In recent weeks I’ve made several attempts to contact New York death metal duo Mortician for an interview. Those attempts were not responded to. The band hasn’t released an album since 2004′s Re-Animated Dead Flesh and only plays a handful of live shows a year, so one can only assume that this relative lack of activity has something to do with it. I can’t say I blame them. But, I’ve wanted to write about Mortician for a long time, and even without an upcoming national tour or new album on the way, there is still much about the band’s totally unique and oft-misunderstood take on death metal that’s worthy of discussion. Continue reading →
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, metal gave me the strength to accept my budding Atheism during my youth. I wish I could say there was some epiphanic moment that came late one night while listening to Reign in Blood, but the truth is that metal’s part in the formation of my beliefs was much more subtle. Reflecting back on those times, I’ve come to realize that my Atheism manifested itself long before my love of metal did, and that metal only helped to cement those beliefs.
I went to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way up through my senior year of high school. A lot of people still have some interesting ideas of what Catholic school is like, but I can assure you there were no draconian nuns in black lording over us with yardsticks and paddles, nor were we forced to go to church every day. That doesn’t mean that the presence of the almighty didn’t loom over us on a daily basis. We did have an extra period for religion class, and although we didn’t go to church every day, there were still multiple opportunities to kneel before the saviour, any excuse to have a mass in the gymnasium or set up confessionals in the auditorium.
I tried my damnedest to believe. I folded my hands, closed my eyes, drank the grape juice, ate the stale crackers (why does the body of Christ taste like cardboard and glue?), and none of it worked. I participated willingly in the three c’s, communion, confirmation and confession, but felt no closer to any “God”. For the longest time, I felt like there was something wrong with me, like I was the only one in the world that didn’t believe. There was nothing I could do about it, no one I was comfortable talking to. If there were others like me, they were keeping it well hidden. Continue reading →
“When you feel like you’re going too slow / I bet you’re gonna like it in / A.D. A.D / People gonna talk about / A.D. A.D. / Bloody hell and sacrifice”
-”Earth A.D.”
I’ve been listening to the Misfit’s Earth A.D. for over a decade now. Every time I listen to it, I hear something different. Sometimes I hear a bruising hardcore album. Sometimes I hear proto-thrash. I most often hear the roots of black metal. Is it a mere coincidence that Quorthon started Bathory the same year or that Slayer’s Show No Mercy was released the same month? Sure, Venom’s Welcome to Hell and Black Metal albums had already been released by the time Earth A.D. hit record store shelves. But the Misfits of Earth A.D. possessed several things that Cronos and his cohorts, or just about any of the proto-black metal bands for that matter, severely lacked.
The first of these key components is speed. I recently read in Steven Blush’s book American Hardcore that Glenn Danzig had tried to get the rest of the Misfits to play slower during the sessions. Thank goodness he wasn’t successful. To my knowledge, the blast beat hadn’t been invented yet in 1983 (Mick Harris didn’t join Napalm Death until 1985), but the blistering speed of Earth A.D. often comes close. A huge part of the album’s power comes from the reckless abandon with which the band plows through songs like “Earth A.D.” and “Demonomania”. It’s a ragged, violent speed, the kind of speed that sounds like the band is going to fly apart at the seams at any given moment. Somehow, the Misfits keep it together for the original album’s fourteen-odd minutes (reissues would include the tracks from the posthumous “Die, Die My Darling” single), but the approach lends a sense of real danger, menace and foreboding to the proceedings that would also be present on second wave Scandinavian black metal albums such as Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas or Burzum’s self titled debut.
The second element that pushes Earth A.D. over the edge is brutality. Unfortunately the word “brutal” (and every permutation thereof) has been thrown around in the heavy music world so often that it has lost nearly all of its meaning as of 2011. This is a brutal album. Primitive, barbaric, nasty. Black and death metal bands surely took a great deal of inspiration from the positively corrosive assault of songs like “Death Comes Ripping” and “Hellhound”. Danzig himself sounds like a snarling hellhound throughout Earth A.D., ready to claw his way through your speakers and “rip your face off” while the rest of the band violates their instruments in a manner that’s probably legally questionable in more than a few countries. Earth A.D. was the first Misfits recording where the aggression of the playing and production scheme matched the violence of Danzig’s lyrics. It’s a level of rubbed-raw vitriol that makes early Venom, Slayer, Celtic Frost et al sound quaint by comparison.
