefulness. I enjoyed painting horrific images, but it made me think that maybe not everyone was going to view these pictures in the spirit intended. They are just little horror stories meant to shock. I was afraid that if the covers became one-sided, some kids would get the wrong message. I tried to put the woman on the cover in some position of power, with her sitting up, and the male zombie groveling on the floor. In the end, I was able to come up with a cover that we all liked. The cover to Vile was meant to “round out” the subject matter. We had showed self-mutilation, and the torture of woman and children. With Vile, we attacked the men as well.

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It showed how much of a fan he was. We shot for two and half days, so there was a ton of footage. It was nice to see the NBC cut, with an extra five minutes of us. Mazurkiewicz: That was a huge thing. Surreal. We thought it could be really cool or really bad. I mean, it’s a Jim Carrey comedy. It ended up being amazing. We were portrayed as ourselves in the movie, which was important. It was supposed to be funny seeing a band like us in the movie. The network version of Ace Ventura was better, though. That’s when Jim gets up onstage and jumps around with us. He didn’t know the lyrics, but it didn’t matter. I remember thinking, “Pay attention. This has to look real.” It was so hard, ’cause Jim was going insane. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Do you think Ace Ventura increased sales or profile for Cannibal?

Barnes: People asked us that at the time. I don’t know that it did. Our fans were just blown away that we were in it. Our record sales were going up on each release, so it’s hard to say how Ace impacted sales of Tomb of the Mutilated. Webster: Definitely. I’ve met a lot of people

Did you use a model or photograph for the pose? No. I rarely use a model. I do use a few good anatomy books and skeleton models. What medium did you use for the artwork? Watercolor, acrylic and colored pencil. What was the most challenging aspect of Tomb of the Mutilated?

who said it was the first time they’d ever seen us. It surprised me. For a few seconds, whether they like it or not, everyone is watching a really brutal death metal band. It was a good advertisement. We weren’t that big back then. We weren’t Anthrax. They got on Married With Children. Mazurkiewicz: It definitely had to. There were kids who came up to us saying, “I got into death metal from Ace Ventura!” A lot of people got into us from that movie. The movie was huge, so I guess we were burned into their memories. I think The Bleeding benefitted the most from Ace, though. The Tomb cover is legendary. It’s so disgusting it begs to be looked at over and over again. Since this was the third cover with Vincent Locke, do you remember how it came together?

Barnes: Since day one I’ve always been impressed with Vince. The way he drew corpses, zombies and stuff spoke to me—his take on it, artistically. I remember suggesting a corpse eating out another corpse. He’s like, “OK!” I think he was having problems positioning the bodies, and that the perspective of it was a challenge for him. I remember when I first opened up the artwork—to approve it before it went to the record company. The blue-ish, slate grey tones, the white tones—it affected me. It was creepy and cold. He portrayed death really well with that cover. Rusay: The first version we sent to the label was sent back to us because it wasn’t gory enough. That’s where all the slash and cut marks on the

lady came from. She was originally white. The label said it wasn’t bloody enough. We wanted the zombie to be more sexually involved with the corpse. I mean, zombies have to eat and the best place to on any female is the pink taco. Owen: It was so brutal it was comical. So overthe-top. I didn’t think we could get away with it. It’s like, “I can’t show this to my mom! She’ll freak!” We wanted it to be completely sick. Like, zombies having sex. Mazurkiewicz: I was like, “This is crazy!” Butchered was the sickest thing we’d ever done. We wanted to keep it going. Vince comes up with crazy stuff regardless of us giving him ideas. Tomb was utter insanity. Complete gore. The voiceover on “Addicted to Vaginal Skin” is revolting. Also, what’s the story on the kids screaming on “Necropedophile”?

Barnes: I snuck that on the record. I was reading a book about Arthur Shawcross, the Genesee River Killer in Rochester. It came with a cassette tape. I was listening to his voice. It creeped me out. I boosted it from the tape. For “Necropedophile,” I’m a late sleeper. I was living next to a church when I was writing Tomb of the Mutilated. Whenever I write lyrics, it’s always late at night. Like, at 4 a.m. Every morning around 11, the church let out the daycare for recess. I was getting woken up by screaming kids. It was pissing me off. So I put my boombox next to the window, pressed record and got those fuckin’ kids on tape. I wrote a song about murdering the kids who were waking me up every morning.

Trying to come up with two covers that worked together and were both interesting. What were some of Chris’s ideas you keyed off to get the scene, setting, blood, candles and staring head? The oral sex was Chris’s idea. Beyond that, I don’t remember. Chris would call me up with his idea and a title for the album. Then I would do a few sketches. I would send them the sketches to get more input from the band before I started the painting.

Position 2 Pencil work for the final cover Position 1 Original cover idea for Tomb of the Mutilated

Metal Blade founder Brian Slagel originally rejected the cover. He wanted more blood. Do you recall that? What did you change? If the band wanted anything changed, it usually

I gather there’s a lot of bad blood with Bob. What’s the story?

Rusay: When we recorded Tomb of the Mutilated there was a big argument about the guitars being recorded. But it started before then. I think it was mainly Paul. When we’d play live and he’d do his monitor checks, he’d always tell the guy to turn my guitar down. So, we get into the studio and they all say, “We want Jack to do both guitars on the album.” I was like, “Fuck that! This is a band.” When they had Jack do both guitar parts, it was the final straw. People need to know I wasn’t able to record my own fuckin’ music—shit I wrote. They did the same thing on the Hammer Smashed Face EP. After about two weeks, I got the call that I was fired. I don’t think Chris had too much to say about it. It took me by surprise. I was working at a club, Chris showed up, punched me in the arm and then the next day I get a call: “We don’t wanna jam with you anymore.” It’s like, “What? Do I have a choice here?” The way it was handled was pretty bad. I called Paul and he was frantic. Like a little girl. That’s how they got rid of me. I tell people it was a mutual break-up and we weren’t getting along, but now that we’re talking about it I want to set the record straight. Owen: I think his playing wasn’t tight enough to where we wanted to progress with the band. It goes back to Butchered. I played more than half of the rhythms on that album, and on Tomb I did 95% of the rhythms. I don’t think he was regressing. He just came from a punk background and wasn’t concerned with

was a call for more blood. What kind of impact do you think the cover had? I don’t have any idea. When I’m working on a cover, I’m just trying to please the band and myself. Trying to come up with something that will grab your attention and maybe shake you up a little bit. Hopefully, the artwork is as memorable as the music. © Original sketches courtesy of Vincent Locke.

DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 73

dBHoF R40 Skin it to win it Owen (l) and Barnes recommend eating out after the show

tightness. It was all aggression. We wanted to be more focused. I think it was in the middle of tracking the album, Alex told him I was going to do the rhythm guitars. Next thing you know, Bob was back at the hotel, drinking beers and getting sunburned. I remember Alex called Bob right after the Bills won the AFC Championship game. They were going to the Super Bowl. Alex isn’t a sports fan, so he didn’t know what was going on. So he called Bob. There’s a big party going on in the background and Bob said, “We’re going to the Super Bowl!” Alex responded, “Bob, you’re out of the band.” The Bills ended up losing the Super Bowl, so it was a bad couple of weeks for Bob. 74 : J U N E 0 8 : D E C I B E L

Webster: He was a good friend of ours. And the fact that he hasn’t wanted to communicate with us since that happened isn’t something we feel good about. To this day, we feel it had to be done. Nobody wants to part ways with a friend in that way. It’s not fun. He’s the guy I called up to start the band. Nobody else wanted to call Bob, but all four of us agreed on the decision for him to go. So I called him and said, “Dude, we don’t know what to say. You’re out. Sorry.” He hung up on me and that was the end of it. I haven’t talked to him since then. Mazurkiewicz: It was really unfortunate. He was an original member. It’s hard to kick a guy out of the band you grew up with. There was no easy way to do it. We had a lot of problems on Tomb of the Mutilated. When it came down to it, on the EP specifically, we needed a very melodic, Iommi-esque solo for [the Black Sabbath cover of] “Zero the Hero.” Bob came in and slopped through it. We were distraught by it. Jack had to fix it and do it properly. What you hear is all Jack.

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Barnes: Things just started to decline. Alex had a specific vision for the band progressing. He took it seriously. He put a lot into learning his instrument and being a better songwriter. I think he felt Bob wasn’t working hard. I didn’t really agree with the decision, but I was out-voted. Bob was an awesome songwriter. He was unconventional in the way he laid things out. A lot of the songs on Tomb of the Mutilated wouldn’t have been written if it wasn’t for him. You can see a change in the band after Tomb of the Mutilated. Did you think Tomb of the Mutilated would go on to influence so many bands? At the time, the media used a specific term—Cannibal Clones—for the glut of bands aping your sound. It was insane.

Webster: I think Suffocation had a big influence on the death metal scene as well. Give credit where it’s due. I think you can still hear it in American death metal. You can hear Deicide, Suffocation and us. If anything pushed this album over the top, it’s “Hammer Smashed Face.” I’m not saying the song is better than any of the other songs on the album, but it became our most popular song. Whenever I go to YouTube, I search for Cannibal Corpse. Half of it is people covering “Hammer Smashed Face.” It’s only that song. Mazurkiewicz: It’s a great feeling to know we’ve left a mark. Tomb took things to the next level. When you talk to people in the scene they will tell you Tomb is a pivotal album. To a lot of people, Tomb is their favorite album. It’s flattering for people to follow the template we laid down. One day, Cannibal isn’t going to be here. We need young bands to keep it going. That way the future of death metal is secure. Barnes: Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Butchered at Birth and Tomb of the Mutilated were the heaviest death metal records at the time. People started using us as a template. I do think a lot of bands just liked the novelty of Cannibal Corpse and never did anything with it. As long as bands make it work and grow from it, then that’s cool. A band like Chimaira was influenced by us, but you can’t hear that influence now. I like that. A

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SCREAM LONG BEACH!

FOR ME,

examines the impact of the greatest metal live album (and video) of all time and why

IRON MAIDEN will always live after death story by J. Bennett | photos by Ross Halfin

It all started with a phone call.

Decibel’s beleaguered Editor in Chief, Albert Mudrian, was on the other end of the line. I was making my way to the Mexican grocery to stock up on limes and refill my prescription—uh, dietary supplement—with Consuela the night manager, a 50-year-old, 300-pound mother of 11 who often threatens to break her customers in half if she’s made to wait around. As such, I was in no mood to be harassed about “deadlines.” Luckily, Albert cut right to the chase. “What’s the greatest live metal album of all time?” It was clearly a rhetorical question—he wasn’t asking for my opinion. “That’s easy,” I replied. “Tesla’s Five Man Acoustical Jam.” “I said metal.” “Oh, right. Maiden’s Live After Death.” “Correct.” And so a plan was hatched: Interview all five members of Maiden from that hallowed and occasionally hilarious 1985 concert at Long Beach Arena to create an oral history that would become the first live album—and home video— inducted into Decibel’s beloved Hall of Fame. But for reasons that are tedious, frustrating and a living testament to the fact that old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every fucking time, the plan failed miserably. Ever resourceful, we came up with something even more long-winded and time-consuming. Ladies and Gentlemen, may we present Plan B:

MAIDEN THE LBC

hortly after the September 1984 release of Powerslave, Iron Maiden Holdings Ltd. commissioned producer Martin Birch and director Jim Yukich to record and film two of the band’s four sold-out shows in March 1985 at Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, CA. Maiden had first played there in 1981, opening for fellow limeys UFO. “We were actually in Philadelphia finishing [a tour] with Priest and we got a call from the agent saying that UFO wanted to play Orange County, San Bernardino and two shows in Long Beach,” Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood recounts when we meet backstage at the Forum in L.A. “It’s a pretty long way to go from Philadelphia—the wrong way from going home—and it was support, so we’d lose some money doing it. But we wanted to go to L.A., so we said, ‘Fuck the money—let’s go!’ So we freighted the backline over, did the shows and they were just humongous. Unbelievable reactions. So Long Beach was the first place we’d played in L.A.—we liked it there, and the fans liked us there as well.” By 1985, Birch had a well-established history with Maiden after producing the band’s four previous studio albums—1981’s Killers (with “original” vocalist Paul Di’Anno), 1982’s

The Number of the Beast, 1983’s Piece of Mind and the aforementioned Powerslave. Yukich, on the other hand, was more of a wild card. He had directed Genesis’ The Mama Tour video the previous year, but had little else to his credit. Live After Death would become his launching pad into the bright lights and big titties that accompany an in-demand concert-film director; he’d go on to helm such perennial VHS favorites as Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required, Gloria Estefan’s Homecoming Concert and New Kids on the Block at Disney-MGM Studios: Wildest Dreams. For Maiden—bassist/mastermind Steve Harris, vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray—the live LP and home video would be the victory laps following a five-album heavy metal championship that began with the band’s self-titled 1980 debut. “The whole lead-up to the shows was brilliant,” Smallwood recalls. “The promoter at that time, Brian Murphy, told me right off that we could do four nights at Long Beach. I said, ‘Brian, you’re fucking mad, but whatever you think.’ He called me about 8 o’clock on Saturday morning when the tickets went on sale and said, ‘One’s gone.’ He called me back about an hour later and said, ‘Two gone.’ Then we put a third show on sale and it was

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in the papers because the kids heard that the first show had sold out and got very restless because they thought they wouldn’t be able to get tickets at all. So the police came in and the press said there were ‘riots.’ There weren’t any riots—it was that old L.A. buzz. “From there, we decided to film it,” Smallwood continues. “We went down to the arena to check it out and saw a big star-spangled banner at the back, so I said, ‘Brian—I want a Union Jack right there. Same size.’” Hence the opening sequence of the Live After Death video—recently released on DVD—when the camera pans across the assorted headbangers, longhairs, heshers and grass pirates (’85 was an excellent vintage for all of these dude archetypes) and cuts to Great Britain’s national ensign as Winston Churchill’s famous “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech booms over the house sound system before the band launches into Powerslave opener “Aces High.” It’s a reclaiming of the former colonies—even if California wasn’t technically one of them. “We know in the U.S. you’re a very patriotic lot,” Harris says with a laugh when we corner him at the Forum. “We are, too. So we just had that put up for the effect, you know: The Brits are here for the night.”

