IMMOLATION - GRIDLINK - CANCER BATS THE ACCÜSED ...
IMMOLATION - GRIDLINK - CANCER BATS THE ACCÜSED ...
IMMOLATION - GRIDLINK - CANCER BATS THE ACCÜSED ...
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METAL ZINE<br />
SCIONAV.COM<br />
VOL. 4<br />
ImmolatIon - GrIdlInk - CanCer Bats<br />
the aCCüsed<br />
Flenser reCords - savIours
STAFF<br />
Scion Project Manager: Jeri Yoshizu, Sciontist<br />
Editor: Eric Ducker<br />
Creative Direction: Scion<br />
Art Director: malbon<br />
Contributing Editor: J. Bennett<br />
Graphic Designers: Nicholas Acemoglu, Cameron Charles,<br />
Gabriella Spartos<br />
CONTRIBUTORS<br />
Writers: Maud Deitch, Etan Rosenbloom, Adam Shore<br />
Photographers: Greg Bojorquez, Courtney Frystak, Scott Kinkade, Amelia Prime<br />
CONTACT<br />
For additional information on Scion, email, write or call.<br />
Scion Customer Experience<br />
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Phone: 866.70.SCION / Fax: 310.381.5932<br />
Email: Email us through the Contact page located on scion.com<br />
Hours: M-F, 6am-5pm PST / Online Chat: M-F, 6am-6pm PST<br />
Scion Metal Zine is published by malbon.<br />
For more information about malbon, contact info@malbonfarms.com<br />
Company references, advertisements and/or websites listed in this publication are<br />
not affiliated with Scion, unless otherwise noted through disclosure. Scion does not<br />
warrant these companies and is not liable for their performances or the content on<br />
their advertisements and/or websites.<br />
© 2011 Scion, a marque of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Inc. All rights reserved.<br />
Scion and the Scion logo are trademarks of Toyota Motor Corporation.<br />
00430-ZIN04-MT<br />
Cover: Image from “Mancoon...Turkey Warlock” video by Weedeater. Directed by David Brodsky.<br />
SCION A/V SCHEDULE<br />
sePtemBer<br />
Scion A/V Presents: Wormrot — Noise (September 4)<br />
Scion Metal Matinee at The Roxy in Los Angeles, CA<br />
Featuring Cerebral Ballzy, Murphy’s Law and Repulsion (September 10)<br />
Scion Presents: A Product of Design curated by Gluekit<br />
at Installation LA (September 17 to October 8)<br />
oCtoBer<br />
Scion A/V Presents: Immolation (October 4)<br />
Scion Metal Matinee at Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago, IL (October 8)<br />
Scion Metal Matinee at TBD in Los Angeles, CA (October 9)<br />
Scion A/V Presents: Immolation Tour<br />
Wreck Room in Toronto, ONT (October 5)<br />
The Basement in Kingston, NY (October 7)<br />
Montage Music Hall in Rochester, NY (October 8)<br />
Broadway Joe’s in Buffalo, NY (October 9)<br />
The Gramercy Theatre in New York, NY (October 10)<br />
Bogie’s in Albany, NY (October 11)<br />
Championship Bar and Grill in Trenton, NJ (October 12)<br />
Peabody’s in Cleveland, OH (October 13)<br />
The Alrosa Villa in Columbus, OH (October 14)<br />
Blondie’s 2281 in Detroit, MI (October 15)<br />
Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago, IL (October 16)<br />
Larimer Lounge in Denver, CO (October 19)<br />
The Complex in Salt Lake City, UT (October 20)<br />
Cheyenne Saloon in Las Vegas, NV (October 21)<br />
Chain Reaction in Anaheim, CA (October 22)<br />
The Clubhouse in Tempe, AZ (October 23)<br />
Backstage Live in San Antonio, TX (October 25)<br />
Scout Bar in Houston, TX (October 26)<br />
Scion Presents: Use Me curated Yuri Psinakis at Installation LA<br />
(October 15 to November 5)<br />
novemBer<br />
Scion Metal Matinee at TBD in Los Angeles, CA (November 12)<br />
Scion Presents: From Here to Eternity curated by Kenton Parker at Installation LA<br />
(November 19 to December 17)<br />
sCIon a/v Presents<br />
musIC vIdeos<br />
Hate Eternal, “Lake Ablaze”<br />
Immolation, “A Glorious Epoch”<br />
Weedeater, “Mancoon...Turkey Warlock”
ExclusivE intErviEws & pErformancEs from<br />
mIdnIGht<br />
From ashes rIse<br />
savIours<br />
Ceremony<br />
noIsear<br />
plus frEE music downloads, EvEnt info,<br />
scion strEaming radio & much morE<br />
scionav.com<br />
GAZA<br />
Story: J. Bennett / Photography: Amelia Prime & Greg Bojorquez<br />
Even the most cursory of listens to either of Gaza’s two albums, 2006’s I Don’t<br />
Care Where I Go When I Die and 2009’s He Is Never Coming Back, reveal a band<br />
that straddles the increasingly blurry worlds of metal, hardcore, sludge and grind<br />
without lingering very long in any of them. Vocalist Jon Parkin says that’s because<br />
the Salt Lake City-based quartet stresses originality over rigid genre identification.<br />
“A lot of what’s going on in metal right now is<br />
parallel to what happened to punk rock in the<br />
1980s and hardcore in the 1990s,” Parkin says.<br />
“There’s a lot of fronting and posing going on. It<br />
feels like a miniature Hollywood, where a disaster<br />
movie does well and suddenly you’ve got ten in a<br />
year coming out. That comes and goes. Original<br />
bands will last. We work real hard to take what’s<br />
come before us and make our own sound with it<br />
rather than mimic or perpetuate.”<br />
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Gaza can deliver<br />
every last decibel of their dissonant, hyperaggressive<br />