What about atmosphere? Earth A.D.‘s got it in spades. Granted, this probably speaks more to Spot’s ineptitude as a producer/engineer (see also: Black Flag’s Damaged) or the lack of a recording budget (probably both), than it does to any grand design by Danzig and Co. Still, the vibe of the album is pitch black and claustrophobic, it reeks of rage, hate and desperation. It’s a document of a band ready to explode and doing their damnedest to take all of us down with them. The fact that the Misfits broke up only a few months after the album was recorded (on Halloween, 1983) leads me to believe that the palpable fury bursting out of every part of Earth A.D. is much more than just for entertainment value (“and that blood’s so real / ’cause I just can’t fake it”).
If all of this doesn’t make for proto-black metal, then I don’t know what does. Add the grotesque, lovably amateurish artwork and black and white band photos, and you’ve got the blueprints for the sound, style and overall aesthetic that Darkthrone would take to the next level almost a decade later with A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Some call Earth A.D. “the speed metal bible”. I’m more inclined to think it’s the goddamn Necronomicon.
In honor of Halloween, I thought I would take a moment to divert from the regularly scheduled THKD programming. Do not attempt to adjust your monitor. I control the horizontal. I control the vertical. Now that I have your undivided attention, I want to take a moment to a talk a little about a band known as the Misfits.
For me, the Misfits are synonymous with the Halloween season and are one of my all-time favorite bands. My reputation as a Glenn Danzig fanboy is well documented. But what might not be so well-documented is that the Misfits represent my favorite phase of the man’s career. Like many folks from my generation, I was introduced to them thanks to Metallica’s “Last Caress/Green Hell” cover. That was a great version, but nothing compared to when I heard the Misfits playing their own songs for the first time. Mind officially blown. It was as if someone combined everything I loved about music into one band, and then added a visual and lyrical aesthetic that represented everything I loved about vintage horror and science fiction films. I remember buying Collection I and listening to it over and over and over again in junior high (especially “Where Eagles Dare”!). Back then, information on the Misfits was scarce (at least in the Midwest), and since Danzig famously hated talking about the band at that time (no doubt due to the legal bullshit going on between him and Only), I could only speculate about the band’s origins. I was so fucking excited to find a Misfits shirt (XL and baggy as all hell on my tall scrawny frame, just how I liked it) at my local record store, before the band’s “Crimson Ghost” logo became ubiquitous. I wore that thing until it disintegrated.
Very few bands are perfect. The Misfits were one of them. I’m not talking about the Jerry Only-fronted abomination that parades around today calling itself the Misfits. I’m talking about the band as it existed from 1977 to 1983. From songs to style to imagery, the Misfits had it all, an often duplicated but never equalled head-on collision of punk rock filth, ’50s rock catchiness and melody, gothic atmosphere and too much horror business. Glenn Danzig’s lyrics were a heady blend of twisted pop culture references, nihilism and misogyny. His backing band, consisting of bassist Jerry Only, a range of guitarists that included Only’s brother Doyle, Bobby Steele and Franche Coma, and a revolving door of drummers that put Spinal Tap to shame, created a sound that was unlike anything I’ve heard before or since. The fact that stories of alleged grave-robbing and excessive violence (the song “London Dungeon” was supposedly the result of Danzig and Steele spending the night in an English jail after a punch up with some skinheads) were part of the Misfits mythos made them even more intriguing, if such a thing were possible.
The Misfits took the innocence of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll and forever corrupted it. They bathed Elvis Presley in the blood, brains and skull fragments of the Kennedy assassination. Punk rock was founded on speeding up and ripping off Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore riffs, but the Misfits brought a darkness and foreboding to the style in the same way that Black Sabbath brought it to the blues in the early ’70s. They were also better song-writers than any other punk band ever, writing some of the flat-out catchiest choruses ever put to tape (“I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it baby!”, “Sweet lovely death, I am waiting for your breath…”, etc.). But the band’s real area of expertise is what I refer to as “the whoah-whoah part”. The whoah-whoah part crops up in numerous Misfits songs (“Mephisto Waltz”, “I Turned into a Martian”, “Astro Zombies” and “Some Kinda Hate” to name just a few.) and is the single most infectious aspect of the band’s playbook. The level of craftsmanship the Misfits displayed was so far ahead of the curve in every aspect; it’s a fucking travesty that they continue to be left out of the punk rock history books.