The outfits, oh my god. You needed a pair of sunglasses just to look at us. —DAVE MURRAY

ROCK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN I wanna go to the doctor and say, “Los Angeles destroyed my hearing,” OK? —Bruce Dickinson, Live After Death

he World Slavery tour kicked off in August of ’84, when Maiden became one of the few bands to penetrate the Iron Curtain by playing Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Hungary well before the Eastern Bloc countries extracted themselves from the Soviet Union’s communist yoke, before Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in the twin red deaths of perestroika and glasnost. On January 11 of 1985, they took the stage at two minutes to midnight—as main support to Queen—in front of an estimated 300,000 fans on the opening night of the inaugural Rock in Rio festival in Brazil. They were then scheduled to play seven sold-out shows at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, but were forced to cancel the last three after Dickinson came down with the flu. But by the time they hit the LBC, Iron Maiden were at the top of their game. “We were several months in, so I suppose we should’ve been tight by then,” Harris laughs. “These days, it’s easy to record every show when you’re on the road. In them days, you had to get a bloody mobile unit—it was a

whole rigmarole. So obviously it was more sensible to do it well into the tour rather than at the beginning, when you’re still rough around the edges. I think sometimes when you’ve got a bit of pressure and you know you’re recording, it gives you a bit of an edge.” On March 14, 1985, eight months into a 13-month tour, the massive World Slavery production made its debut at the Long Beach Arena. Inspired by Derek Riggs’ Egyptianthemed Powerslave cover art, the colossal set design seemed to consume the entire stage with sphinxes, sarcophagi and hieroglyphs. The pulsing hi-watt light show, cornea-searing pyro and sudden onstage appearance of 40-foot Maiden mascot Eddie over McBrain’s monstrous drum kit only served to enhance the overall hugeness. “We tried to make it this massive, epic, Cecil B. DeMille-type production,” Murray recalls. “That set was one of my favorites—that whole Egyptian theme and the imagery of Powerslave.” “When that set was designed, it could go in huge arenas in the States, but then we’d play these venues in Europe that were kind of like large theaters,” Harris offers. “It could it fit in both, and it worked really well because it was very 3-D looking, so it looked bigger than it actually was.”

In one of the show’s most flamboyant moments, Bruce Dickinson would appear 15 or 20 feet above the stage floor in an insanely garish bird mask that was both figuratively and literally gay, considering that it was purchased at a “homoerotic paraphernalia” shop in Hollywood. “The beginning of ‘Powerslave’— when I would appear from behind the sheet of flame made by the explosive powder mounted in a crucible at the top of the stairway backstage—was always a kind of Russian roulette in terms of wearing a flammable outfit and feather mask,” the singer tells Decibel. “On more than one occasion, the local pyro guy had been a little exuberant with the amount of powder being used, so it could get a little hairy on some nights. If you watch the extras on the DVD there’s some footage from Rock in Rio and you’ll see me stamping out flames where I’m singing!” The band looked forward to Eddie’s nightly mummified appearance during “Iron Maiden” even though they knew exactly when it was going to happen. “I know that it’s all part of the show, but to stand in front of a 40-foot monster with rubber snakes hanging out of his mouth and his huge arms bouncing on motorcycle springs, you can’t help but smile a little bit,” Dickinson offers. [4]

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It’s all part of the show, but to stand in front of a 40-foot monster with rubber snakes hanging out of his mouth and his huge arms bouncing on motorcycle springs, you can’t help but smile a little bit. —BRUCE DICKINSON “Whenever the huge Eddie came out, you always got a huge roar from the crowd and I could see his huge arms coming over the top of me,” McBrain adds. “On a couple of occasions he was a bit low and threatened to wipe out my cymbals.” The gag was a testament to just how meticulously—and far in advance—Smallwood had plotted Maiden’s career arc. The fact that Eddie was mummified was crucial to both the Egyptian aesthetic and Smallwood’s grand plan: The band had “killed” their mascot onstage in December of 1983, at the end of the World Piece tour in Dortmund, Germany. For Live After Death, Eddie had risen from the grave. “I always thought we’d do a live album after the fifth album, so we killed Eddie off at the end of the Piece of Mind tour to set it up, basically,” Smallwood reveals. “That’s where the title comes from.” According to the History of Iron Maiden Part 2, a mini-documentary included in the DVD release of Live After Death, the World Slavery setup was so elaborate that there were even secret messages embedded in the hieroglyphics on the vinyl or Marley flooring (named for a popular brand produced by Marley Floors Ltd). “There were always little details in the scenery [that] the crowd would not be able to see either in the Marley floor covering or on the scrims which were situated around the stage—and they would often have little pictures rather than words on there,” Dickinson notes. “There [were] quite a few during [1986’s] Somewhere on Tour, but [the World Slavery tour] was really the first time these things appeared, so they were very subtle. Just a bit of silliness from our set designer to make us laugh when we’re prancing about the stage.” “It was so long ago I don’t recall any specific messages, but it really started when Alan Chesters started designing our stage sets around then,” Harris adds. “Most nights you’d notice something else which wasn’t a hieroglyphic that was a reference to West Ham—football scores, et cetera—or one of the crew or band. We still have them appear even to this day.” But all the lights and pyro and Egyptian bullshit in the world couldn’t overshadow what has since become Live After Death’s visual focal point.

HALLOWED BE THY WARDROBE You’re not going to believe what this idiot is wearing tonight. —Bruce Dickinson, referring to Nicko McBrain, Live After Death

eople tend to associate spandex with the Poisons, Ratts and Def Leppards of the Me Decade fashion landscape, but the fact is that much of the metal world had an extensive Lycra collection. Just check out some of Ozzy’s unfortunately tight leggings from the ’80s. Or the kind of loud, shiny ball-huggers the dudes from Slayer were cramming into their ass cracks back then. But outside of Halen and possibly the Scorpions, Maiden did it best (and without teasing their hair). Not that “Hey, everybody was doing it” is an excuse for anything. Still, the heavy metal plum-smuggling on display in Live After Death is priceless. Harris, Dickinson and Murray look as though they’ve escaped from a prison aerobics class and are about to start their own way-off Broadway production of Pirates of the Caribbean. McBrain hunkers down behind his enormous drum kit in a red and yellow one-piece and a studded belt. Meanwhile, Smith looks as though he’s still pining for the Di’Anno days, opting for a loose-fitting black vest—shirtless underneath, obviously—a headband and tight leather pants with zippers across the thighs. As usual, Dickinson takes the cake by complementing his jazzercise ensemble with white knee-high tube socks and a giant silver belt buckle. Murray says he hasn’t actually watched the Live After Death video all the way through since it first came out, but remembers the spandex well. “The outfits, oh my god,” he laughs. “You needed a pair of sunglasses just to look at us. Back in the ’70s, all the bands had those outfits—Queen, David Bowie, T. Rex, the Sweet, even Led Zeppelin—they were just flamboyant, loud and colorful. And I think we kinda brought that into the ’80s. It looked cool then, but you try and do that nowadays… well, actually, I wouldn’t even fit into that outfit nowadays.” Harris, on the other hand, suggests he just might be able to squeeze into his. “We’ve all probably put a little bit of weight on, as you do

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over the years, but I think we still look pretty good. I only weigh about seven or eight pounds more than I did back then, which is not bad, really.” Unlike Murray, however, Harris doesn’t seem to regret the band’s wardrobe choices. “It’s funny because my kids take the piss out of me sometimes, like, ‘Dad, what was you wearing for god’s sake?’ And I always say, ‘Well, you know what? Everybody wore that—people used to turn up at the shows wearing that, if you can believe it.’ And they go, ‘No, we can’t believe that.’ And I must admit when I look back at the clothes we used to wear, I can’t believe it, either. But at the time it was cool. It was bright; it felt good. Obviously we’d look pretty ridiculous mucking about in something like that now.” Rumor has it that Maiden’s outfits (or at least one night’s worth) from the World Slavery Tour are ensconced in the upstairs office of the Crobar in Soho, London. When Decibel visited back in July of 2006, our U.K. security advisor Tony “Dukes” Sylvester tried to make arrangements for us to be photographed in Harris’ zebra jumpsuit. Sadly, the office key holder was missing in action.

SET LIST OF THE BEAST We did a song on this album that’s about 13 minutes long, alright, this little song we’re gonna do for you… A guy called Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem on which this song is based, alright? And this poem… this poem, I’m sad to say, was written while under the influence of drugs, ladies and gentlemen. —Bruce Dickinson, Live After Death

ore so than any other single factor, it’s the set list that makes Live After Death so unstoppable. Established fan favorites like “The Trooper,” “Run to the Hills” and “Running Free” rear their heads alongside then-new, now classic Powerslave cuts like “Aces High,” “2 Minutes to Midnight,” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the title track. “Rime” and “Powerslave” were mothballed after the World Slavery tour, making Live After Death even more significant as a historical document. In fact, it’s been suggested that Maiden never actually managed to

improve upon that nigh-untouchable live era until just recently, when they reincorporated much of the World Slavery set list (and stage design) into this year’s Somewhere Back in Time tour, for which they hauled out both “Powerslave” and “Rime” alongside Somewhere in Time chalice-hoister (and Decibel favorite) “Wasted Years” and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’s “Can I Play With Madness” and “Moonchild.” “Judging from [what] some of the fans have been saying, they want to hear us play the songs from that era,” Murray offers. “Last time when we went on tour, we focused on the new album, but this time we went back.” For Murray and Dickinson, the album has even proven itself an educational tool. “We haven’t played some of these songs in over 20 years,” Murray explains. “When we were relearning the songs, I actually used the Live After Death CD to figure certain songs out, like ‘Powerslave’ and ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ We spent four or five days rehearsing, and they came back pretty quickly, but ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ is quite challenging, you know? There’s a lot of shit going on, and it’s 13 minutes long.” “I listened to it quite recently to go over some of the performance points for ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and a couple of other bits and pieces,” Dickinson says, “and the one thing that did occur to me was the strange way I seemed to have this strange East London accent and finish most of my statements with ‘alright.’ Not really sure where that came from, but [it’s] certainly a little odd.”

Victoria’s menstrual cramps, is equally satisfying at 3 a.m. after about a dozen beers. But it’s so much more than words that our man brings to Live After Death’s ancient Egyptian table. His mere presence in the Long Beach Arena that night deserves a goddamn Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Soaring vocal displays? Check. Foot on the monitor? Check. Possible athletic cup stuffed into way-too-tight leggings? Check. The new “Powerslave” bird mask he’s been donning on this year’s Somewhere Back in Time tour, along with a pair of pants that a certain tall, handsome genius described in the May 2008 issue as “semi-camouflage leggings that look like they were designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier for the Norwegian Forestry Bureau,” only highlight the fact that Maiden’s tendency toward stage gear that resembles rejected superhero costumes (Harris describes

Dickinson’s new mask as “even better than the old one”) is actually more of a full-blown predilection than their fleeting spandex phase might suggest. Plus, Maiden’s Pipemaster General certainly seems to play to the camera more than his bandmates, who seem almost willfully ignorant of the swooping cranes and wide-angle lenses in their midst. “I don’t like looking into cameras, to be honest with you,” Harris says. “I think Bruce is a lot more comfortable in front of the camera than any of us, really. He’s much better at hamming it up than the rest of us, without a doubt. But then he’s got to be, I suppose—he’s the frontman. The rest of us can hide behind our guitars to a certain degree.” Bruce Bruce would clearly beg to differ with his bandmate’s assessment of his comfort level in front of the electric eye. “I think it’s no secret [that] I’m not the biggest fan of [4]

ENTER THE BRUCE BRUCE Do any of you remember an album called The Number of the Beast, by any chance? Yes, well, this song is not actually on that album. —Bruce Dickinson, introducing “Revelations” on Live After Death

ow available on DVD (and in Dolby 5.1) for the first time since its initial October 1985 release on VHS, Beta and Laserdisc, Live After Death is as every bit as entertaining today—if not more so—than it was back then. After the music, the performances and the outfits, the main reason for this is undoubtedly Bruce Dickinson’s stage banter. OK, maybe even before most of that stuff. Bruce Bruce’s “Scream for me, Long Beach!” mantra remains one of the most memorable (and quotable) stage exhortations in the history of forever. With 23 years of hindsight, his “Revelations” intro presages the Pollyannaish comedic stylings of Ricky Gervais’ David Brent character on the original BBC version of The Office. Dickinson’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” introduction, which morphs into a bizarre rant about Queen

On a couple occasions, huge Eddie came out a bit low and threatened to wipe out my cymbals. —NICKO MCBRAIN 81 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

You don’t know you’re making a landmark when you’re doing it. You don’t think like that, really. You just go out and do it. —STEVE HARRIS

having cameras shoved in my face when I’m trying to add drama or energy to a show,” he counters. “You’d be at the front of the stage concentrating on a part of the audience and up would pop this sodding, great TV camera. In those days, the cameras weren’t small like they are now so you completely lost sight of the audience on some occasions when they were moving about. So for me it was quite distracting, but like anything you just have to get on with it.”

RUN TO THE DENOUEMENT

hot on 35 millimeter by Yukich and his crew and recorded by Birch with the help of his trusty mobile unit, Live After Death looks and sounds as good as any live video recorded today with advanced digital equipment. “We captured it properly,” Smallwood emphasizes. “And soundwise, it was done with analog stuff, which has a different sound—and to me, a better sound, quite honestly. It captured a moment. [Maiden’s 2002 live concert video] Rock in Rio was stunning, but it was a different set. It wasn’t as theatrical; it was more straightahead. And obviously a bigger audience. You just gotta concentrate on the camera angles, but Steve always supervises the edits. I said, ‘Steve, we can get somebody to do that!’ But he wanted to do it.” Harris worked closely with editor Jerry Behrens to fine-tune all the cuts and angles. “That was the first time I started getting involved with the editing. Jerry did the basic edit, and then I went down there and spent a week with him just going through all the shots. I remember the last day, we were running out of time and we did a 23-hour stint without a break. Since then, I’ve directed live stuff, the Maiden England stuff, did all the edits for Rock in Rio and god knows what else,” the bassist laughs. “It’s about time someone else did it.” According to the band, just two allowances were made for the Live After Death home video. “We didn’t change anything to do with the actual production as far as the actual stage set went,” Harris claims, “but the lighting was

changed slightly—when you’re shooting a video like that, the director’s gonna want it to be a bit brighter. These days, it’s a whole different thing. The cameras can handle lower lighting and you don’t have to worry about it. But if we’d done that back in ’85, the cameramen would’ve freaked out.” McBrain also had to stay after school to mime a few of his drum parts for the overhead crane. “I had a rather bizarre situation in that I played the Long Beach Arena six times, not four like the others,” he tells Decibel. “How, you ask? Well, as you’ll see during the concert, there were some crane shots that came over the kit and these were recorded as cutaways separately after the show on the second night, as they couldn’t be recorded during the show itself, as it would have got in the way. So I had to play the show three times that night: Once for the show and then two more times after that for the crane guys. It got to about four in the morning and they wanted to have another run-through, at which point I told them where to go.”