goods live. “Anyone who comes to<br />
see us will get a very loud, gimmick-free punk<br />
rock show,” Parkin promises. “It should be a<br />
place where you can find an outlet and a room<br />
full of people who might see the world similarly<br />
to you. We’ll play as well as we can and as loud as<br />
they’ll let us.”<br />
facebook.com/gazamusic<br />
Watch an interview with Gaza and videos of their live<br />
performance at Scion’s Metal Matinee series at scionav.com/metal
It’s not often that a musician’s side project<br />
ends up becoming his primary band, but that’s<br />
what happened to vocalist Chris Colohan in<br />
2008 when prominent Toronto hardcore outfit<br />
Cursed broke up after they were robbed of their<br />
passports and all their earnings at the end of a<br />
European tour. Colohan had started Burning<br />
Love the previous year with Our Father members<br />
Easton Lannaman, Pat Marshall, Andrus Meret<br />
and Dave O’Connor (who has since been replaced<br />
by Alex “Hawk” Goodall), and suddenly found<br />
himself with more time to devote to his new<br />
project after Cursed’s demise.<br />
“I had to take a few steps back from everything, let<br />
alone music, after what happened,” he explains.<br />
“But within a couple months I wanted to step it<br />
up and get back to it. It’s what I love doing, so I’m<br />
going to be doing it regardless of the liabilities<br />
that come with the territory, or how many times I<br />
have to walk away from something that a bunch of<br />
us have put a lot of years and work into. Burning<br />
Love was already there and ready for it.”<br />
BurninG<br />
LovE<br />
Story: J. Bennett<br />
Photography: Greg Bojorquez<br />
Burning Love’s full-length debut, Songs For<br />
Burning Lovers, fuses propulsive stoner-rock<br />
grooves and turbo-charged punk riffage with<br />
Colohan’s seemingly deep affinity for Henry<br />
Rollins-era Black Flag. Lyrically, Burning Love is<br />
far more positive than Cursed’s venomous tirades.<br />
“There’s definitely a shift in approach, if not<br />
subject matter,” Colohan says. “The content isn’t<br />
really all that different, but it has to fit the context<br />
of the music it’s made for, which is still loud and<br />
chaotic, but with a very different energy—more<br />
fun than bleak. My comfort zone is one particular<br />
side of my mentality—the dark and nasty,<br />
paranoid and apocalyptic point of view. And it’s<br />
genuine, but not a healthy place to live in fulltime,<br />
you know?”<br />
burninglove416.blogspot.com<br />
Watch an interview with Burning Love and videos of<br />
their live performance at Scion’s Metal Matinee series at<br />
scionav.com/metal
ecords<br />
Interview: Etan Rosenbloom<br />
In just under two years of existence, San Franciscobased<br />
label Flenser Records has curated a small but<br />
respected roster of out-of-the-box metal acts. From<br />
its inaugural release by one-man black metal project<br />
Palace of Worms to the epic For Winter Fire by<br />
Louisville doom bringers Seidr, Flenser is going its<br />
own way. We caught up with label owner Jonathan<br />
Tuite for a look inside Flenser’s operations.<br />
Why did you start Flenser?<br />
I had heard this Ghast record, May the Curse Bind. I really wanted<br />
a vinyl version, and there wasn’t one available, so I contacted the<br />
band and asked them about that. It went from there. The purpose<br />
has kind of changed since then. I’m not into doing just the vinyl<br />
editions anymore, but that’s really why it started.<br />
Early on, many of the bands you signed were from the<br />
Bay Area. What’s special about that region’s metal?<br />
There does seem to be a theme of good outsider metal here. You<br />
look at bands like Von or Weakling, which were both early, very<br />
important black metal bands. I don’t know exactly why that is.<br />
San Francisco is a pretty nice place, there’s not a huge amount of<br />
social oppression here, but it does seem to result in outsider black<br />
metal that is unique here. That’s not necessarily the reason that I’ve<br />
signed San Francisco bands, it’s partly just a matter of access. But<br />
it also does seem like there’s a lot going on here.<br />
What do you look for in a band you sign?<br />
I don’t have a specific aesthetic I look for in the bands. In general, I<br />
seem to be into bands that are just a little bit different than what’s<br />
going on in the genre. So with Panopticon, that’s not straight-up<br />
black metal. There are crust influences, he’s an anarchist. I kind of<br />
like that that’s outside of the regular black metal world, although it<br />
has roots there. That’s true for most of the bands on the label.<br />
Are there personal qualities, or a particular work ethic,<br />
that you look for in a band beyond the music they make?<br />
More recently that’s something I look for. If a band wants to tour<br />
and is really excited about that, that’s a plus. But that hasn’t been<br />
the thing that has drawn me to bands. It usually just feels right. It’s<br />
the whole package. I have to like the music and like the people and<br />