The Misfits might not get the respect they deserve, but that’s beside the point. The fact that they have influenced everything from thrash to black metal to gothic rock to doom says a lot more about the band than some jag-off rock critic who refuses to acknowledge their greatness. For me personally, a lot of bands have come and gone over the years, but the Misfits sound just as exciting, vital and visceral today as they did when I heard them for the first time in 7th grade. They are total fucking anarchy by way of an alien invasion/zombie outbreak, lead by the reanimated corpses of Vampira and Marilyn Monroe. They are the soundtrack to an Autumn filled with “brown leaf vertigo / where skeletal life is known”. They are the Misfits. Beware.
Hooded Menace’s Never Cross the Dead is one of my favorite albums of 2010. It’s a sickening slab of vintage-style death/doom with no shortage of gnarly slow-motion riffs, not to mention some genuinely creepy, catchy melodies that will lodge themselves in your skull like the rusty swords of the bloodthirsty Blind Dead. I contacted Hooded Menace mainman Lasse Pyykko via e-mail for the following in-depth interrogation.
THKD: Tell us about the making of Never Cross the Dead. How did the recording process for this one differ from Fulfill the Curse?
Lasse Pyykko: It was pretty painless process apart from the vocal sessions. That always seems to be hard for me. Well, I didn´t practice it much at all so it was expectable… Anyway, everything came out great and we are very happy with the result. This time around we recorded the album in two studios. We just wanted to try something new. The one was a pro-studio (Bordercase Studio) and the other one my own “studio”… just a basic and simple recording gear that I call Horrisound Studios, haha!
THKD: Without revealing all of your secrets, what was your equipment setup for the new album? The guitars sound massive!
LP: Thanks but we keep these things to ourselves. Discussing about equipment and stuff like that is pretty boring anyways.
THKD: In addition to the crushing riffs, you’ve got a killer vocal style. Where does that deep, cavernous growl come from? Does it put a lot of wear and tear on your throat?
LP: For Hooded Menace I wanted vocals that are not very powerful.. you know, in a way like the vocals of L.G. Petrov, Matti Kärki and other tight death metal vocalist like that. They rule but I think that style wouldn´t fit so well with our concept. I wanted something more creepy and kinda more.. how should I put it… more growly and kinda “lazy”, zombiefied vocals, you know. I´m not so good at very powerful vocals so coming up with something like this was easier but still it is definitely not easy. Growling has always been hard for me and it´s not really my favorite task in a band. Doesn´t feel too good either. No pain no gain, I guess, haha! Glad to hear you like the vocals! It seems that some people into doom and into metal in general can´t cope with my vocals. Well, we are DEATH/doom so what do you expect? One more Ozzy? I can tell you I could make clean vocals, and in fact it would be easier than grunting, but we want it to be this way! As long as this feels the “right” way to do it, we´ll stick to it. I think with clean vocals we´d end up being more or less just another doom metal band. Then they´d whine that we are just a Candlemass clone or something, haha! I think our stuff is more original and fitting with deep death metal vocals. But what can you do.. can´t please everyone and we won´t. I have always dug doom metal, death metal, death/doom and whatelse… I have no problem with clean vocals or death metal growling. It´s whiners´ loss and more music to me, ha! If you are looking for “pure n true” doom, look somewhere else.
THKD: How would you describe your songwriting methods? Does your writing approach for Hooded Menace differ from your other projects?
LP: Not really. I just sit down and play until something good comes out. Then I record it and start building a song around it. I record everything from harmonies to solos and also program the drums to the songs just to make sure everything really does work. Then I send an mp3 to the other members and they´ll learn it. That´s the way it has been so far.