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Though the contents of the various Live After Death releases would vary from format to format (set closer “Sanctuary” was excised completely from the double LP, but included on the home video, and the initial CD version contained an edited version of “Running Free”), the results remain legendary. “There’re more toys to play with these days, but whether it makes the overall impact better or not is very dubious, I think,” Smallwood asserts. “There’s a lot more to deal with now in terms of DVDs and the Internet, but in those days, it was just a piece of plastic and we were like, ‘Wow—we can do movies!’ It was very simple, so you could concentrate on each format very well. But there’s actually one thing I regret. I remember Jim [Yukich] saying, ‘We should go widescreen.’ And I said, ‘Nah, everybody’s gonna be watching it on TV.’ Idiot. I should’ve listened. But anyway, that makes it of its time. It gives it a different sort of charm, I guess—says he trying to get out of fucking up.” “It’s just amazing, really,” Harris enthuses. “The live album and DVD just seem to be landmarks. My landmark for a live album was UFO’s Strangers in the Night, but everybody’s got their own, I’m sure. But you don’t know you’re making a landmark when you’re doing it. You don’t think like that, really. You just go out and do it.” “It just comes across as a well-produced and well-performed show from everyone’s perspective,” Dickinson offers, “and I think I could be right in saying that it’s probably the best live album of all the ones we’ve produced so far.” As such, it’s no surprise that Maiden are revisiting Live After Death’s glory in 2008. Only instead of traversing the globe in their trusty Prevost motor-coach, they’re traveling in a 757 co-piloted by Dickinson and loaded with 12 tons of gear. “Probably a lot of the fans we have now weren’t even born when we did the Powerslave tour,” Murray posits. “We’re recreating it now; we’re just a little bit more aged. And we left the spandex at home.” A

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INSIDE ≥

APOCALYPTICA [Snorrrre]

BLACK TIDE [Dreaming about Tommy Lee’s penis]

CAVITY I’m awake! I’m awake!

DEICIDE Man, I’d better watch some reruns.

104

RUSSIAN CIRCLES [Nodding off again]

106

TEXTURES [Dreaming about Fred Durst’s penis]

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS REVIEW OCTOBER 2004 REVIEWS BY THE NUMBERS section writers

— 10 not including the EIC—who are still with the magazine future Hall of Fame

4 bands reviewed 8.5

average score of future Hall of Fame

bands’ records (which, in fact, were not the ones named to the Hall of Fame) Megadeth review

that 1 ends with assessment “There’s far less to cringe at than usual.”

Legacy Artists TESTAMENT

The Formation of Damnation NUCLEAR BLAST

After what seems like eons, thrash metal’s most successful also-rans have finally delivered their ninth studio album. Allegedly in the works since 2002, empires have arisen and been swept away while the Bay Area bruisers sorted their shit out. For those of us over the age of 30, it’s sobering to recall that the band’s last all-new studio recording, The Gathering, emerged way back in ’99, which in musical terms is practically a generation ago. Younger thrashers—and there are plenty of them around these days—might well have seen their first show, drunk their first beer

Hell still awaits for unsung classic thrash warriors

TESTAMENT

and been harassed by their first military recruiter in the time it’s taken Testament to lay this down. It does, however, feature four-fifths of the “classic” lineup, which in itself may be worth the wait. Jazz assassin Alex Skolnick makes his first proper appearance since ’92’s The Ritual (we don’t count First Strike Still Deadly), while bassist Greg Christian was last heard on ’94’s mighty Low. Journeyman timekeeper and Testament alumnus Paul Bostaph, for ’tis he, is the man you should address regarding drums. Do say, “Welcome back Paul!” Don’t say, “Nick, man, you’ve lost weight!” Sheathed in some decidedly apocalyptic old-school artwork, The Formation of Damnation is the album Testament needed to make. In the past they’ve demonstrated willingness both to push the boundaries of their comfort zone (Demonic) and play it ultra-safe in a desperate lunge towards the mainstream (The Ritual), but in 2008 they seem at last to have grasped their strengths and understood their weaknesses. As the latest in [4] DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 85

newnoise

record reviews

a long line of entries in the band’s discography, it’d be glib and somewhat lazy simply to label this as a straightforward amalgam of the best of the rest, but for all its cognizant savvy, The Formation of Damnation is a solid slab of the Testament you know and love, with no major surprises, nasty or otherwise. And before you stick your hand up at the back, the fact that it’s chock full of muscular riffing, slamming tempos and oodles of slick and tasteful solos is hardly a surprise. The perennial Chuck Billy too, is in sterling form, his animalistic growl showing absolutely no sign of being diminished by the passing years, and this is arguably his most intense performance, Demonic included. Sired in the spirit of their classic debut, but ultimately more mature and with musicianship at a level the youthful Testament could only have dreamt of, it’s a tightly focussed and reliably consistent effort that easily holds its own in the face of the hungry new breed. If there’s a coherent criticism, it’s that it lacks light and shade, but sooner that than shoe horned Zippo lighter moments or, hell help us, Dragonlord. —DAMIEN

ABYSMAL DAWN

Programmed to Consume RELAPSE

Saviors of death metal? No. Violators of female private parts? There’s always a chance.

Take a read through any of Abysmal Dawn’s bios, past and present, and you’d think this band was a half-step away from being the last remaining hope for American metal, death metal, heavy metal and any other kind of metal you could imagine. Let it be known that vocalist/guitarist Charles Elliott’s day job is in music publicity, and if writing hype-filled one-sheets isn’t part of his daily grind, it should be. It’s like this: Abysmal Dawn are good, but saviors? Nah. They are a tightly-executed and brick-solid combination of old-school Swedish groove, Morbid Angel and the “shun” bands (Immolation, Suffocation, etc.), but nothing they do is outlandish or quirky enough to set the world abuzz. Solid, serviceable death metal played by solid, serviceable death metal dudes who own the requisite classics and an inordinate number of longsleeves featuring drawings of women being disenvaginized, a word that could only exist in death metal circles. The conundrum here is that the energy and life of songs like the title track, “Twilight’s Fallen” and “Grotesque Modern Art” are neutered to where the drumming, riffing and consistently killer solos sound like they’re coming out of a transistor radio. Whether this is because our provided review copy came in MP3 format or 86 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

because Programmed to Consume has been recorded as such, I can’t tell, but herein lies the divide between listening to death metal digitally vs. listening to it on CD/vinyl vs. letting it kick your ass in person. There’s a certain amount of fidelity required to fully escape into a world where swirling riffs played by scathing, downtuned guitars and ripping drums are commonplace, and people giggle at fake words like “disenvaginized.” Still, listening to AD on record is probably nothing compared to watching them onstage, sweating like Ethiopian marathon runners, which likely doesn’t hold a candle to how brutal they must sound in a stinking 15’ x 17’ rehearsal room. Just a long-winded way of saying that this is a pretty decent listen, but the live energy hasn’t been captured enough so as to get shut-ins and work-at-home types slamming around the privacy of their homes. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

AGALLOCH

The White EP VENDLUS

We live among the creatures of the night

Much like 2004’s short-form companion piece The Grey EP, this transitional EP was prepared in an extremely limited pressing of 2,000 copies. If you made it this far into the review without being aware of a follow-up to Agalloch’s awesome, life-affirming Ashes Against the Grain, it’s time to hit the torrent sites or give yourself over to the Satanic urges of eBay, because you’re already way too late to get your jam hands on a copy. You’re still in good shape if your Agalloch collection is currently limited to Pale Folklore, The Mantle and Ashes Against the Grain, though: The Portland quartet’s fulllengths offset any karmic damage done by a steady stream of limited EPs that have been practically hand-delivered to collector scum. The White EP is lush, beautifully arranged and intoxicating, but there’s still one measure of forehead-slapping obviousness that almost fucks the whole thing up: a handful of sound bites from The Wicker Man. The band’s pagan thrust is communicated well enough within the EP’s seven songs; the dialogue at the beginning of “The Isle of Summer” is as annoying as an elderly couple who can’t shut up when the lights go down in the movie theater and the credits begin to roll. Music this sparse and subtle needs no additional context. That said, The White EP— which features material written by all of the band’s members over the last four years—takes a step back from Agalloch’s recent post-rock direction and fills in the gaps nicely between The Mantle and Ashes Against the Grain. John Haughm’s whispered Marianne Faithfull impression on

“Birch White” is a treat and everything’s Zen on “Sowilo Rune”—it’s a perfect soundtrack for the yoga mat. —NICK GREEN

APOCALYPTICA

Worlds Collide JIVE

Cellos await

Despite the obvious noveltysell of Long-Haired Dudes! With Cellos! Playing Metallica Songs! And Other Stuff!, it’s interesting to note how Finland’s Apocalyptica have managed to override accusations of gimmickry to forge themselves a 12-yearstrong career. Some of it you can attribute to the fact that, from 2001’s Cult onwards, the band decided it might be a good idea to prove their intent with some original material that actually sounded OK; some of it you can safely bet is down to the fact that, in metal circles, it’s still something of a novelty sell. Still, it’s clear from this sixth studio release that striking out completely on their own is something of a bridge too far. Only half the tracks here are instrumental (Apocalyptica number three cellists and a drummer); the rest feature guest vocal spots from the rock and metal worlds, with varied results on both sides. Things begin portentously enough with the dark bombast of the title track, but while the mournful stringwork is beautifully played throughout, the heaving bedrock of processed metal riffage it’s often welded to (try the mosh-by-numbers “Burn” or “Stroke”) is less remarkable. Bring singers into the equation—Corey Taylor’s contribution to the industrialized malice of “I’m Not Jesus” is one of the better moments here when faced with Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia or Three Days Grace’s Adam Gontier—and identities are diluted further. Occasionally, Apocalyptica make good on the promise of their album title—Dave Lombardo’s bpm-busting overdrive for “Last Hope” or the wholly unexpected German version of David Bowie’s “Heroes” (with vocals provided by none other than Rammstein’s flame-throwing meatstack-in-chief, Till Lindemann)—but elsewhere, it’s less of a big bang and more of a polite handshake. —CATHERINE YATES

AVERSE SEFIRA

Advent Parallax CANDLELIGHT

Country tetragrammar

Sure, Averse Sefira owe the likes of Darkthrone and Immortal. What 13-year-old American black metal band doesn’t? But not big time. Given

newnoise to folding death tropes into their agenda since 2001’s Battle Clarion, the Texan trio (quartet, counting ambient interlude creatrix Lady of the Evening Faces) marry chaos and order in a manner that mimics the universe itself—or maybe a couple-three of ’em—crafting blast beat-infused Mandelbrot sets for the ears that reveal their inner rigor only after repeated listenings. Regardless, it’s hard not to immediately feel Advent Parallax’s affinity for structure, even when the band deploy massively chaotic gestures, as on mini-epic “Refractions of an Unexpected Singularity.” They’ve become way less abrupt since 2005’s Tetragrammatical Astygmata, and more prone to embrace the cosmic ooze and/or subtlety. You hardly even notice “Cognition of Rebirth”’s myriad tempo changes at first, thanks mostly to the Carcass’s knack for articulating blast beats, gravity blasts and rocky stuff in the same loose-limbed voice. Only when the band slips into overt knelling for the reincarnation anthem’s middle bit does the smoothness of their transmission reveal itself. “Trapped / In a fascination / With the process,” singer and guitarist Sanguine Mapsama dry-gurgles with decid-

edly mixed feelings that grow more triumphant as the Carcass’s kick drums default to 16th notes, then subside just long enough for Mapsama to conclude the interlude by crying, “Ineffable / Flesh of ages,” before the band returns to hidensity mode for a finale capped by one of Lady’s most intriguing drones to date. —ROD SMITH

AZAGHAL

Omega

MORIBUND

Reign of fire

There are those who believe that, on a netherrealm existing between our dreamworld and the barely-awake state, there’s an evil plane of undead clown-like creatures who subtly leech on the lives of humans as they sleep. These evil white-faced soul-suckers, besides fueling our nightmares, are the eternal bogeymen of the collective unconscious, popping up on the material plane in everything from Kabuki theatre, tribal African voodoo rituals and Native American lore to, of course, Scandinavian black fucking metal!

Maybe that’s why corpsepaint warriors like old school Finnish crew Azaghal are so infectious and scary—like a bad car wreck you can’t look away from—even if they aren’t all that novel musically. Azaghal have been around for quite a while now and this latest album, their first for new label Moribund, is as ball-busting as previous efforts, although nothing groundbreaking. Without getting all cheesy and dabbling in gothlaced, symphonic keyboard atmospherics, these Finns accentuate their fierce and fluid oldschool riffage (think a more nimble Horna, or a catchier Sargeist) with witchy choral sounds and Valhalla-echoing Viking chants (think Enslaved’s classic “Havenless”). Their God-hating treble-y guitar scorches, mid-tempo drum thunder and rasp-shriek vocals seem to be smartly following the newish trend in grim releases as of late, choosing to have production that doesn’t sound like shit, but instead opts for clear and discernible—and hence more powerful—grimness. Geek kudos must be given out for the band’s name— it’s taken from an attempted (but failed) dragonslayer dwarf-lord from Middle-Earth’s First Age. Long live the Satanic nerdlings! —SHAWN BOSLER

PRACTICE SAFE FLEX

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newnoise BLACK TIDE

Light From Above Who’s a greenhorn? What’s a greenhorn?! So many reviews are going to dwell on the fact that Black Tide singer/lead guitarist Gabriel Garcia is 15 years old and use that as a jumping-off point to knock the kid and his band just because he wasn’t alive when A Vulgar Display of Power came out. But not this one. Granted, Light From Above still blows, often spectacularly so, but it’s not for lack of trying. The fact is, Garcia can flat-out play, immediately made apparent on the straight-outta-1984 “Shockwave.” The precocious young shredmeister is all over this sucker, simultaneously emulating Dimebag and DeMartini, and boasting a voice that avoids the lazy screaming and effeminate singing of other rockers his age, going for a full-throated howl instead, his barely-pubescent pipes not unlike Tesla’s Jeff Keith. The huge problem is that, although their love of early ’80s melodic metal is endearing as hell, Black Tide are far too green to have any business being signed to a major label. Aside from the strong “Shockwave” and “Black Abyss,” while the chops are there, the songwriting is often embarrassingly raw, the band milking pop-metal clichés and failing to sell any of them. You’ve got the rave-ups (“Shout,” “Light From Above”), the battle epic (“Warriors of Time”), the teen angst ballad (“Give Me a Chance”), a cover (a woefully tepid “Hit the Lights”), and even a cock rock anthem (the flaccid “Let Me”), but everything falls flat, the boys completely in over their heads, trying far too hard to impress on what should have been a threetrack teaser EP. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