like whatever message they have. Or at least not completely hate it!<br />
To what extent is Flenser a DIY label?<br />
I don’t think it really is a DIY label at this point. When it comes to<br />
releasing vinyl, I might press an insert and package it myself, but<br />
I’m not hand-screening anything. I’m not building the packages.<br />
I’m definitely getting things manufactured by people. I have people<br />
helping with artwork, but besides that, pretty much everything’s<br />
me. So I don’t consider it a DIY label, but I definitely appreciate<br />
that aesthetic, and especially the ethics of a DIY label, in terms of<br />
trading and how you treat your artists.<br />
Which is the most important release in Flenser’s history?<br />
And which best embodies what Flenser is about?<br />
The label’s changing. The most recent release, by Seidr, is definitely<br />
the release I’ve pushed the most and felt like I’ve really hit a stride<br />
with. Probably my favorite release was the first Bosse-De-Nage selftitled<br />
record. A lot of people really didn’t like that record very much,<br />
but I thought it was amazing. I used to listen to it all the time. But I<br />
don’t know if there’s one specific release that sums up the label or<br />
is the most important release. It’s all part of a progression for me.<br />
theflenser.com<br />
necrite “sic transit gloria mundi”<br />
skagos/panopticon “split”<br />
pale chalice “afflicting the<br />
dichotomy of trepid creation”<br />
Bosse-de-Nage “II”<br />
Seidr “For WInter Fire”
davId Brodsky<br />
Brooklyn-based director David “My<br />
Good Eye” Brodsky has shot Scion A/V<br />
videos for the likes of Municipal Waste,<br />
Kylesa, Landmine Marathon and Hate<br />
Eternal. His most recent assignment<br />
took him to Wilmington, North<br />
Carolina, to shoot a clip for “Mancoon”<br />
and “Turkey Warlock” by veteran<br />
sludge merchants Weedeater. Brodsky<br />
tells the tale of making the video:<br />
The house we shot in was where Weedeater<br />
started 14 years ago. It’s this old, beat-up house<br />
in the North Carolina swamp. The person who is<br />
currently living there was kind enough to give us<br />
access to it for the day. All the phone numbers the<br />
band had written on the walls were still there, and<br />
there were Weedeater stickers all over the house.<br />
The original idea was to shoot a day-in-the-life<br />
type of thing about Dixie Dave [Collins], the band’s<br />
singer/bass player, but it turned into a video for<br />
two short songs put together. The first song is<br />
called “Mancoon,” which is apparently about a<br />
man who is also a raccoon. The second song is<br />
called “Turkey Warlock,” which is something that<br />
Dave made up. It’s basically a sloppy joe made out<br />
of turkey, but because Manwich is a brand name<br />
of a sloppy joe product and a warlock is a male<br />
witch, he decided to call it a “Turkey Warlock.”<br />
And then he wrote a song about it.<br />
So we combined this bizarre subject matter and<br />
turned it into a bizarre video. It’s styled as a silent<br />
film, and the simplest way to put it is that it’s kinda<br />
like that fairytale about Goldilocks, the girl who<br />
wakes up in the house with the bears. In the video,<br />
Weedeater wakes up in the house of the Mancoon.<br />
For some reason, the Mancoon is living with this<br />
creepy guy who forces Weedeater to eat a huge turkey<br />
sandwich. Then they sneak out and get hunted down<br />
through the swamp, get caught and—not to spoil it for<br />
you—are brought back for yet another delicious meal.<br />
It’s hard to make sense of, but it makes complete<br />
sense to the band. I tend not to ask where these<br />
things come from, because sometimes it’s better to<br />
not know. It kind of takes the romance out of it.<br />
As told to J. Bennett<br />
To see more of David Brodsky’s work, check out mgenyc.com<br />
Watch David Brodsky’s videos for Scion A/V, including<br />
“Mancoon...Turkey Warlock,” at scionav.com/musicvideos
ONLY TwO PEOPLE HaVE bEEN wITH SEaTTLE THRaSHcORE<br />
PIONEERS <strong>THE</strong> accüSEd SINcE <strong>THE</strong> bEGINNING: GUITaRIST TOm NIEmEYER<br />
aNd ZOmbIE maScOT maRTHa SPLaTTERHEad, <strong>THE</strong> STaR Of maNY accüSEd<br />
SONGS, aLbUm cOVERS aNd mERcH ITEmS. wE aSkEd NIEmEYER TO TELL<br />
US EVERYTHING HE kNOwS abOUT maRTHa.<br />
HER PURPOSE<br />
Martha’s main purpose has always been to<br />
rid the world of dirtbags and weasels. She’s<br />
a superhero in a way, and she does suddenly<br />
appear in places you didn’t expect her to, to get<br />
justice done. Pretty quick and brutal justice.<br />
HER ORIGIN<br />
We were all sitting around as a band in 1984,<br />
designing flyers for a couple shows we had<br />
coming up, and we were reading so many<br />
comics that Blaine [Cooke, former vocalist]<br />
had. One of them had this woman with a<br />
knife on the cover of it. Blaine said, “How<br />
about something like this?” So I sketched out<br />
this crazy extreme version of what he was<br />
showing us, added some big long fangs, some<br />
goofy rocker-guy hair, an outrageously large<br />
bosom, and I think she had little tiny tiger skin<br />