THKD: On this album you have several guest lyricists. How did this come about? What does each one bring to the table?
LP: We had the same people contributing the lyrics on the debut album as well. Billy from Razorback Records has been writing lyrics for us since the day one and he hooked up some of his horror obsessed friends for the task as well. This is great because I don´t like writing lyrics that much. I´m lazy at it. Those guys are like walking horror movie encyclopedias and they “get” what this band is all about so this procedure has been working perfectly for us. They are all great but Lucio Holocausto´s style stands out the most. Lucio is more poetic. Very cool style I think!
THKD: What made you decide to switch labels from Razorback to Profound Lore for Never Cross the Dead?
LP: Profound Lore offered a better deal. Simple as that. Now we get the promotion, distribution and support that we think we need and deserve at this phase. It was time to move on. I know it happened quickly but so what. Usually the first albums that bands put out are their best so why should we have waited? I wanted “Never Cross The Dead” to have better circumstances, so to speak.
THKD: Hooded Menace has gotten a lot of attention between Fulfill the Curse and Never Cross the Dead. Are you surprised by the great response you’ve gotten?
LP: Yes! It is quite amazing. When the band started I thought it would attract only a handful of die hard freaks. Of course I knew the stuff we had was really good and that it deserved recognition but I didn´t expect our death/doom to be this appealing. But yeah, it´s good to notice that people care about good music. It´s nice to get great feedback for a work that you are very satisfied with and proud of. It feels justified.
THKD: Hooded Menace is known for using imagery related to Ossorio’s Blind Dead series. What is it about those films that you find inspiring?
LP: The films just go so well with our sound. The slow and heavy pacing of the Blind Dead, the fog-shrouded graveyards, the menacing atmosphere… it´s all there in our music. To express these vibes musically feels quite natural and very inspiring. It gives depth to the whole thing.
THKD: Aside from the Blind Dead movies, what are some of your other favorite horror films?
LP: Here are some of my faves: The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Evil Dead, Toxic Avenger, Suspiria, Halloween etc. Probably forgot a few that I definitely should have mentioned and that will bug me later, haha! Anyway, my favorite stuff is mostly from the 80´s and 70´s.
THKD: You cover the theme from the film Return of the Evil Dead on the new album, and many of the melodies throughout Never Cross the Dead sound like could’ve come from a vintage horror movie. Would you ever consider doing soundtrack work?
LP: Of course that would be interesting and challenging. It´s a pity that I suck at keys tho. Horror keyboards would rule and if you really could play piano it damn surely would help. By the way, one track on the new album has a melody that I ripped off from the Blind Dead soundtrack! I´m not gonna tell you where it is. People can try to spot it out! Of course I´m not talking about “Theme From Return Of The Evil Dead”.
THKD: Beyond horror, what else inspires you creatively? Who are your primary influences?
LP: Early Cathedral, 80´s Candlemass, Asphyx, two first albums by Paradise Lost, Winter, Black Sabbath… I think those are our biggest influences. Also I get in the “doomy mode” by just wandering in old cities with great medieval architecture like Ghent, Brugge, Prague etc. I only wish I could do that more often, ha! Gotta stick with the books from the library, haha!
THKD: Putrid’s cover art for Never Cross the Dead is beyond sick! Will you continue to work with him in the future?
LP: Yes, we will! Right now he is working on the cover art for our split with the mighty Asphyx! Putrid rules! He is a great artist and an easy-going, nice guy too!
THKD: I know you guys are getting ready to do some live shows. Are you looking forward to playing live? Will you ever make it over to the US?
LP: Yes, we will play at Live Evil Fest in London and some other fests are under consideration or confirmed already. More about them later. I just wish we will enjoy playing these shows because if we won´t, we are probably not going to do it again. Of course we´d like to come to US too if performing live is what we really want to do. First we have to find out!
THKD: You’re also involved in several other projects (Claws, Phlegethon, etc). How do you find time for so many bands?