BLOODBATH

Unblessing the Purity PEACEVILLE

Unholy hateful death metal songtitle-o-matic

For a studio band created as a tribute to old-school Stockholm death, the lineup drama seems a bit much (kickin’ Dan Swanö to the curb and the open-ended vocalist situation). Not that any of it bears directly on Bloodbath’s music, as Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse (Katatonia) are the main veins. But… OK, Bloodbath Mk-III. For Unblessing the Purity, Bloodbath’s first for the Peaceville label, Mikael Åkerfeldt returns and new guitarist Per Eriksson fills in for Swanö, pushing Renkse back to bass duties. Otherwise, Nyström and Martin Axenrot retain their positions as guitarist and drummer, respectively. 88 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

BLACKLISTED: ROBBY REDCHEEKS

INTERSCOPE

BLACKLISTED,

Heavier Than Heaven, Lonelier Than God Kill yourself to live | D E AT H W I S H The title alone of Blacklisted’s album paints a picture of despair. Heavier Than Heaven is Charles R. Cross’s biography of Kurt Cobain. But if that’s not enough to convey the mood, the album’s art (designed by Converge’s J. Bannon, naturally) drives it home. The cover is a photo of a young girl on her back in a filthy gutter. She’s half here, half blotto, with dark circles under her eyes, cigarette ash on her otherwise clean wife beater, and is basically the epitome of teenage wasteland. She’s also wearing lip gloss, blush and has remarkably clear skin for someone who’s presumably at the end of her rope. Gotta put the “hot” in “hot mess.” Right. Moving on. Heavier Than Heaven, Lonelier Than God clocks in under 20 minutes and the band makes good use of the fleeting time. The album’s foundation is built upon blasts of screamy noise hoping to ignite a lagging

will. But when the very first lyric is “Peace is just a warm gun away,” it’s not all that encouraging. Thankfully, the production (tip of the hat to Kurt Ballou) conveys more than just the mania of mental health diseases. The volume fades, goes from mono to stereo and evokes an overall sense of someone coming in and out of clarity. Meandering static is warped through the furor, as if the band itself became disinterested. Very Melvinsesque. If it weren’t for these sonic nuances, the songs wouldn’t work nearly as well. “I’m Weighing Me Down” is a raw, ravaging good time even if it’s about emptiness and neglect. “Memory Lane” wears some heavy chains, and drags its shackled limbs through fields of shit and broken glass. “Matrimony” is a nasty scorcher criticizing the act of tying the knot. Singer George Hirsch blows his fucking top when he screams, “I just want to love myself.” Don’t we all. —JEANNE FURY

Presumably Bloodbath used Unblessing the Purity as a test for what can only be a forthcoming full-length. Each songwriter (no, Åkerfeldt wasn’t involved) contributed one song, with Renkse nailing opener “Blasting the Virginborn,” Nyström “Weak Aside,” Eriksson “Sick Salvation,” and Renkse/Eriksson “Mouth of Empty Praise.” The methodology worked, insofar as each track has a different, albeit very death metal, vibe. Elegant like a hammer, opener “Blasting the Virginborn” is a mostly up-tempo blast-beaten beast, with a solitary melody line effectively stitched into it for contrast. Sort of classic Bloodbath. “Weak Aside” is an Edge of Sanity/ Dismember hybrid, modernized by a keyboard break (à la Grave’s “Into the Grave”) and thrash (Forbidden’s “Through Eyes of Glass” rings a bell) underpinnings. Both “Sick Salvation” and “Mouth of Empty Praise” are soundly, if somewhat predictably, constructed death.

However, the problem with Unblessing the Purity is it lacks hooks. Speed replaced the hook. So, no “Breeding Death,” “Like Fire” or “Eaten.” To that end, what’s left is merely competent and forgettable. For the members involved, more than that is expected. Now, who has my Sriracha? —CHRIS DICK

BROWN JENKINS

Angel Eyes MORIBUND

Darkest heritage

Last year’s BJ—um, that would be in reference to the 2007 Brown Jenkins release Dagonite, not my girlfriend’s annual beg-induced pity slurp—found this one-man isolationist BM act getting all creepy crawly in the cellar. (Our man Bartkewicz smartly and accurately described that EP as a cross between Justin

newnoise

record reviews Debutante Ball:

Broadrick and Quorthon, sans any fast bits.) Yes, Jenkins is sick: That’s not just because of all the snaggle-toothed, hairy-warted, hooves-for-hands guitar malice (we’ll get back to that), but because it’s kult as fuck and the moniker is taken from the rat-man character found in Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch House. Exploring the same bad acid trip depression that Xasthur, Nortt and Blut Aus Nord like to grovel in, Umesh (BJ’s mastermind) has given his sideways slo-mo riffs a tiny bit of pick-meup for this full-length—and a lot less of that glacially-paced, sometimes heavy-handed dissonance that was one of Dagonite’s few flaws. The title track, “Forever Funerals” and “Like a Sword Through Worlds” have a repetition that’s not only trance-inducing, but contains grooves that could almost induce a foot tap or a headbang. (That is, if you weren’t so damned concerned with how the chipped paint patterns on the wall seem to be opening a portal to the Great Old Ones, or how the 1,096th repetition of your surname reveals a stomach-turning sense of déjà vu.) So, to recap: Broadrick-goosed axe chunklets impaled with the best of kult BM’s slooow parts—all done practically instrumentally with some scant death-y bellows—pretty much equals all kinds of wonderful. —SHAWN BOSLER

BURNING SKIES

Greed.Filth.Abuse. Corruption. LIFEFORCE

These are a few of my favorite things

Thinking about the audio pollution stinking up the MySpace universe—thousands and thousands of bands mistaking an almighty racket for quality—makes me physically uncomfortable. It’s an unfortunate reflection of the music industry as a whole, whereby an unprecedented number of indistinguishable bands are simply blasting away aimlessly, consuming precious resources to bless the world with yet more directionless fury. So thank fucking god for a band like Burning Skies. These Brits have a firm foundation in at least a couple of ’cores—namely hardcore and grindcore—but they’ve managed to cull a vast and vaguely eclectic array of influences into something cohesive and completely rampaging. Greed.Filth.Abuse.Corruption. is the band’s third album, and for 28 minutes, it’ll make you forget just how shitty and empty a good majority of new extreme music really is. Nothing about this is predictable, however—from the wacky Yosemite Sam sample 90 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

b a s k a t r e c or d i n g s GERMANY

WWW.BASKAT.NET

A word to the wise: There doesn’t appear to be an English translation option on Baskat’s official website, so you may want to head over to their MySpace headquarters (http:// www.myspace.com/baskat) to find out what these Germans are about. As far as I can tell, Baskat isn’t a home of grind, doom or anything -core so much as an open-minded depot for experimental metal and a band of buffoons that named themselves Poostew for some Satanforsaken reason. —ANDREW PARKS

WHITE EYES,

A Demonstration of White Eyes Four songs clocking in at three and a half minutes— what is this, a grasshoppershaped mini-CD from the Locust? Not exactly, but fans of An Albatross will definitely dig the synth shrapnel and Squarepusher-schooled IDM beats that are sprayed across the screeching of vocalist/keyboardist Falk Schwab-Pepperhoff. Bonus cramming-too-much-shitin-one-basket points for the rather Bonnaroo-esque riffs of David Solbach, who’s clearly a wanker—as in guitar wankery—at heart.

STA$D400/ ELEKTROKILL, Split

Having listened to Wolf, er, White Eyes before this split, I have to say I’m quite shocked by the XLR8R-ready tunes on here. Apparently the side projects of drummers from World Downfall (a selfproclaimed “death metal and grindcore bastard”) and Japanische Kampfhörspiele (a self-proclaimed “grindpunk” outfit), STA$D400 churn out Commodore 64-channeling cuts and Elektrokill veer between slightly twisted downtempo tracks and Venetian Snares-like experimentalism. Definitely a random must-listen for anyone that’s into heady electronic music.

that pops up in “Rounding Up the Cattle” to the freaky industrial noisescape “It’s Hard to Breathe With a Bag on Your Head”—and much of the appeal is simply due to the ferocity with which the band attacks every second of the album. With Napalm Death’s social conscience, a solid foundation in advanced Slayer riffiology and a well-developed appreciation of the far-reaches of deathgrind madness, Burning Skies have put together an album that actually distinguishes itself quite convincingly from the masses. A rare feat in this era of overabundance and excess. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

POOSTEW, Misericordia

I can’t say I’ve ever heard a concept CD quite like this before: a grind/melodic death metal band attempting their longest (10 minutes, 53 seconds) and shortest (18 seconds) songs in one tidy EP package. The title track is the behemoth here—four chapters of time changes, incessant growling and mile-a-millisecond riffs. And “Silence Is as Golden as Piss”? Well, it’s the finest Pig Destroyer slaughter I’ve scoped in a minute.

BURY YOUR DEAD

Bury Your Dead VICTORY

A strong argument for deafness

To fans of Killswitch Engage/Hatebreed: Hey bros, what’s crackin’? I want you to check out the new self-titled Bury Your Dead record. It’s really metal and hardcore, but still has a groove and some catchy-as-hell melodies. The guy’s vocals are fucking burly, but he can also sing. Keep mosh alive! To everyone else: stupid, tough-guy sellout

newnoise bullshit. Meathead fight in the pit because the world is so fucked up and you still can’t believe Dimebag got fucking shot when there was so much more shredding he could have done kind of music. Seriously, how many times can a band play the same goddamn chug part? According to Bury Your Dead, at least four entire records. These dudes have siphoned the garbage juice from every generic metal/hardcore breakdown that has ever existed, only to then add humiliating emo parts that would embarrass My Chemical Romance. I know these guys tour a lot, but did it really take two years to write this record? The quality of songs like “Disposably Yours” could be shat out in a half hour. The singer starts the track off by yelling, “Fuck!” If that doesn’t illustrate the lowest common denominator of heavy music, I don’t know what else to tell you. If you’re looking for a soundtrack to your wicked sick homemade snowboarding video, get your ass to the record store. If not, avoid Bury Your Dead’s new record like… well, the last Bury Your Dead record. —SHANE MEHLING

THE CAST PATTERN 8 The Cast Pattern UPRISING

Blood simple

The band name, it has to be said, rules. It so happens that this Kansan quintet picked a moniker that subtly conveys extreme violence—a cast-off pattern is the term used in forensics to describe blood spatter. It also happens that by calling themselves the Cast Pattern, they’ve signalled their musical intent, not unlike the Dillinger Escape Plan and Converge. Spot the similarity? It’s curious how the more left-field the metalcore, the more the band needs to hint that they remain in control. That’s precisely what the Cast Pattern have achieved with this self-titled debut. Eschewing the chaos-for-chaos’s-sake approach of all too many Dillinger wannabes, TCP keep a tight lid on their sound, allowing atonality and technicality free rein just long enough to set them apart from more conventional metalcore acts, but never losing sight of the holy grail of the almighty breakdown. The results are exceptional: Tracks like “Set, Like, Three Things on Fire” or “Die With Your Boots On” mash and merge bass-heavy rhythm lines and top-end guitar work into some of the best metalcore you’re likely to have heard in quite a while. “Infant Stomper” unleashes Turmoillike feedback and bone-shudderingly thick riffs, offsetting itself against the somewhat mellower link pieces that are scattered through the album. TCP also reveal a winning way with song

titles, at least if you’re a fan of the sick and the sarcastic: The brief intro “Paraplegic Fist Fight” leads straight onto the aggro-outro of “She’s Not Pregnant, She’s Just Fat” before the album closes with a two-parter, the heavier intro “Shut Your…,” featuring Guy Kozowyk of the Red Chord on vocals, and the more atmospheric outro, “Homeless Mouth.” So compacted is the Cast Pattern’s sound and musical approach, that you’ll barely notice that the album lasts hardly much more than 20-25 minutes. Here’s looking forward to the next installment. —NICK TERRY

CAVITY

Laid Insignificant HYDRA HEAD

Decade of decay

It’s amazing that Cavity were such a consistent band. The South Florida sludge act existed for a decade, from 1992 until 2002, and included innumerable members (two of whom went on to form Torche and Black Cobra). All of Cavity’s music is a mixture of punk rock and doom metal. Yet, rhythmically, there’s a big chasm between the band’s grooviest material and their most chaotic. Originally released on Pushead’s Bacteria Sour label in 1998, the re-mastered and expanded reissue of Laid Insignificant belongs to the latter category. The record is marked by lurching—and sometimes surprising—changes in tempo. One minute the band is racing at hardcore velocity; the next, they’re wading through murk. Bipolar shifts such as these may come as a surprise to those familiar with 1999’s Supercollider, a relatively even-keeled album that features some of the band’s catchiest hooks and most polished rhythms. What connects these two records is that, no matter who’s in the band, Cavity never deviate from their core concept, which is that blooz sounds best when turned up to 666. It doesn’t matter that the two discs boast different singers, different drummers and a different level of intensity. As far as Cavity are concerned, the song is more important than the people playing it. And, because it’s Cavity, the song remains the same. —BRENT BURTON

CENTURY

Black Ocean PROSTHETIC

100-year stare

What started a few years ago as one dude—Carson Slovak of from ArmsBendBack—and a vision has turned into a full blown concern. No longer is Slovak doing everything himself, as on the first, self-released Century EP; he’s only doing about DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 91

newnoise

record reviews

95 percent of it. Yeah, sure, he has a band around him, but the production/recording/mixing, artwork and no doubt the bulk of the writing are his domain. And with Black Ocean he (and his bandmates) may have created Century’s most ambitious effort yet. A literal nonstop (there are no breaks between the 10 tracks) crush of overblown sonics, this dense 33-minute CD references all the notable C bands—Coalesce, Converge, Cave In—and gracefully moderates its metallic ferocity with subtle washes of melody via strummed/picked minor chords. Slovak’s aneurysm-inducing vocals—the most obvious nod to metalcore—never, thankfully, fall below a forceful roar, allowing his band to deliver the quieter dynamics (“Daylight Algorhythm”) and avoid the use of clean vocals that awkwardly come soaring out of nowhere. And like all the best “progressive” bands in this realm (think Burst), Century don’t align themselves solidly into any one genre. Though metal, hardcore and post-punk all kind of convene at the same intersection, none seems to dominate. Black Ocean is brutally heavy, unstintingly fierce and caustically moody in equal parts, a well-conceived amalgamation that seems to support the fact that leader Slovak has a clear vision for what Century are all about. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