underwear on. Blaine said, “We should call it<br />
Martha Splatterhead. We used to have BB gun<br />
wars back in the day, and one of the guy’s name<br />
was ‘Splatterhead.’” And Martha was obviously<br />
a woman’s name. And she was born.<br />
HER SIZE<br />
We knew that people weren’t walking where<br />
they would see our flyers. It’s raining all the<br />
time [in Seattle], so they’re gonna be in a car.<br />
That’s why the knife’s so big, the chest is so<br />
big, and why the logo is hopefully big enough<br />
for them to see while they’re going 45 miles an<br />
hour through a rain-soaked window.<br />
HER LONGEVITY<br />
If we’re ever like, “We gotta have another<br />
song. What’re we gonna write?” there’s always<br />
Martha. You can send Martha to the Harlem<br />
Globetrotters, send her to space, you can do<br />
whatever you want. She’s not only consistent<br />
and cool, she’s also handy.<br />
As told to Etan Rosenbloom<br />
splatterrock.com<br />
Watch an interview with The Accüsed<br />
and videos of their live performance at Scion’s<br />
Metal Matinee series at scionav.com/metal
Story: J. Bennett<br />
Photography: Greg Bojorquez<br />
The music of Cancer Bats, Toronto’s mayors of death & roll, pulls<br />
from a deep resource of influences. Their albums burst with<br />
Entombed-style riff riots, thick New Orleans sludge-stomp and<br />
raucous gang-style backups. They also do a mean cover of Beastie<br />
Boys’ “Sabotage.” We caught up with vocalist Liam Cormier and<br />
guitarist Scott Middleton just prior to the band’s Scion Metal<br />
Matinee performance at the Roxy in Hollywood.<br />
Do you think that there is anything<br />
uniquely Canadian about Cancer Bats?<br />
Liam Cormier: I think that there is something<br />
very Canadian about the type of metal that we<br />
play, in terms of [heavy] Canadian bands being<br />
sludgy. There have always been bands from our<br />
area, or from all over Canada, that have this<br />
heavier sound, like Kittens in Winnipeg and<br />
Thrush Hermit. It’s that way even in the indie<br />
rock scene with bands that we grew up on, like<br />
the Swarm and Cursed.<br />
What do you get out of Cancer Bats that<br />
you didn’t get out of bands you were<br />
previously in?<br />
Scott Middleton: This is the first band where I was<br />
the only guitar player and had the responsibility<br />
of writing all the songs and the riffs. When we<br />
started the band, I never had done anything like<br />
that before, so it was a real challenge. It was cool<br />
because it really pushed my playing and made me<br />
a better musician. When you play in a two-guitar<br />
band, it is really easy to be lazy and sit in the back.<br />
With this, you have to be on it and be the anchor.<br />
Cormier: Obviously, when Scott and I started, it<br />
was fun. We wanted to do something that neither<br />
of us had done in other bands before, like, “Lets<br />
have rock & roll, and let’s have hardcore and<br />
punk.” But then it came to a point were it was like,<br />
“OK, this is going to be serious,” so we needed<br />
to find guys like [drummer] Mike [Peters] and<br />
[bassist] Jaye [Schwarzer], who are really serious.<br />
As much fun as Scott and I were having with it,<br />
we also wanted to be a full-time band and to tour.<br />
We had to get guys that were really cool and fun<br />
to tour with, and were good at headbanging.<br />
How would you describe Cancer Bats’<br />
musical philosophy? Do you have one?<br />
Cormier: Thinking back on when we started the<br />
band, it was just to have fun and to play music<br />
that we liked and to do something that we felt like<br />
other bands weren’t doing. We’re about to write<br />
our fourth record and we’re still thinking of it in<br />
the same way.<br />
I think that some of the appeal of Cancer<br />
Bats is that there is a little something for<br />
everybody. Metal people get into it, punk<br />
kids, hardcore kids, etc. Do you think of<br />
the band as kind of like a melting pot?<br />
Middleton: I think that it’s like a modern-day<br />
crossover, like when people used to talk about<br />
the punk/thrash/metal crossover back in like<br />
the early to mid-1980s. We all listen to so many<br />
different kinds of music that influence us and<br />
we just play those kinds of music in our way, and<br />
it just comes together. No matter what we try,<br />
it always still sounds like us, even if we go on<br />
something that is a bit of a departure.<br />
What would you like the audience to get<br />
out of a Cancer Bats show?<br />
Cormier: Sometimes we’ll have a crazy pit and<br />
it’ll be awesome. Other times it will be adults that<br />
are standing there, just smiling and stoked, and<br />
there’s one kid trying to start a pit and he is so<br />
bummed. But I’m just as stoked. It’s just different vibes.<br />
cancerbats.com<br />
Watch an interview with Cancer Bats and videos of<br />
their live performance for Scion’s Metal Matinee series<br />
at scionav.com/metal
Interview:<br />
J. Bennett
Over the course of nearly a quarter-century and eight full-length albums, Immolation<br />
has created some of the most crushing death metal known to mankind. With a lineup<br />