LP: Basically it´s just about using the time efficiently. I don´t play shows with any of these bands besides Hooded Menace so they don´t take as much time as one might think. It´s more like working in periods. Right now Hooded Menace rehearsals is pretty much all I do. I´m having a break from songwriting apart from my latest project Swarming with Rogga Johansson. We recorded two songs for a split with Zombie Ritual and it´ll be out on Doomentia Records this year. Once we get Hooded Menace live set together I think I will start writing more stuff for Hooded Menace, Claws and Swarming too. Vacant Coffin is on hold at the moment and I don´t know when/if we´ll return. So my life is not that hectic after all.
THKD: What does the rest of 2010 have in store for Hooded Menace, as well as your other various projects?
LP: As I mentioned, we will have a split 7″ with Asphyx out on Doomentia sometime in 2010. Also a split 7″ with Coffins is line up for this year. Doomentia will be releasing that one too. I´m really looking forward to the aforementioned Swarming/Zombie Ritual split 7″. It´s great to finally collaborate with Rogga!
THKD: Are there any final thoughts you’d like to add?
LP: Thanks for the support! It was pleasure to answer to this interview! Take care!
Jerry Only should really be ashamed of himself at this point. When he (along with brother/guitarist Doyle) originally resurrected the Misfits name back in 1997 with the American Psycho album, I had some pretty high hopes, in spite of my undying allegiance to original Misfits singer Glenn Danzig. Michael Graves was a solid new vocalist, and the songs were catchy and heavy. Even if they didn’t touch the heights of classic Misfits material, at least they weren’t dragging the name through the mud, and I came to think of the “nu-Misfits” as an entirely separate band, allowing myself to enjoy them without worrying too much about the legacy factor.
Now fast-forward to the present day. What now records and tours the globe under the Misfits banner can only be called a joke and at this point it has become impossible to ignore. Jerry Only, who technically speaking is not even an original member of the band himself, is parading around with Dez Cadena (ex-Black Flag guitar/vocals) and Robo (also ex-Black Flag and one of approximately 5 million drummers from the Misfits’ original 1977-1983 heyday) as what basically amounts to a glorified cover band. Now, to make matters worse, they are releasing new material in the form of the positively dreadful “Land of the Dead” single. Featuring two songs (“Land of the Dead” and “Twilight of the Dead”) penned by this wannabe Misfits lineup, the single is a dazzling display of poor production, worse musicianship and totally uncreative songwriting. Only’s vocals are atrocious, and the songs themselves are about as limp as a male porn stud’s dong after a 12 girl orgy scene.
Speaking of dongs, at this point Only might as well whip his out and piss on the Misfits’ legacy, because that is exactly what he’s doing with these two tracks worth of total embarrassment. Don’t believe me? Go to the band’s myspace page and listen for yourself.
The real, original ’77-’83 incarnation of the Misfits has been and will continue to be one of my all-time favorite bands. But this is seriously a piss-poor attempt to keep the cash-cow that comes along with the band’s name afloat and should not be supported by anyone that considers themselves a true fan. Go out and buy Static Age or Walk Among Us if you want to hear what the lords of horror punk are supposed to sound like, because you won’t find it on Land of the Dead. In fact, the only redeeming quality of this release is the illustration by acclaimed comic artist Arthur Suydam (cover art for Marvel Zombies).
Although I’ve admittedly been on something of a doom/prog kick here for the last little bit, one death metal band that has managed to turn my head in recent weeks is Australia’s Portal. Not only is the band visually striking (check out the above pic of their vocalist, known as The Curator), they are the musical and lyrical of equivalent of being driven mad by the sight of some sort of Lovecraftian abomination (think The Call of Cthulhu), such is the twisted, convulsing and gnarly nature of their approach.
I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing their absolute mindfuck of a third album Swarth, for Sonic Frontiers, you can read it HERE.
Check out this rad live video of the band performing the track “Glumurphonel”.
In recent weeks I’ve made several attempts to contact New York death metal duo Mortician for an interview. Those attempts were not responded to. The band hasn’t released an album since 2004′s Re-Animated Dead Flesh and only plays a handful of live shows a year, so one can only assume that this relative lack of activity has something to do with it. I can’t say I blame them. But, I’ve wanted to write about Mortician for a long time, and even without an upcoming national tour or new album on the way, there is still much about the band’s totally unique and oft-misunderstood take on death metal that’s worthy of discussion.