CHILDREN OF BODOM

Blooddrunk S P I N E FA R M

Plasma + Cuervo Black = unfun hangover

Missing Amon Amarth ’cause eight million “Hate Crew” trolls sold out the Trocadero in 2005 still tastes like Matt Heafy’s vapid thrash sounds. I’ll give the Bodudes credit, though: At least it wasn’t Nightwish banking in Killadelphia. On Blooddrunk, the follow-up to 2005’s impressively average Are You Dead Yet?, Children of Bodom are tweaking their nearly played-out script by reducing keyboardist Janne Wirman’s role and injecting stronger thrash motifs (“Lobodomy,” the title track) throughout. Blooddrunk, as a result, is tighter and meaner musically and conceptually. Though Children of Bodom rely heavily on tried and true tricks—the YouTube Guitar Hero crowd will have plenty to destroy—“Hellhounds on My Trail,” “Done With Everything, Die for Nothing” and “Banned From Heaven” are tits. Other cuts aren’t nearly as fab. “One Day You Will Cry,” “Smile Pretty for the Devil” and “Lobodomy” insipidly bash away, evidently created to frame Alexi Laiho and Roope Latvala solo histrionics. Six albums in, Bodom still sadly settle LCD-style when the songwriting 92 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

gets tough. Vocally, Mr. Laiho snarls menacingly—as if someone’s threatening to cut off his calloused, black-painted digits—but the singing needs to stop. “Tie My Rope” is no-fucking-go territory! From inception, Children of Bodom have balanced ever-so-cleverly on the precipice of greatness. With Blooddrunk, the Finns minimized the full-on Juustoleipa waterfall so prevalent on post-Follow the Reaper albums and maximized, at least for now, the very things that made them wicked in the first place. If only Alexi would relinquish the fuckin’ microphone. —CHRIS DICK

COMPLETE FAILURE 3 Perversions of Guilt S U P E R N OVA

Completely unlistenable

You can tell that Steve Austin of Today Is the Day, who recorded this, still thinks pretty highly of his former drummer (and Complete Failure’s current drummer), Mike Rosswog. The headacheinducing mess of a mix features the drummer prominently, to the detriment of this album, unfortunately. Guitar and bass are reduced to a murky roar/buzz in the background, the screamed vocals are completely distorted and those fuckin’ drums just rattle away at your frontal lobe like a woodpecker looking for a fat grub. If my ears could vomit, they’d try to eject this like the toxic sonic bile that it is. Considering Austin’s track record, I can’t help but think that it was his and/or the band’s intention to render this so, uh, unlistenable, because there’s no way simply falling asleep at the board could have produced these results. Yeah, grindcore ain’t supposed to be pretty, but this is beyond the pale. The mix and recording is so fucked up—purposely or not—that it’s virtually impossible to assess the material accurately. This recording quality would have been acceptable 20 years ago when most engineers didn’t have a clue how to capture extreme music, but in the 21st century no one needs to suffer through this. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

DARK FORTRESS

Eidolon

CENTURY MEDIA

Bloodloss in translation

Dark Fortress = Dimmu Borgir. Dimmu Borgir = Dark Fortress. If not in style, then in name. Snicker all you want, but metal is appropriative by nature. There are nine different Cremations, eight Sacraments, sixteen Maelstroms, two Dark Fortresses… eh, you get the idea. So, apart

from similar names in different languages, the Bavarians are sonically closer to, say, Abyssos, early Dark Funeral and Mörk Gryning, which works in Dark Fortress’s favor, as Eidolon isn’t so much about grandiose gestures or over-posturing. It, more than predecessor Séance and the preCentury Media catalog, is solid, semi-ambitious, atmospheric black. What distinguishes Eidolon is not its speed, dexterity or jammin’-in-a-mausoleum sound, but how the songs are arranged. Whereas previous Dark Fortress albums fumbled around with trad/ atmospheric black concepts and how not to suck, this time, on album number five, those incantations and wild, ritualistic orgies in honor of the Horned One actually pay off. In inverted spades. Having better chops helps, too. Eidolon opens with the mid-paced, evilly melodic ‘n’ grimy “The Silver Gate.” “Analepsy,” replete with a killer solo section, “Catacrusis” and closer “Antiversum” are similar in approach, except marginally faster and with sweeter, Dawn/ Dissection-like riffs. “Cohorror” and “No Longer Human” blaze like The Secrets of the Black Artsera Dark Funeral, if they had John Zwetsloot composing the acoustic bits. There’s also a little corpse-boogie as well. “Baphomet,” featuring Tom Gabriel Fischer on backing vocals, channels Satyricon cool and Destruction swagger. Most black metal gets attention at polar ends of the spectrum—overblown vs. undercooked—but it’s really bands in the middle, like DF, that are kickin’ necro arse. —CHRIS DICK

DARSOMBRA

Eternal Jewel P U B L I C G U I LT

Harvester of sorrow

Eternal Jewel has a metal record intro—ominous drone, flatted seconds, harmonized guitars (Metallica’s “Blackened” comes to mind). But instead of the usual hammer drop, the intro takes on a life of its own. With his solo project Darsombra, Brian Daniloski (Meatjack, Trephine) opens yawning abysses of drone. He uses baritone guitar and probably an army of effects. It’s doom, but not metal; percussionless, but rhythmic. Taking the red pill can lead to very interesting places. Daniloski’s range is impressive; unlike most drone projects, which often reveal their nature at the outset, Eternal Jewel is ever-changing. The discordant, descending glissandi of “Night’s Black Agents” evoke Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack for There Will Be Blood. But Greenwood was writing film cues, which come and go; Daniloski fills in the spaces with oozing, buzzing malevolence. It’s like Zombi minus drums,

newnoise plus some serious downers. High-end is the most salient aspect of this record. It’s informationrich and requires active listening—no toking up and tuning out. “Incarnadine” and “Drops of Sorrow” explore Steve Reichian repetition; the former glistens like a thousand wind chimes, while the latter saws away like a small string ensemble. The delicate guitars and minor key drones of “Lamentings/Auguries” recall the MGR project of Isis’ Mike Gallagher. It’s fuller and more layered, though, hitting a dramatic bass note of symphonic gravity. Then those blackened intro melodies seep back in. I’ve wondered what I’ll listen to when I’m very old, and want power and atmosphere, but not at 250 bpm. I might listen to Darsombra then. —COSMO LEE

DEAD CHILD

Attack

QUARTERSTICK

Please don’t cancel your subscription, Dave

Prolific axeman for Slint, Tortoise and a bunch of other art-fart combos who’d probably fail your standard online kult test, Dave Pajo’s contributions to post-whatever-rock in the ’90s will probably always earn him a pass from yours truly, because I am a big smooth jazz pussy. Reconnecting with our shared headbanger youth, Pajo’s take on retro metal with Dead Child is less cheeky than other indie-dudes-go-hesher outfits like the Fucking Champs, but also less fun, as if trying to ward off accusations of falsity before a single message board denizen had the chance to call the band out. Even the most straight-faced thrash throwback would have thrown in a wink or two, unless you count calling a song something as quaint as “Screaming Skull” this long after we all fell in love with Bill Steer’s way with a physician’s desk reference. So Dead Child defiantly cling to the pre-grind/ death era, practically the pre-Slayer era, and the result’s an exhaustingly reverent love letter to Ozzy, Venom and various NWOBHM legends and no-hopers. ’Course, like most retro outfits, Dead Child are eight kinds of anachronistic, moving from Priest worship to Hanneman/King black magic within and between songs, all of it passable enough in its conviction, but rarely with the gnarly enthusiasm of backward-looking fellows like Municipal Waste or even surviving thrashers like Death Angel. And with the monthly glut of new releases, false and otherwise, no one’s going to mistake Pajo and fellow guitarist Michael McMahan’s occasionally sluggish mid-tempo chug for first-rank metal heroics. Legitimately sick 94 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

DEICIDE, Till Death Do Us Part

They are the middle-aged men of the underworld | E A R A C H E If the slogan on the free sew-on patch that comes with Deicide’s latest is to be believed, mainman Glen Benton is running for president. We trust that once in office he’ll implement a raft of measures to make inverted cross brands and the shooting of squirrels compulsory whilst decoupling Church and State in the U.S. with a general burning and beheading policy. In the meantime, Till Death Do Us Part makes for a compelling manifesto. The slow-burning tension of “The Beginning of the End” and relative restraint of the title track suggest that—as with previous effort The Stench of Redemption— Benton and Co. are at a point where they feel they’ve simply nothing left to prove.

moments like the opening of “Eye to the Brain” aside, Attack founders less on suffocating classicism than a basic lack of good riffs. —JESS HARVELL

DREAM THEATER

Greatest Hit (…and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs) RHINO

“Pretty” may be pushing it

As a teenager, I never understood why other metallers hated Dream Theater. In 1992, “Pull Me Under” somehow managed to combine the atmosphere-drenched majesty of Metallica with a dreamy, pop-influenced sound. It ruled. Their other big single from the breakthrough Images and Words album, “Take the Time,” sounded like Michael Jackson, but cool—and with about a million musical ideas firing in the spaces between James LaBrie’s vocal histrionics. But Jesus God, listening to the other songs

Such a realization can offer a new lease of life, or in this case, death, and they seem content in their scaly skins not attempting to outdo everyone else. They haven’t, however, allowed this newfound musicality to cast out the demons of the past, and their ninth testament is darkest Deicide to its blackened core. From “Hate of All Hatreds” onward, then, it’s business as usual. Benton’s inhuman vacuum-cleaner vox remain the very definition of cookie monster, but the tar-thick timbre of his bark is a big chunk of what’s always made their music so intense. He gleefully trades growls with Jack Owen and Ralph Santolla’s scything riffs, while the relentless battery of sticksman Steve Asheim rattles away like an Uzi. It sounds like they’re drilling their way down to hell. —DAMIEN

of this compilation back-to-back is a grueling exercise. Carved into hemispheres of “Dark” and “Light,” the sequencing of the two-CD set is massively unappealing and is as much to blame as the music within. “Dark” includes “Pull Me Under,” and is where Dream Theater attempt to validate themselves still as “heavy,” reining in their galaxyimploding musical knowledge and ability into an unconvincing, clunky aggression (see “Lie”). “Light,” meanwhile, is 11 sappy MOR ballads replete with wrist-slashing Kenny G solos. For a band so renowned for their mastery of their instruments, Dream Theater really make some exceptionally bland musical gestures. What is missing in this document, crucially, is the middle ground—the longer, less song-oriented and more “experimental” musical diversions from the albums (in a Nuno Bettencourt wigging out on Division Bell-era Floyd kind of way): fan favorites like “Under a Glass Moon,” where the sheer glassiness of their emotion-free sound actually makes a whole new texture of its own, the sheer ridicu-

newnoise

record reviews

lousness of their pomp reconstituting itself as bigbrained inter-dimensional pop-metal, blissfully isolated from any modern music, swirling forever in its own vortex. —DAVID MCNAMEE

THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE

Primitive

20 BUCK SPIN

Yep. Sure is.

The Endless Blockade, along with Apt. 213, were recently cited by Wood from Man Is the Bastard as the only two NWOPV (new wave of powerviolence) bands who got the “psychological aspect” of the music. I have no idea what this means. My gut says it’s something like “unceasing rage at the damage we do to ourselves and our environment at the

expense of whatever part of us we consider human—played really fast and really slow; cover art and overall graphic presentation should be extremely well-thought out.” Either way, considering that a shout-out from Wood is like getting a blessing from the Pope on your new brand of Catholicism, the Endless Blockade should be pretty pleased. And Wood’s not wrong—these Canadians have the vibe down cold. Riffs that are never quite as inaccessible as you think they could be; bellows and screeches that sound a little too much like torture victims; an ability to move from thrash to sludge at the drop of a D. The big addition here is all the gnarly electronic wheezing. The final track, “Do Not Resuscitate,” heads into an obtuse noise freakout (freq-out?) that’s, well, very Bastard Noise. Also, the song named after their band is eight seconds long, with four seconds of sound. Yes, these guys know what’s up. —JOE GROSS

FALL OF SERENITY 7 The Crossfire LIFEFORCE

Beats the hell out of Fall of Depends

When you’re living in mom’s basement (again) and you’re trying to file some metal album reviews that are late (again), it can be pretty hard to concentrate when the documentary crew from that TV show Intervention—the one that films people drooling, nodding out and hitting their heads on the corners of coffee tables—is at your house (again) for a “follow-up” episode. Relapse! Not just a record label, people! Shit… what was I talking about? Oh yeah, those German melodic death dudes Fall of Serenity and their new collection of (thankfully less) metalcored monotony. Last time we took a gander, previous album Bloodred Salvation found lots of grandiose, classic heavy metal moments

Can you tell this stuff apart? Neither can we. But J. Bennett likes to pretend he knows what he’s talking about.

The Grim, The black & The Ugly ANIMUS MORTIS 8 Atrabilis (Residues From Verb & Flesh) DEBEMUR MORTI

There’s something about South American black metal that just seems so much more evil than its European or North American counterparts. Maybe it’s because military juntas, urban shantytowns and satanic humidity are actually worth being pissed about. Or maybe it’s because bands like Chile’s Animus Mortis have songs called “Among the Phlegm of God” and ex-drummers named Goebbels.

96 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

CELESTIA 7

KAISERREICH 7

PA R A G O N

FUNERAL MOONLIGHT

Sin-Thesis

DISPLEASED

If you can overlook the extreme pretentiousness of the album title, song titles like “Admirable Eros Extraction,” “A Regrettable Misinterpretation of Mournfulness” and “Morbid Romance”—and of simply being French (apologies to Deathspell, Blut Aus Nord, Merrimack, Spektr and Serge Gainsbourg)—Celestia can actually pump out some decent Immortal-style grimness when they want to. Not to mention the occasional flamenco guitar interlude. And mainman N. Geiistmortt does Abbath’s croak like nobody’s business.

The reigning champions of the indecipherable logo sweepstakes, Italy’s Kaiserreich up the ante with a fat, bald, corpsepainted bass player named Necro Bosco who straps his instrument on with a chain, Pete Steele style. Musically, the band splits the difference between early Gorgoroth and classic Darkthrone, which is kinda like making a roast beef sandwich held together with more roast beef instead of bread. But if you like roast beef, you’re psyched.

KNIGHTMARE

We’ve been taking shots at this dude in G,B & U for years now. Maybe that’s because black metal’s own Tasmanian devil has shit out 18 fucking releases in the last five years and shows no signs of letting up. Like much of his back catalog—last year’s Nocturnal Emissions/ Nyctophobia collection being an exception— Autumnal Melancholy (yeah, dude is pretty emo) is shrill and monotonous and vaguely annoying.

Frigidiis Apotheosia

KRRH

STORMING 9 DARKNESS The fact that Storming Darkness are from Russia pretty much makes this an automatic nine. The music itself—a standardissue lo-fi buzzfest— is about a six (tops), but shit: Russia. How fucking awesome is that?