currently composed of original members Ross Dolan (vocals/bass) and Bob Vigna<br />
(guitar) alongside drummer Steve Shalaty and second guitarist Bill Taylor, the band<br />
released one of its most formidable and memorable albums, 2010’s Majesty and<br />
Decay, 22 years into their career. And yet so much has changed both within the band<br />
and the wider death metal landscape since Immolation got together in Yonkers, New<br />
York, back in 1988. Ross Dolan explains.<br />
For the last several years, you’ve had two<br />
members in Yonkers, one in Ohio, and one<br />
in Florida. How do you make it work?<br />
Yeah, we’re a bit spread out now. Thankfully,<br />
today’s technology allows that. In the past, we<br />
all lived in Yonkers, and we’d get together on<br />
a nightly basis to write and rehearse. But it’s<br />
actually much easier now, believe it or not. We’re<br />
all pretty much in tune with what needs to be<br />
done, nobody needs to babysit anybody. When it<br />
comes to doing shows, we put a set list together<br />
and each rehearse on our own. If it’s a tour or<br />
something, we’ll get together at Steve’s house out<br />
in Ohio, just because his drums are there and he’s<br />
got the space. As far as writing goes, with the new<br />
computer programs Bob can essentially write a<br />
whole song, program some mock drumbeats and<br />
“This music is honest, it’s<br />
primal and it’s edgy, and<br />
that’s what I’ve always liked<br />
about it.”<br />
email it to us. So when we get together, we have<br />
a jump on everything. It’s not like it used to be.<br />
We were very bootleg in the past. I think this way<br />
actually keeps us sharper because we have to<br />
work harder on our own.<br />
Death metal has come a long way since you<br />
started in the late 1980s. What’s your take<br />
on how the genre has developed since then,<br />
and Immolation’s development within that?<br />
When we started back in 1988, if you’d told me<br />
that we’d still be doing this, I would’ve probably<br />
laughed. I mean, honestly. We were all into metal<br />
since our early teens, and like most fans of this<br />
type of music, we gradually got into heavier stuff<br />
because you’re always trying to find something<br />
more extreme. Music was definitely our drug<br />
of choice, and we got hooked early. But we were<br />
realistic from the start—we realized we weren’t<br />
gonna make a living off of death metal. So we<br />
adjusted our lives to work around our passion.<br />
We’ve always had full-time jobs, and always the<br />
kind of jobs, luckily, that allow us to go on tour<br />
and do our recording. But to see the scene grow<br />
and come this far and get this much recognition<br />
is amazing. It’s nice to see it blossom, even<br />
though it’s still underground on a lot of levels. It’s<br />
not mainstream—it’ll never be mainstream—but<br />
that’s kinda what keeps it unique for the fans.<br />
The overall theme of Majesty and Decay<br />
is the abuse of power. Was that influenced<br />
by current events?<br />
Absolutely. If you read a newspaper or go online<br />
and read some of the headlines, it affects you. But<br />
I never wanted to be a political band, so we try<br />
to downplay that side of it. We write our lyrics<br />
in a way that’s not specific, but I think anyone<br />
with common sense can kind of get where we’re<br />
coming from. But that’s the cool thing about<br />
lyrics, I like to write them in such a way that<br />
everyone can get what they want out of them. It<br />
doesn’t have to be exactly what we mean.<br />
Do you think of death metal differently<br />
now, in terms of its limits and possibilities,<br />
than you did when you started the band?<br />
Well, we always believed in what we did. This<br />
music is honest, it’s primal and it’s edgy, and<br />
that’s what I’ve always liked about it. We always<br />
knew the music had potential if it was just given<br />
a chance and people could get past whatever<br />
their hang-ups were. I think most people hear<br />
the vocals and go, “What is that?” So that’s a<br />
hard obstacle to get around. But today, more<br />
popular bands have infused more mainstreamtype<br />
music with that vocal style, so it’s not that<br />
leftfield anymore. And that only helps our cause.<br />
What a lot of people don’t understand is that the<br />
people who play this kind of music are really good<br />
musicians. I can attest to that because I’ve been<br />
on tour with a lot of these guys. It’s just a shame<br />
to see all these great musicians not getting the<br />
recognition they deserve. A lot of them are finally<br />
getting it, though. Today, you can see a guy like<br />
Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse in Bass Player<br />
magazine. You’d never see that in the old days.<br />
Does the band mean something different<br />
to you today than it did in the ’80s?<br />
Yeah, it means more to me now. It means<br />
everything to me. I couldn’t imagine my world<br />
without it because it consumes so much of my<br />
life. I’m constantly thinking about what we’re<br />
gonna do next. I mean, going out to Steve’s place<br />
to rehearse is like a mini vacation for us. Touring<br />
isn’t work for us, either. It’s our time away from<br />
our jobs to do what we really wanna do. I think<br />
that’s why we’ve always had positive attitudes<br />
about what we do. It’s never been like a business.<br />
It’s fun for us, so we’ve never taken it for granted.<br />
It’s easy to get caught up in the nine to five<br />
routine, time just flies by. With this, you always<br />
have something to look forward to.<br />
myspace.com/immolation<br />
Watch the Scion A/V video for Immolation’s “A Glorious<br />
Epoch” at scionav.com/musicvideos
Photography: Scott Kinkade<br />
GRID<br />
LINK<br />
Grindcore fanatics the world over know Jon<br />
Chang as the former frontman for legendary (and<br />
sadly defunct) cult favorite Discordance Axis,<br />
as well as the current vocalist for both grind<br />
masters GridLink and speed-thrashers Hayaino<br />
Daisuki. What they might not know is that Chang<br />
is also the president of and lead game designer<br />
for Echelon Software, where he is currently<br />
developing the online video game Black Powder,<br />
Red Earth. He told us about the connection<br />
between video games, anime and GridLink’s<br />
dizzying new 13-minute album, Orphan.<br />
Music and video games are both very cathartic,<br />
especially the kind of games that I like to play,<br />
which tend to be shooter games with really<br />
intense action. You get really emotionally involved<br />
in these games because they require deep<br />
concentration. It’s the same thing with music—I<br />
get really involved in it. GridLink is certainly a very<br />
abrupt in-and-out experience, and people have<br />
complained because our new album is only 13<br />
minutes long. To me, that’s exactly how long that<br />
album needed to be. Anything longer would’ve<br />
been filler. Think of it as a short story if you want,<br />
but that’s the whole book, you know?<br />
A lot of old anime and, surprisingly enough, old<br />
video games, have themes about deciding what’s<br />
the best course of action, what’s the right thing<br />
to do, what’s the way forward. Certainly when<br />
I started off writing I didn’t understand that. I<br />
mean, I was 19. As I’ve grown older, more and<br />
more of that kind of message comes out in my<br />
lyrics. When I started in Discordance Axis, we<br />
were not a very popular band. We’d play shows<br />
and three people would come. No one was really<br />
interested in what we were doing because the<br />
music was so extreme and the message was<br />
very intense emotionally, but it wasn’t delivered<br />
with clarity. For the most part, it was about the<br />
fact that life forces you to make hard choices and<br />
there are no easy answers.<br />
I think I got some of that from old arcade games<br />
like Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun—these are what<br />
are called “bullet hell” games. The concept is that<br />
there’s a ship propelled across the screen and<br />
the background is scrolling by while thousands of<br />
bad guys are charging at you and bullets are filling<br />
the screen. You have to maneuver through these<br />
intense waves of bullets and destroy everything<br />
you come across. I think those games have<br />
strangely deep messages in that the protagonists<br />
in the background narrative are people in turmoil<br />
who are trying to do the right thing even though<br />
they don’t necessarily know how to do it. And it<br />
always ends up somehow going wrong. There’s a<br />
lot of that on Orphan, actually, if you wanna relate<br />
it back in a broad sense to GridLink—certainly the<br />
idea of trying to follow the right course through<br />
life, making decisions, and having them just<br />
backfire on you over and over again.<br />
For me, it’s funny how Orphan and video games<br />
in general coincide. Most of the games and<br />
anime I enjoy are pretty dark and there are rarely<br />
happy endings. They involve young people trying<br />
to become adults, and it’s easy to get destroyed<br />
in that process, especially today. It’s difficult to<br />
“It’s difficult to find<br />
where you can be in<br />
the world. Is there<br />
any responsibility to<br />
do anything beyond<br />
having a happy life<br />
for yourself?”<br />
find where you can be in the world. Is there any<br />
responsibility to do anything beyond having a<br />
happy life for yourself? Can you even do that? It<br />
might sound silly, but that’s the bigger picture of<br />
how these things interact with what I write.<br />
As told to J. Bennett<br />
Watch an interview with GridLink and videos of their<br />
live performances at Scion’s Metal Matinee series at<br />
scionav.com/metal
Story: J. Bennett<br />
Invisible Oranges is an extreme music website owned and operated by Cosmo Lee,<br />
a Los Angeles-based metal journalist who also contributes to Decibel magazine.<br />
The site takes its name from the colloquial term used to describe the exaggerated<br />
clutching gesture that many extreme metal bands make in their promo photos.<br />
Squeezing the imaginary citrus is a sort of street-level Masonic handshake that,<br />