STRIBORG 5

Autumnal Melancholy

newnoise

record reviews enough for second stage Ozzfest) bands like Strapping Young Lad, DevilDriver and Unearth are your thing, FOS could tickle your taint—they basically sound like a mash-up of all three, but with lots of reconfigured Ride the Lightning passages. —SHAWN BOSLER

GANON

As Above, So Below ACERBIC NOISE DEV

Second slab from this heavy-as-bricks Michigan crew

EPICUREAN, A Consequence of Design 8 From the heartland, for the motherland | M E TA L B L A D E There must be times when life in Epicurean is more like an episode of Three’s Company than being in an exciting metal band. Recall, children of the ’70s and ’80s, the sophomoric adventures that protagonist/ comedic genius, John Ritter, would find himself in because of simple slips of the tongue and juvenile misunderstandings that could only come from the typewriters of the era’s most stoned-as-fuck comedy writers. With three guys in this band named John (Major on lead guitar, Gensmer on drums and vocalist Laramy), the potential for confused hilarity about which John forgot their merch in Kansas City when either Jared (Schneider, keyboards) or Jared (Mills, guitar) didn’t specify when asking, “Hey John, could you grab that box of CDs?” is unending. Confusion could potentially greet listeners of A Consequence of Design, which is actually the re-mastered, Metal Blade version (with two additional songs) of the two-year-old self-

that got overshadowed by chug-and-grunt-by-thenumbers At the Gates riffery. Smartly heeding my warning about smoking bathtub crank, they apparently also got the memo about having too many breakdowns and shit: Crossfire flips a bitch and steers things straight into the thrash zone, but considering the sprinklings of blast beats, NWOBHM guitar trickery (cool old Maiden bits), 98 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

released version. While every step Epicurean take is drenched in copious melody, it would appear they’re having a hard time deciding whether they want to be Emperor, Dream Theater, Shadows Fall, Children of Bodom or Kalmah. Not that this is a bad thing—or necessarily confusing—as Epicurean’s synthesis is feted by Laramy’s chameleonic vocals, excellent all-around guitar work and keys that artfully balance skill and widdle, with the result being a heck of a lot more interesting than if they just picked one of those individual outfits to emulate. Their synthesis is made all the more potent by their intelligent use of melodies usually heard in Swedish or Norwegian bands, which drape this album in hooks that are as dark and melancholic as they are life-affirming and triumphant; check out “The Author and the Architect” and “Illusion.” But given that they hail from Minnesota— which, according to census figures, might as well be called Little Scandinavia—we shouldn’t be all that surprised. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

death-groove cruises and even goofy power metal wails (“Funeral Eclipse”), they won’t get accused of vintage speed Puritanism. Not counting the two overtly Swedeaping numbers (“In Case of Death...” and “Blindfolded”), this new/old thrash formula strikes a decent balance between melodic and catchy. If borderline-commercial (as in popular

The setting: my shoulders. Like the angel and devil in old Looney Tunes cartoons, two sides of my personality/imagination emerge from a puff of dry ice to comment on the latest from the Ganon thunderfuck crew. On one side, the complaining whiner; the other, the motherfucker who gets shit done. “Last-minute reviews are the absolute worst; whether it’s because of timing, miscommunication, technological shortcomings or the cloggedup mail delivery system… Put the fucking CD in the CD player and zip it, ’cuz this band hits you with a steamroller riff in the opening seconds of “Descend From the Wind” … Thus, you’re usually only given a few scant days to form an opinion about an album comprised of someone else’s blood, sweat and beers… Ganon appear to have worked on distinguishing themselves by eschewing the mood-setting tendencies of their Neur-Isis forefathers, without (initially, anyway) the post-rock fetish… Not to mention that everyone down at the Decibel HQ is cursing you for holding up the issue while you hunt down yet another synonym for “brutal.” Additionally, a last-minute critique means you’re usually provided with artwork-and-lyric-sheetless CD-R burns. Your guess as to what these songs are about is as good as mine… Ganon’s formula involves trampoline jumps from clean to distorted riffs with slight variations. Riffs they bash and crash on are similar to those they get all pensive on, making for smoother flow and transitions… And then, once you formulate an angle, you fret about putting those thoughts on paper coherently and whether or not those thoughts are gonna change in a month… “Collide and Cease” possesses the awesome and soulful bass playing and spine-tingling palm mutes of Intronaut instead of the patience- testing buildups of Mouth of the Architect or the recent leaden ponderousness of Neurosis… Did I just insult MOTA or Neurosis? I didn’t mean to… The classical instrumentation and soundtrack-y melodies in “The Night Draws Near” and the distortionkissed guitar excursions in “At This Time” are beyond cool… Yet, you wonder about the spacey layers in “The Night Draws Near”—are they revolutionary or just clumsy-sounding?... “Until First

newnoise Light” combines angular rock riffing with thunderous metalgaze… Is their calm/raucous style a bit too rudimentary and played out?... Shut the fuck up and buy this.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

GOD’S REVOLVER

Little Black Horse Where Are You Going With Your Dead Rider? SCOTT KINKADE

EXIGENT

Keep the dude from North Side Kings away from this band

A telling sign of an album’s quality, or lack thereof, is when it feels twice as long as it actually is. An analogy: My wife and I recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary; a number which still surprises me, because it doesn’t feel like I’ve been married 10 years. Contrast that with a nameless friend, who recently commented that he feels like he’s been hitched for at least 10 years, even though he’s barely into his second year of matrimony. And he’s right; he married a fucking bitch. As far as God’s Revolver are concerned, all signs pointed to promise before laser actually kissed plastic: awesome fold-out cover art, awesome album title, awesome song titles that screamed a mixture of the Allman Brothers, Soilent Green and any number of bands rocking the Emissions From the Monolith fest. But man, Little Black Horse’s 37 minutes easily feel twice as long. Utah’s Exigent Records has had a pretty good track record thus far with the Decibel-recommended Gaza and Prize Country. (Let’s not forget the awesome Bird Eater, Medea and Loom. )But they fail miserably with this directionless, pisspoor Danzig exhumation and straining, evil Elvis wannabe warbling about the vastness of the wild wild west, alcohol, loneliness, alcohol, firearms, women with questionable morals, alcohol, souped-up cars that get three miles to the gallon and alcohol. Did I mention that these dudes enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage? This might explain their unfocused songwriting, where clichés aplenty are thrown into the air, rearranged and thrown again like an endless game of 52 Pickup. “Scratch Dealt Me a Dirty Hand” is easily the best tune here and as close as they get to cohesion, as the rest of the time everyone’s talent—and, yes, they are individually talented—is battling to be heard. When, that is, they’re not breaking out chintzy blues shuffles (“Cantina Poetry Blues”), bleak chain-gang acoustic strummers (“Boxes Done Buried”) and in “The Holy Breath,” adding the most tuneless flute since a cheese knife severed Zamfir’s bottom lip (I made that up, by the way). Should my buddy make it to his 10-year anniversary, I think I’ve just found his wife’s gift. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO 100 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

THE GATES OF SLUMBER, Conqueror 9 Seriously, that cover is awesome | P R O F O U N D L O R E Much has been made about “the loudness war,” in which overcompression on albums has reduced the dynamic range on the recordings to near non-existent levels. Simply put, it’s all loud, loud, loud when it comes to CD mastering these days. Audiophiles rightfully despise the tactic, but when you’re a metal writer who is inundated with hundreds of releases every year, it’s easy to get used to the massive, cacophonous wall of noise, and you never realize just how ridiculous some albums sound until you hear something like the new disc by the Gates of Slumber. Fervently old-fashioned doom, the Indiana trio (along with producer Sanford Parker), knows exactly how a heavy album should sound: The quiet parts are actually quiet, compelling us to turn the volume way up, and

HOUR OF PENANCE 6 The Vile Conception UNIQUE LEADER

Running towards nothing again and again and again

In Decibel #40, a reader complained that we give death metal short shrift. We reviewers, he said, “either aren’t death metal fans, or maybe don’t know how to listen to the music.” Actually, we do; our editor-in-chief literally wrote the book on the subject. We’re fans of death metal, and we know how to listen to it. And that’s the problem. After Death, Carcass and Morbid Angel, anything less feels... less. We love death metal—and hate the fact that it’s had nothing new to say in, like, forever. Sure, it’s slept with hardcore punk and black metal, but that’s only produced rich cousins we don’t really talk to. Death metal started out breaking boundaries, and now it’s boxed inside them. How many “this is unoriginal, but it still rocks” reviews

by the time the Sabbathian riffs and cymbal crashes do kick in, it feels gargantuan, euphorically so. With the force of St. Vitus, the dynamic approach of Pentagram and the suffocating weight of Master of Reality, the band’s third full-length backs up that fabulous analog sound with first-rate tunes, from the thunderous gallop of “Trapped in the Web” and “Children of Satan” to the stately epic title track. Top marks, though, go to the 16-and-a-half-minute “Dark Valley Suite,” which starts out as a majestic Winoesque jam, then dissolves into a murkily mellow nine-minute section, only to come to a spectacular, explosive 76-second climax that—after we’ve kicked the volume up several times higher than usual—has the walls literally shaking. Now that’s old-school metal. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

have we written? Do we keep coddling the art form, or do we show it tough love? Well, this is another one of those reviews. It’s the last time—but I said that the last time. Like an ex who’s boring yet hot, Hour of Penance are horribly irresistible. Even hotter, they’re Italian. As a certain cowboy said, “I wish I could quit you!” But your blast beats are oh so sweet. Your freshly shaved Phrygian mode brings me to my knees. Those fast-talking growls you stole from Nile and Cannibal Corpse—they give me sweatpants boners. Now that your vocals tickle both my ears, it’s obvious you got new toys. And that skin job by Par Olofsson is pretty slick. I liked it better when we played rougher, but I appreciate that you’ve been working out. Careful with that Suffocation! I won’t lie—sometimes the ride gets boring. You just can’t grind on and on, you know. But wait! That ambient break felt good. Where did you learn how to do that? (Don’t tell me.) OK, I guess you can stay over. Just this once. —COSMO LEE

newnoise

record reviews

ISLAND

Orakel

VENDLUS

Like chocolate and peanut butter, but different

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and while that sounds pretty fucking metal, it doesn’t always make for a good record. On their album Orakel, Germany’s Island have paved at least a hundred miles (approx. 161 km.) with their “progressive” death metal, and I hope they take a much needed break. Orakel is actually two EPs released together, and the production values and death growls are noticeably, and annoyingly, different. The real problem, though, comes from their constant use of “progressive” elements, which just means they put some pretty parts in between blast beats. This would be great, except the metal parts aren’t anything especially brutal and the prog parts just sound like bad Jerry Cantrell riffs. Also, this constant juxtaposition makes for songs that are as long as they are disjointed. Any momentum built up is torn down by another Spanish guitar solo or something equally sub-par. By the time the drummer picks up his brushes, bone-crushing tedium sets in. I’m always up for metal getting a creative shot in the devil horns, but Island fall into that unenviable position where their ability can’t keep up with their vision. Maybe if they focus on writing a regular DM song, or try to put out something that’s just their fruity grunge parts, they can move onto their grand scheme. But until then, Orakel is as strong an argument for regressive death metal as you’ll find. —SHANE MEHLING

KORPIKLAANI

Korven Kuningas NUCLEAR BLAST

Time for detox?

Ever notice how the provincial drinking tunes of just about every culture found around the world sound exactly the same? Hell, close your eyes and you won’t even be able to tell if the sloshed party dudes singing besides you are wearing kilts, lederhosen or, in this case, rune necklaces. Finnish folk metallers Korpiklaani aren’t entirely about pouring ’em down the hatch, but with past tunes like “Let’s Drink,” “Beer Beer,” “Wooden Pints” and “Happy Little Boozer,” it’s clear that it’s a huge part of their cultural exchange program. What they trade in is accordion- and violin-driven, guitar-reinforced folk-metal. 102 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

by Cosmo Lee

In which we sort through our green plastic bin o’ label-less CDs, and tell it like it is Artep Fires of Mortal Deception Artep plays a mean axe (sweep-picking!), bass and synth, and shrieks out raw yet melodic and slightly symphonic black metal. She also likes to hold flaming torches. “Artep” spelled backwards is “Petra,” the Christian rock band. Her vocalist/drummer is named Lord Goatesque. It’s that kind of band. http://www.myspace.com/artepmetal

Howl Howl The term “beard metal” was practically invented for these guys (and gal). If Mastodon stopped wowing critics and started rocking the fuck out, they might sound like this. Big, burly, glorious filth, but with slight prog and some Slayer. Hesher heaven, hipster hell. Three tracks are NOT ENOUGH. http://www.myspace.com/howlheavymetal

Now on their fifth album (the third to feature Vaari, the old man grandfather character on the cover), Korven Kuningas continues the same musical exploration as last year’s semibreakout record, Tervaskanto. Well, truth be told, it’s pretty much the same humppa pumpin’ jigs they’ve been skippin’ and moshin’ to since pagan mastermind Jonne Järvelä first disbanded his even folkier group, Shaman—which was sung entirely in the ancient Sami language. Much like my original observation about the homogeneity of drink songs, there are just way too many moments during this record where the prancing folk melodies and the thrashlite guitars blend into a kind of universal samey-ness where it’s all too easy to forget if you’re listening to an Irish bar band or an Eastern-European gypsy rock act. Fun and fairly safe stuff, but not as nearly frenetic, playful or funny as fellow folk-lovin’ countrymen Finntroll. —SHAWN BOSLER

Mendozza White Rhino Sometimes bands speak best for themselves. Mendozza say they’re “Entombed dating the Melvins while making out to old Metallica.” That would be one hairy and crowded backseat. It would also rule HARD. Big, ball-swinging sludge that’s not afraid to step on the gas and wah-wah pedals. Sweatpants boner factor: high. http://www.myspace.com/mendozza

Netherbird Lighthouse Eternal (Laterna Magika) “Netherbird”??? Did they run out of band names??? This might be the first ever Dethklok tribute band. Nephente’s vocals sound like Brendon Small’s parody of death growls, while Bizmark (just a friend) is on guitars and keyboards. Symphonic black metal + melodic death metal = Danny Elfman metal. http://www.myspace.com/netherbird

Planet Rain Re-Parture Amon Amarth with Animal from the Muppets on drums. Seriously, this guy is out of control. It’s like he’s shaking up a drawer full of silverware for 15 minutes straight. So many blast beats and cymbals fly around the mix that the keyboards actually sound good. Utterly majestic, utterly ridiculous. http://www.myspace.com/ planetrainswe

MAHATMA

Perseverance LISTENABLE

Who’s buying?