much like the site itself, speaks to obsessive power of heavy metal. On Invisible<br />
Oranges, you can read remarkably thoughtful interviews with musicians, chime in<br />
on salient journalistic queries like “Are Album Reviews Dead?” and peruse Lee’s<br />
ongoing analysis of every song on Metallica’s first four albums.<br />
Sadly, Lee recently announced that he would be leaving the popular communitydriven<br />
site on September 24, 2011. His reason? “I want to make music,” he<br />
explains. “I’ve written about music for a while, but that’s not what I was meant<br />
to do. I don’t have enough hours in the day to make music, though, so something<br />
needs to go. And that something is Invisible Oranges.”<br />
However, there is good news for the site’s dedicated followers. If all goes<br />
according to plan, Lee will pass his phantom fruit to a worthy successor. “I don’t<br />
think I’m so unique that when I leave the site its functioning will diminish. I think<br />
my thought processes can be duplicated, and right now I’m in the process of<br />
finding people I can school in my methods and principles so the site can continue<br />
doing what it does,” he says. “I haven’t had much time to figure out succession<br />
issues, but I really need to come up with a plan and people to carry out that plan.<br />
But it’ll happen. It needs to happen.”<br />
invisibleoranges.com
o a k l a n d<br />
Since 2004, Saviours has been keeping Bay Area<br />
metal alive with its gigantic, doomy sound. On<br />
their third and latest album, Accelerated Living,<br />
the band combines the breakneck riffage of<br />
classic 1980s New Wave of British Heavy Metal<br />
with the infectious twin guitar leads of Thin<br />
Lizzy. We spoke with guitarist Sonny Reinhardt<br />
about what’s keeping heavy music alive in his<br />
Oakland hometown.<br />
Eli’s Mile High Club<br />
Right now there’s a bunch of warehouse spots<br />
and smaller venues going on, and Eli’s Mile High<br />
Club. They’ve been doing quite a few punk and<br />
metal shows. They did a secret Sleep show that<br />
was pretty crazy. There was no advertising or<br />
anything but it was pretty packed.<br />
Crossing the Bay Area Divide<br />
The East Bay is definitely more punk oriented—<br />
grind punk and sludge and some thrash—but it’s<br />
pretty varied, and a lot of the different bands<br />
play with each other. People hang out a lot, it’s<br />
not super segregated as far as scenes go. There’s a<br />
fairly good crossover of stuff from San Francisco,<br />
and the San Francisco scene has good shows, and<br />
there are bands that will play both. Everybody<br />
tries to help each other out on both sides.<br />
Scene Report<br />
1-2-3-4 Go! Records<br />
1-2-3-4 Go! Records is really cool. It looks like<br />
they’re going to be expanding soon and, from<br />
what I hear, possibly become a venue. Most of the<br />
warehouses and places besides Eli’s are all ages.<br />
1-2-3-4 Go! is definitely my neighborhood store that<br />
I go to all the time. I also find stuff at swap meets.<br />
The Oakland Metro<br />
They’ve been doing a lot of really cool metal<br />
shows. They’re a bigger spot with a bar that’s allages.<br />
They just had Doom and Brainoil. They do<br />
bigger metal gigs.<br />
The Ruby Room<br />
Me and a couple friends do a metal DJ night at the<br />
Ruby Room on Tuesdays, and there’s a new metal<br />
DJ at Merchant’s on Wednesdays. Even if there isn’t<br />
a show, you can hang out and listen to metal.<br />
As told to Maud Deitch<br />
killforsaviours.blogspot.com<br />
myspace.com/saviours666<br />
Watch an interview with Saviours and videos of their<br />
live performance at Scion’s Metal Matinee series at<br />
scionav.com/metal
BloG roll<br />
Interview: Maud Deitch<br />
From Slayer and Slipknot to the latest fresh-faced thrashers, Metal Injection is a website<br />
dedicated to exposing every subgenre of metal to headbangers everywhere. With videos,<br />
interviews, live coverage and a weekly “Livecast” podcast that offers, according to editor<br />
Robert Pasbani, “a metalhead’s perspective on world events,” Metal Injection is a mustclick<br />
spot for all things heavy. Below, Pasbani answers some questions about the history<br />
and the approach of the site.<br />
How did Metal Injection start?<br />
We’ve been doing Metal Injection for seven years. It started when we were in<br />
college, and two of us were TV and Radio Production majors. We would get together<br />
and hang out and watch metal videos, and then one of our friends made us aware of<br />
this metal show on Brooklyn Public Access (BCAT). We watched it for a few weeks<br />
and we would always get so mad at how terrible the show was and would be like,<br />
We could do this so much better than she’s doing it. Finally we were like, Let’s do it.<br />
Later we realized that there was a much bigger audience online, so we took it there.<br />
What was the initial objective of the online show and then the blog?<br />
The goal was always to expose all forms of metal. We cover the whole spectrum—<br />
mainstream metal bands like Slipknot and Lamb of God, but also really small<br />