Neo-thrash metallers Mahatma aren’t EasternIndian and most likely not Hindus; they are, however, one of Korea’s few extreme-metal exports. (And with song titles like “Violence” and “There Is No Hope Without Suffering,” they probably ain’t peace activists either.) Sophomore release Perseverance is their first to be picked up by the growing French label Listenable (Gojira, Immolation, Hacride, Aborted). Just for clarification, this writer tends to describe “neo-thrash” as bands like Shadows Fall, Arch Enemy, Lamb of God—those who blend updated thrash with death and groove-metal—as differentiated from the young gun, new-school thrash pur-

newnoise ists like Warbringer, Merciless Death, Violator, Fueled by Fire, etc. Mahatma land squarely in the former category, with slightly technical, groove-minded riffs, subtle stabs at catchy vocal hooks (usually manifesting as death-lite grunting), and guitar play inspired by melodic, tech-y death. Sadly, the final product is not so memorable, often sounding a wee bit dated. The much smarter, but sadly quite rare moments occur when Mahatma attempt something approximating Prong/Gojira-styled boogie-prog. These tangents, found in “Having Hope” and previously mentioned jam “Violence,” show potential, but wading through all of the not-somemorable Testament-meets-... And Justice for All axe wind-ups gets fairly tedious. More weird, dark and warbly bits, please, and more of those doomy/stoner quick-cut segues. But the cheeseweiner epic closer “Despair Overcome” that wishes to be “One” with its power-metal balladry and clean-vocal drama? Uh, nevermind. —SHAWN BOSLER

MIDNATTSOL

Nordlys N A PA L M

Maidensong encircled my shimmering Nordic dreams

From a visual point of view, at least, the advantage Midnattsol have over the other myriad gothic metal outfits with fit female singers warbling away over vaguely atmospheric soft rock riffage and swirling keyboards, is that they have not one, but two hot Nordic women in the band. OK, Birgit Öllbrunner (somewhat butch, dressed in black, but still endowed with those flowing blonde locks) strums the bass instead of singing, while it is Carmen Elise Espenæs (Liv Kristine’s younger sister, yes), who, clad in virginal white, provides the band’s dreamy, sometimes coy, always seductive vocal lines. This hasn’t stopped Midnattsol from playing up their double assets to the hilt in photos and artwork. After all, why should it? Like whoever thought up that new Nightwish video where

all the dudes have been replaced by supermodels, I’m still waiting for an all-female opera goth metal band. Until then, Midnattsol will more than do. Nordlys doesn’t differ too much from 2005’s Where Twilight Dwells, besides a few tightenings here and there and a slightly slicker sound. This is a good thing: The sonic edge Midnattsol possess over other bands in their ilk is probably restraint, their sound simmering and stewing tastefully with folkish flair while Espenæs does her thing. No cod-Maiden operatics, no Andrew Lloyd Webber nonsense, no Depeche Mode covers, no songs about drunken ex-boyfriends— just 50 minutes of soothing, graceful Nordicism (even though, save Espenæs, the band is actually German—go Wagner!), conjuring up images of nocturnal forest groves and the fey spirits that dwell there, sun-kissed winter expanses and the lapping of the freezing waves on timeless stone, all so pure and clean, and oh so far away from our grinding, filth-spattered metropolitan existences here in reality. —DANIEL LUKES

THE DEATH METAL BIBLE IS BACK

Revised and Expanded Edition! 100 New Pages of Interviews and Photos! Dan Seagrave Cover Art! Hardcover! Limited to 3,000 Hand-Numbered Copies!

EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE AT STORE.DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 103

newnoise NO AGE

Nouns

SUB POP

Finally, grammar doesn’t suck

Noise-pop is alive and, according to No Age, it’s doing pretty damn well. Their new album, Nouns, is a frenetic lesson in how to be Guided by Voices when you love Sonic Youth. The L.A. two-piece tosses lo-fi hooks in a garbage disposal with clattering cymbals and dimestore guitars. Not content with a conventional garage rock sound, they pour on reverb and feedback like a drunken night at IHOP. You’ll swear this was recorded in a parking lot on the windiest day of the year. Some may see this as overkill, but it turns their otherwise traditional songs into junkyard anthems. The Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement nods in particular end up being frothing melees of fucked-up solos and unintelligible lyrics. In a world of overproduced bullshit, it’s refreshing that there are bands like No Age still willing to cover their songs in layers of shit and mud to bring some personality to worn-out indie rock. In fact, you metalheads should take note as well. Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the grating attack of Nouns makes your wicked death growl sound kind of pussy. —SHANE MEHLING

OCEANA

The Tide RISE

If only the tide would carry crap like this off to sea

Part of me feels bad for bands like Oceana. While they may have a fighting chance with the Cyclops/Manic Panic crowd, there’s no denying the fact that screamo eclipsed its expiration date quite a few years ago—basically the second bands like Boys Night Out and the Used soured the subgenre for far more creative acts like Thursday and Thrice. And let’s not forget how far removed we now are from such dynamic, screamo-defining acts as Angel Hair, Swing Kids, Orchid and City of Caterpillar. So, yeah, I pity Oceana because circumstances are certainly not in their favor on this, their Rise Records debut. One look at their press photo (kudos for looking like a floor of carefree college freshmen) is all it takes to see how young these guys are, too. However, are they so young that they shouldn’t be held accountable for aimless chords and a lurching, repetitive mix of scattershot drums and pointless screaming? Of course not—crap is crap, especially in a nose-diving economy where people divert their music budget to “more important things” like beer money and 104 : JUNE 08 : DECIBEL

Grand Theft Auto 10. Oceana’s main issue is simple: Nothing sticks in their songs. Not a hook, or a melody, or a onenote harmony. The reason bands like Thursday and Thrice led the screamo charge, willingly or not, is because they wrote rock-solid songs. Don’t believe me? Go download Thursday’s “Understanding in a Car Crash” and “Paris in Flames.” That shit’s epic in a way that makes me want to hurt like a 15-year-old only can again. The same goes for Thrice’s “Kill Me Quickly” and “Deadbolt” or, hell, Poison the Well’s “Botchla” and “Turn Down Elliot.” Now go study your forefathers, Oceana. Only then can we sit down and talk again. —ANDREW PARKS

RED HARVEST,

The Red Line Archives INDIE RECORDINGS

Time for a reboot recordings

The Red Line Archives isn’t so much a stopgap release between last year’s stupendous A Greater Darkness and the upcoming (as in 2009) long-player, but rather a collection of remixes, mash-ups and album tracks independent of recent Red Harvest work. Sort of like NIN’s Fixed and Further Down the Spiral offshoots, except Trent Reznor, unlike Red Harvest, was keen to connect them to their respective full-lengths. Apart from straight album cuts (“Last Call” from Cold Dark Matter, “Desolation” from Sick Transit Gloria Mundi, and “Synthesize My DNA” and “4418” from Internal Punishment Programs), the comp hinges on electro-industrial/noise elements, where the human touch (“Dead,” for example) is removed by re-tooling, re-layering and re-processing. On the surface, The Red Line Archives is on par with remix tradition, but dig a little and it’s all, well, too plastic. Song choice (no “Ad Noctem,” “AEP,” “Omnipotent” or “The Lone Walk”) as well as song treatment are likely culprits. Contractual restrictions probably forced Red Harvest to work from a limited set (the Nocturnal Art releases are the main focus), while song treatment for all 2008 re-versions misses the mark. Some of the songs seem rushed, as in the case of “Move or Be Moved (Full Version Mix)” and “Dead (ReFactor),” and others largely unnecessary, such as “Abstract Moral (Junction Mix)” and the tin can cyber-necro “Technocrate (Dunkelheit Version 2008 Mix).” The two unreleased tracks (“Bleed” and “Central Sun—Part 1”) don’t help either, even if they’re from the HyBreed era. The Red Line Archives may appeal to the Borg-minded, but doesn’t offer much else. —CHRIS DICK

RUSSIAN CIRCLES 5 Station

SUICIDE SQUEEZE

Let your voice be heard. Please.

Alright, I get it: Bands don’t always need a vocalist. You win. Now, can we end the instrumental trend? Vocals can serve a purpose, you know. Maybe they could have prevented Russian Circles from putting out such an underwhelming record. The Chicago duo (with help from These Arms Are Snakes bassist Brian Cook) has released some sort of free-jam they call Station. I’m sure these songs are highly structured, but I’ll be damned if I can pay close enough attention to tell. There just isn’t much cool stuff happening—too little focus, too much unneeded atmosphere. And the looped tapping parts may possibly drive you fucking crazy. Most of the record sounds like big, long intros that segue into big, long outros. Rarely does anything get started or resolved. They seem to just meander through riffs for a long time and then call it a day. Nothing’s allowed to make an impact. And I’m sorry, but some of this stuff is getting a little too adult contemporary. There are a fair amount of rock/metal parts, but expect to get swiped more than once by some VH1-caliber material. Closing track “Xavii,” with its melancholy guitar and funereal organ (plus significantly shorter length) is a perfect example of how an instrumental song can work, but also highlights how badly the rest of Station lacks. Maybe Russian Circles don’t need vocals, but they need something and they need it badly. —SHANE MEHLING

SAHG

REGAIN

It’s OK to sing! Really!

As much as we love such celebrators of classic metal shtick as Lair of the Minotaur, the Sword and Saviours, it’s a shame there aren’t many American bands willing to take the music that extra step further and employ a vocalist with the kind of melodic range the sound demands. We dig the robust vocals and all, Steven Rathbone’s especially, but all it takes is one listen to any song by Sahg to show us how well classic doom and soaring vocal lines complement each other, and just how exceptional the Norwegian band is at the craft. Steeped in the turgid tones of early ’80s Trouble and mid ’70s Sabbath, and with “Hole

newnoise

record reviews

in the Sky” serving as their own Rosetta stone, Sahg’s 2006 debut was one of that year’s more pleasant surprises, and the aptly-titled II continues right where the previous disc left off. That classic 6/8 swagger ever-present, opening tracks “Ascent to Decadence” and “Echoes Ring Forever” exude that careening, Bill Ward-style swing, but near the end of the latter track, we start hearing sly emulations of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, as clean, sunny mellotron tones start creeping in, paving the way for some enticing ventures into Hawkwind-style space rock and late ’60s psychedelia, complementing more muscular fare like “Pyromancer” and “Wicked Temptress.” In the end, it’s the band’s strongest asset—singer/guitarist Olav Iversen—that keeps the whole thing together, his robust tenor dominant, especially on the beautiful, funereal epic “Monomania,” a song which everyone from young stateside doomsters to Ozzy himself should be emulating more. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

SALT THE WOUND

Carnal Repercussions ROTTEN

Dark Grey Dahlia Murder?

The Black Dahlia Murder arguably established their legitimacy once and for all with last year’s Nocturnal. However, in the five years of their ascension (with band members entering and exiting with astonishing frequency), they have unwittingly created a backdraft of imitators who, if we really examine it, are merely thirdrate Carcass clones. Though the BDM have somehow made this particular endeavor—paying tribute to Carcass, that is—endearing, it starts to seem a little sketchier the further away from the source you get. Salt the Wound are, no surprise, a Midwest deathcore/metalcore quintet who have also had their share of band members coming and going. The dude that does vocals on their Rotten Records debut, Kevin Schaefer, isn’t even in the band anymore. Nor is the drummer, but, c’mon, he’s just the drummer; any chimp can hit a few triggers and make it sound real sweet in Pro Tools. Am I right? But I digress. Carnal Repercussions is perhaps most annoying in the disconnect between the br00tal artwork (yay, death metal!), the soul-

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searching lyrics (yay, emo!) and the snarky song titles (“Peas and Carrots”? WTF?!). Then there’s Schaefer’s over-reliance on piggy squeals, the overly-processed drum sound and the general unspectacular mediocrity of it all. Somehow I doubt that the next album (if they can continue to find an unending source of band members) will find Salt the Wound anywhere close to the BDM’s success, but if they abandon this current career path for something a little more cohesive and fresh, who knows? —ADEM TEPEDELEN

TEXTURES

Silhouettes

LISTENABLE

Unholy union

I just don’t know what to make of Textures, a band afflicted with the kind of split personality that would have them drooling onto their straitjacket in the day room if they were a man. Their most recent album is called Silhouettes. It could also be called We Had the Bright Idea to Combine the Wack-Ass Crooning Parts From Some Alternative Press Bullshit With Hyper-Syncopated Math-Metal. All the heartfelt choruses of your emo favorites with twice the vomiting noises on the verses! Actually, emo would be a balm. Textures’ metal grunt-growling is just undistinguished; their melodic side comes off like the ugly-ass kid that Mike Patton circa The Real Thing and the non-rapping one out of Linkin Park would have left on a nunnery doorstep had the condom broke. Or maybe Hinder? There’s some sort of mainstream butt-rock DNA in there. This doesn’t mean Textures are bad, per se. Their math-metal side occasionally approaches genuine aggro worthy of banging your knees into your desk as you try to imitate double-bass hits with your pathetically out-of-shape legs. Their drummer’s certainly fit enough to unleash the full arsenal of triple-time fusion tricks, and while their rhythm-and-riff combos are never pants-crappingly terrifying, they can be pretty scary. (It helps that they crib good ones, not only the expected Slayer and DEP and Meshuggah, but I also thought I heard a Pig Destroyer lick in there.) Then they bust out with more of the shameless radio-ready breakdowns and subDeftones atmospherics. Yes, your kick drum is way fast and your headbanger parts are way

intricate. But “Awake” sounds like goddamned Creed trying to turn into a second-rate Botch, and those are minutes I’m never getting back. —JESS HARVELL

VINCENT BLACK SHADOW

More Deeper

H E A R T B R E A K B E AT

This is your middle finger on acid

Taking their name from Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite motör-sickle and their sound from the ghost of Iggy past, Baltimore’s Vincent Black Shadow bring the big noise, the black (brown?) eyes and the broken brains on their full-length debut, thus catapulting themselves to the beleaguered forefront of the often annoying, never subtle, always-overpopulated punk subgenre known as Fuck You Rock. You know who we mean, and we do mean pretty much everyone from the Dictators and Fear to Poison Idea and Eyehategod. And those are just the good ones. The bad ones are too numerous to even begin listing here, but let’s just say Fuck You Rock is the kind of thing Nashville Pussy and Texas Terri try to latch onto by not taking showers and being perpetually hammered and obnoxious. Iggy and Wendy O. Williams pretty much launched this noisy, druggy, freewheeling style for their respective genders; Lemmy did (and does) it with the most class and the greatest degree of commercial success, and GG Allin slapped it around, forcibly impregnated it and took a giant shit on its chest. Vincent Black Shadow’s part—these dudes are in no way to be confused with Vancouver softrock pop-tards The Vincent Black Shadow—in this ongoing cultural malaise is distinctly psychedelic. Call it blind lysergic rage if you want, but it’s more like the band’s own private MKULTRA revival, complete with potential movie adaptations, flashbacks of Drew Barrymore as a precocious nine year-old and full-bore pyrokinesis. Think Motörhead covering Blue Cathedral-era Comets on Fire with Johnny Rotten on vocals. Think Kirk Fisher from Buzzov*en fronting Zen Guerilla. Think our man GG dropping 10 hits of Orange Sunshine and then mercilessly buttfucking everyone in Royal Trux, pausing only to lay down some serious cowbell on “Shamanix.” Or don’t. It’s not a pretty picture. —J. BENNETT

newnoise

music dvds

ENVY

Transfovista TEMPORARY RESIDENCE

Glory be! It’s not two hours of that other Envy

My relationship with Envy got off to a strange start. Y’see, in the mid ’90s there was Envy from Buffalo, NY, who existed down the highway from where I grew up. A lot of people liked them; I thought they were fucking horrendous. The period of time in which I was unfortunate to have experienced the Buffalo Envy was around the same time Japan’s Envy released Breathing and Dying in This Place, their first full-length of brilliant, über-melodic, shimmering, post-alterna-core that was just as much My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai and Shudder to Think as it was D.C. punk and NYHC and Explosions in the Sky precursor. Of course, this was in the early days of the Internet, when people were busy exploring its potential as the world’s biggest porn mag, not exchanging info. Consequently, I figured everyone around me had suddenly lost all sense of quality control when the name Envy would pop up, as no one ever mentioned they were pimping a band of nerdy heart-wrenchers from Tokyo. I’ve since seen the light—thank you Al Gore, Shawn Fanning, Rock Action and Temporary Residence—and, like many, have become a big fan of Envy’s colossal sound, masterful crescendos and the way their guitar tone can make your spine tingle. Their first DVD is a compilation of 17 song performances, countless song/show fragments and a bit of behind the scenes/backstage footage spanning a dozen (or so) years, from gigs as intimate as someone’s basement to huge outdoor festivals in the Japanese mountains. Your enjoyment of Transfovista will rest solely on what you’re looking for. Want an explicit docuhistory of the band? No dice. Over the course of two hours, nary a word is spoken—not even any “Engrish,” as these guys barely talk to each other, let alone anyone else. There’s no saying from when and where the show footage originated, nothing about where Envy is coming from, zero about their history, ideals or philosophy. There’s no commentary about Tetsuya Fukagawa’s bleak and poetic lyrics (although it would have been interesting to ask why he’s used the same vocal line over the course of a decadeand-a-half) and a big fat zilch regarding guitar duo Nobukata Kowai and Mashahiro Tobita’s bipolar stage presence, where they’re Oasis one minute and Dillinger Escape Plan the next. This

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excellent-sounding DVD, where even the single handheld camera shots are as engaging as the professionally-shot and edited captures, is all about Envy’s music and the live interpretations. As you watch, you start to understand, via some strange post-hardcore osmosis, what Envy are all about: stirring the soul and bombarding the senses with sonic dynamics, rocking out at 122% regardless of where they’re playing, and above all, their triumphant music. And nothing else really matters. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PROFANATICA

The Enemy of Virtue D E AT H G A S M

Penis ennui

“All shows were captured on VHS format. Please be aware that there may be slight degeneration throughout the content of this video,” warns the scrolling text at the beginning of The Enemy of Virtue. OK, we’ve seen enough bad VHS transfers and shaky cell phone footage to know that sitting through The Enemy of Virtue is only advised if a) you’ve bopped bologna to naked photos of Profanatica (just Google it), b) you have a shitty job with computer access, or c) you’ve just been lobotomized and think you’re watching unreleased footage of Darkthrone or Mayhem or Grand Belial’s Key. There are too many reasons why The Enemy of Virtue shouldn’t exist, but there’s only one why it should. Apart from the six unwatchable—adjust the tracking, boys!—live concerts (one in 1991, four in 1992 and one in 2001), Deathgasm unearthed priceless interview footage of Profanatica from 1992. In full panda gear, Paul Ledney and crew make big, round hairy asses of themselves. Apart from the usual rhetoric about “gay” and “trendy” death metal, “homo” Jesus and other nonsensical, amateur occult BS, someone’s drawn a black metal Liger on a notepad, presented to the camera as profane art. Then there’s the urination segment, where Ledney pulls down his pants, professing to be “totally black” in a surfer voice, yanks on his junk and pees in a glass to what amounts to gay black metal gonzo. The whole interview segment may be worth the price of admission, if the price is free. The Enemy of Virtue comes with a few more caveats. Racial comments throughout the concert and interview footage may upset those who don’t see Profanatica as a joke. Who’s ready for some bamboo shoots? —CHRIS DICK

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Metalmania 2007 M E TA L M I N D

Spit and polish

To record a good live metal DVD, go to Poland. Metal Mind have cornered the market there with highly professional productions using armies of cameras, including their trademark flying overhead cam. In Metal Mind’s hands, even the most necro bands come off as superstars. “Underground” doesn’t have to feel that way. That’s most evident in 2007’s Metalmania DVD, representing Metal Mind’s annual metal festival. It marks a decided upgrade to A-list acts, including Korpiklaani, Zyklon, Vital Remains, Entombed, Destruction, Sepultura and Testament. As a result, the fest feels less quirky than before. Viewers will know most of the bands, though an included CD sheds light on the smaller second stage acts. But while the multi-camera orgy feels familiar, it still yields visual treats. Destruction’s wizened mugs come through in perfect fidelity, making their jet-propelled performance that much more gratifying. In Korpiklaani’s set, one camera shot captures a hi-hat with incredibly bright clarity. The image is fleeting, but moments like it define our memories of gigs. The bands upshift considerably for Poland’s famously supportive audiences. In fact, Testament almost fly off the rails with runaway speed. The execution is loose, but drummer Nick Barker peps up the classics, which previously had sturdy backing from Louie Clemente. New(ish) Sepultura drummer Jean Dolabella is fast and precise, pushing the beat more than predecessor Igor Cavalera. However, he can’t hide the fact that Max Cavalera’s guitar is sorely missed. Entombed, too, sound thin without a second guitar. The surprise highlight is Vital Remains; shaven-headed Dave Suzuki pours out molten neoclassical licks, while rhythm guitar and drums blast away in lockstep. Like previous editions, Metalmania puts the “extra” in extras. Detailed bios are available for each band; each first stage band also gets a short interview. Admittedly, they’re conducted by the worst interviewer ever. His subjects noticeably squirm at questions like “Tell me the story of your band” and “Do you like touring?” Language differences also get in the way; often band and interviewer both grasp at English. However, these are brief diversions. The action’s on the main stage, in glorious excess. —COSMO LEE

subculture

movies

A Whole New Boll Game

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is a true torture sentence BY CHRIS KAYE

n case you were wondering what the Lord of the Rings movies would be like if they sucked, watch In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. (Henceforth ITNOTK:ADST.) Based on the (possibly?) popular Dungeon Siege videogame franchise, ITNOTK:ADST has all of the elements required of a videogame adaptation: decent production values, a script patched together from pieces of other fantasy movies and (drumroll, please) director Uwe Boll. Boll, who finances his films with funds from German tax shelters, is responsible for some seriously heinous moviemaking. To be clear, his films are not of the Ed Wood, so-bad-they’rekind-of-good variety. They’re of the so-badthey’ve-gone-past-good-and-back-to-bad-again

variety. The kind of thing that MST 3000 was invented for. This is the man responsible for cinematic shitstains such as Alone in the Dark, in which he had the nads to cast Tara Reid as an anthropologist. Then there was Bloodrayne. In the game, a vampiric Lara Croft clone in fetish gear humps Nazis and then slices them to pieces with cool-ass swords. Boll moved the action to the 18th century and cast Michael Madsen (though, thankfully, not as the title character). While most of his damage had previously been done with smaller budgets, ITNOTK:ADST cost $60 million. And you’ve never seen so much money look so fucking boring. Most of that cash is onscreen—in said production values. But this time Boll really outdid himself with the casting, which is what we’re really going to talk about (read: make fun of). Check this out… Jason Statham plays Farmer.

Who is, actually, a farmer. Like with dirt and crops. He’s got no name. They just call him “Farmer.” He gets to throw a boomerang every once in a while and be bald. Leelee Sobieski plays some chick in armor who shows up every once in a while to make some statement about chicks being able to wear armor. Her dad is the king’s mage, played by John-Rhys Davies, who fulfills one half of the requisite geek stunt casting. The other half is Ron Perlman, who comes off the worst of everyone, since we know he can actually act. Then there’s Kristanna Loken as some kind of lesbian Buddhist tree sprite and Matthew Lillard as a mewling prince in waiting. But this is not all that Boll has in store for us. No! Are you ready? Playing the two heavies… In this corner, as the evil Gallian… I give you… RAY LIOTTA! In the other… weighing in as the titular King Konreid… ladies and gentlemen… BURT REYNOLDS! Now, while this sounds like it would be fun to watch—and believe me, watching the Bandit saying lines like “wisdom is our hammer” and “call in the ninjas” should be totally fucking hysterical—it isn’t. Do not be tempted. Do not taunt Super Happy Fun Boll. Just leave him alone. A DECIBEL : JUNE 08 : 109

Shadows in the Light French cartoonist Cyril Pedrosa casts the perfect pitch with Three Shadows BY JOE GROSS Cyril Pedrosa is a French cartoonist with a background in animation, specifically working on Disney flicks such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules. Which goes a fair way to explaining his powerful, black and white style and the smart visual shorthand that is the very essence of wise cartooning. He manipulates line width with grace and ease, moving into scribbly, impressionistic passages, pulling back into wider shots that pulse with the stately energy of classic Disney animation. Which is to say Pedrosa’s style both mitigates and amplifies one of the most heartbreaking graphic novels you’re likely to read this year, so emotionally exhausting I can’t imagine picking it up again for some time. This isn’t to say it’s one of the best—it’s still early in the year and Three Shadows (First Second) still feels like an open wound. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this tour de force mediation on sorrow and the limits of love ends up on all sorts of Top 10 lists. It unfolds like a fable, the story of a young family in rural somewhere. Louis is a bear of a man, rarely without his pipe. Lise is his lithe wife. Joachim is their young son, full of life, whom his parents adore. Their existence is idyllic to the part of, well, cartoonishness—playing, laughing, swimming. Then Joachim begins to see three horsemen in the distance. His parents fear them, but aren’t sure

Step on It StompIO-1 is better than

Stomp 442 BY CHRIS KAYE Here’s what you want onstage: 4,000 sounds. Pretty much impossible to achieve with your usual crappy stomp boxes. The StompIO works with both guitar and bass to give full mobile control over popular AmpliTube plug-ins (and it comes with stocked with over $1,500 of software: AmpliTube 2, Ampeg SVX, AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix, AmpliTube Metal and AmpliTube X-GEAR). This allows you to pick tones from more than 150 digitally simulated pieces of gear—from amps to effects (specifically: 51 stomps, 26 amps, 33 cabinets, 11 mics and 23 rack effects). The cool part is you don’t even need to muck around with a mouse—all the settings can be tweaked and activated with your feet. If you’ve got a laptop or MacMini, you can say goodbye to those shitty little cables and 9-volt batteries and bring your same tones to the gig. Not a bad deal for around a grand. A

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why. They grow scared to leave the house. This is no way to live. Eventually, Louis decides that he and Joachim must leave, perhaps to escape the shadows, perhaps to draw them out, to force a confrontation, the consequences of which haunt the couple. As they move across the sea to the land of Louis’ birth, the father realizes there are many sacrifices—moral and physical—that must be made (that he willingly makes) in order to protect his son. Like many superlative comics, it’s the blend of line and tone that gives the story its weight and pitch. Pedrosa is a master craftsman; novice cartoonists could do a lot worse than pick apart Three Shadows like an engine to see how it all fits together. And the sheer sorrow of the tale seems to at time overwhelm narrative elegance; the author is clearly very close to the source material (the book was inspired by on the experiences of a close friend). Nevertheless, it will haunt you. A

gear

Thanks,

everybody. Before we get started, I was just wondering: Do we have anybody here from out of town tonight? [scattered applause] All right! Ma’am, where are you from? [woman at bar: “Schenectady.”] Schenectady, great. Well, being from out of town myself, I know it can be kinda cold to find yourself far from where you’re home. Even if you’re havin’ fun, it can get real, real cold. So I’d like to dedicate this first number to Schenectady, and to anybody else who finds themselves... “Frozen by Icewinds.”

Hey, awesome. People, if I can just speak from the heart here—if I can just speak for a minute not as “Demonaz from Immortal,” but as Demonaz the human being: It means a lot to me to be able to sit here at this keyboard and play you my songs. For a while I felt like I might never play again, and it was a hard time for me. This is a song that speaks to that time in my life, and I hope if there’s anybody here who’s been down like I was, they’ll be able to find some strength in it. This one’s called “Descent Into Eminent Silence.”

[plays “Frozen by Icewinds”]

[plays “Descent Into Eminent Silence”]

All right, thanks. Is it just me or is it getting cooler in here? Listen, I have to tell you, it is great to be here. Before this tour, as many of you know, I hadn’t really been onstage in a long time. But one day in the middle of my cross-training workout, Max—that’s my life coach—says to me: “D, how long are you going to let tendonitis tell you how to live your life?” And for me, that was a turning point. I know it sounds crazy, but I hadn’t really even thought about playing the piano before. And now... well, here we are, December in New York... you might say we’re in the... well, you know the words.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So, a lot of people have been asking me on this tour: “Dman, are you just playing the old songs because you know it’s what people want to hear?” And I wanted to say something about that. I don’t just play for the money, or for the acclaim. Believe me, if it was just about money, I wouldn’t be sitting at this piano right now, pouring my heart into these tunes. [man at bar claps] Thank you. But I’m here because I hope I still have something to share with the people who love my music, wherever they may be. And so when I play something from way back when, it’s because those feelings are still real for me. And that’s the name of that tune.

[plays “Cursed Realm of the Winterdemons”] 112 : JUNE 0 8 : DECIBEL

[plays “Unholy Forces of Evil”] Wow, thanks. Something special in here, folks. I— [five-minute pause; arguing heard off-mic] OK, wow. I’m real sorry, but management says I can only play one more song and then I have to leave. I was pretty sure this show had actually been confirmed and I’m real sorry to have to cut the set short like this, but I guess they weren’t really expecting me here tonight. [uncomfortable pause] OK. Well, I want to apologize both to you all for not being able to finish out the set, and to the management for tickling the ivories without letting them know who I was. My bad! Anyway, they’ve said I can play one last number. So, cool. I’m at Grossinger’s in the Catskills tomorrow; I hope some of you can make it out—I understand that their piano is an 1864 Steinway and it sounds like butter. Looking forward to that. Until we meet again, then—well, I’m Demonaz, the pleasure’s been mine, and now I’m ridin’ on! [plays “A Sign for the Norse Hordes to Ride”; leaves building] A