bands, like Wormrot. The goal is to get some of the mainstream kids on the site<br />
and maybe hear some smaller bands and really get into the scene. The goal is to<br />
champion the metal cause.<br />
What has worked and what hasn’t?<br />
I’ve definitely learned that there is not as much money in metal as there can be in<br />
other types of websites. But it’s not about money. It’s very hard to predict what is<br />
going to become popular in metal. You can sort of guess, but you’ll never know. I<br />
never would have predicted that deathcore would become as big as it has now. This<br />
has taught me that you should always be nice to everybody because you never know<br />
who’s going to make it. It’s really nice when we interview a band on their first record<br />
or first tour, and then we can go back four or five years later and interview them again.<br />
metalinjection.net
SCION STREAMING RADIO TOP PICKS:<br />
Adam Shore, host of Radio Doom! on Scion Streaming Radio and<br />
booker of the Scion Rock Fest and the Scion Metal Matinee series,<br />
spotlights what’s currently interesting him in the world of metal.<br />
Nightbringer<br />
Certainly not among the more popular black metal<br />
bands around, Nightbringer is a lost crew from<br />
Colorado who have been burning the candles at both<br />
ends, conjuring up truly awesome spells of chaos for<br />
10 years over 10 releases. Firmly in the second wave,<br />
their music consists of the usual noise layers, shifting<br />
melodies, weird digressions and demonic vocals, yet<br />
there’s a overall mood, a power and density, and a very<br />
dedicated sense of mission that makes them among<br />
my favorite black metal bands. Their new album<br />
Hierophany of the Open Grave (Season of Mist)<br />
is a monster. Their last album 2010’s Apocalypse<br />
Sun (Anja Offensive) is even better, filled with an<br />
unfiltered, uncompromising intensity. Nightbringer<br />
doesn’t tour that often, so see them when you can. I<br />
did once, at a weird hollowed-out Mexican restaurant<br />
in Compton in Los Angeles last year. There were more<br />
people onstage than in the audience, and the sound<br />
was louder coming out of their monitors than through<br />
the rickety PA. But they were mesmerizing.<br />
Yob<br />
Doom is as much about the space around the notes as<br />
the notes themselves. Normal song components like<br />
lyrics, melodies and hooks are much further down<br />
in the list of priorities. There needs to be suspense<br />
and anticipation hanging off every chord, a feeling<br />
that that there’s something unimaginably heavy<br />
coming up next, soon, at the precise moment when<br />
it all it’s just too much. Then repeat. The best bands<br />
have a depth of maturity and a level of concentration<br />
unimaginable for us mere mortals. That’s Yob. Yob<br />
just crossed over from being a first-rate doom band<br />
to being one of the best doom bands ever. That’s<br />
partially due to the excellent Atma record now out<br />
on Profound Lore, but just as much because of the<br />
amount of touring they are doing, and will continue<br />
to do, night after night, getting deeper and deeper<br />
into the zone.<br />
Lustmord<br />
Brian Williams has been making terrifying music for<br />
30 years now, first as part of the SPK/sound terrorism<br />
crew and continuing through his massive collection<br />
of solo records, some of which get pigeonholed as<br />
“dark ambient.” But this is not some depressive sonic<br />
wallpaper, new age music for saddos. It’s precise,<br />
claustrophobic, constantly shifting and moving<br />
sound, and it sounds like no one else. Williams<br />
makes his living doing sound design in Hollywood—<br />
you’ve heard his terrifying soundscapes, whether you<br />
realize it or not, in films, trailers and video games. He<br />
talked about it at length recently in a rare interview<br />
for Radio Doom!, right before his first New York City<br />
show since 1981. (Yes he made the stunning visuals<br />
for the show too, go to YouTube now!). It’s easy to<br />
highlight his releases with the Melvins and Tool<br />
camp, but instead get records like 1990’s Heresy<br />
(Soleilmoon) and 2009’s The Dark Places of the Earth<br />
(Side Effects), put on headphones, turn off the lights<br />
and enter into a completely new world.<br />
Playing Non-Stop<br />
Alpinist, Lichtlærm (Southern Lord); Maruta,<br />
Forward Into Regression (Willowtip); Dark Castle,<br />
Surrender To All Life Beyond Form (Profound<br />
Lore); Deathspell Omega, Paracletus (Norma<br />
Evangelium Diaboli); Thou, To the Chaos Wizard<br />
Youth (Howling Mind); and yes, even Gallhammer,<br />
The End (Peaceville).<br />
Listen to Radio Doom! at scionav.com/radio/channel8
Burning Love at Scion<br />
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at Installation LA<br />
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Scion’s commitment to artistic expression provides a<br />
platform for passionate artists to focus on developing their<br />
art and exploring the endless possibilities. To learn about<br />
current and past projects from Scion Audio/Visual (SA/V),<br />
please visit scionav.com.