Upload the Hammers!

By 1988, thrash metal was already at peak cruising altitude. Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets were widespread, all the ragers had signed to majors, and every old school metal band from AC/DC to Judas Priest rushed to squeeze moshpits into their videos. Though the underground had already started to turn towards death metal and grindcore, you could argue that some of the finest thrash metal bands were just surfacing. Bands like Coroner, Pestilence, and Demolition Hammer would go to the elaborate lengths in the early 1990s to elevate thrash–just as the floor was about to fall out from under them.

On Demolition Hammer’s first demo, the trio already controlled a deathly mish-mash of speed and constant change-ups, nodding to nearby New York-area notables like Nuclear Assault, Whiplash, and a whole host of metallic hardcore bands. They wanted to match Slayer’s aggression, but they had their own ideas about how to get there. For sure, these guys sound way advanced compared to the East Coast thrash demo bands of 1985 or 1986, and it’s cool to hear some death metal riffs and vocals creeping into the maelstrom.

I dug up my original mail from the band, so this download includes a lyric sheet:

DEMOLITION HAMMER * “Skull Fracturing Nightmare” demo 1988 [24.3MB .rar]

Demolition Hammer flew the thrash flag late enough to have shared bills with Sweden’s Grave around New York, and I heard somewhere that they managed a tour of Mexico, which makes them serious pioneers. Gone but not forgotten, this band is a prime candidate for a thrash reunion, but I haven’t heard a peep about any such adventure. There is a MySpace page, though, and YouTube is still hammering out their evidence.

88 BoaDrum NYC Rehearsal

Wowwowpowpow. Tonight, 8/8/08, at 8:08pm, at the end of North 8th Street, the Brooklyn wing of the Boredoms’ cosmic 88BoaDrum event will flap. Basically, this is 88 drummers playing full drum kits in unison accompanied by some cruising Can/Neu-style synth and guitar drones. It’s kind of an improvement on Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestras, though as a guitar player with experience playing Branca’s music I know that’s sacrilege. Since it’s happening about 100 yards from my front door, I crashed the rehearsal today,
and this thing is fully awesome. In broad daylight, with no audience, under a blue sky, the Empire State Building looking like a giant metronome, the earth was rumbling, and 176 drumsticks flashed together under the noon day sun. And after seeing some of China’s Olympic opening spectacle earlier today, my appetite for a massive unison display of mechanoid human performance was satisfied. By way of juxtaposition, tomorrow I get to see Motörhead–a living monument in honor of individualism.

LINK / List of Drummers

Secrets of Swedish Death Metal Revealed

Here Daniel Ekeroth, author of the massive Swedish Death Metal book (not to mention bassist of TYRANT and INSISION), unleashes a short session explaining the classic Swedish death metal guitar sound invented by Leif Cuzner of NIHILIST and perfected at Studio Sunlight in Stockholm on albums by ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER, and countless others. As you can tell by sunburned face, this is on day ten of a recent trip to New York. As soon as he finished making this clip, his body was chopped into pieces and sold as drugs to other Swedish tourists. That’s how we roll in New York…I guess.

Excitering News

I don’t live in Ottawa, so this is weird. A couple weeks ago I was marching up Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, sending hordes of summer tourists flying with my huge stride and manly boots of solid iron. Anyway, I got a call, and while I was shouting into the phone, a heavyset dude with a ponytail and a Madonna headset flipped a flyer into my hand. I think he had a clipboard, and was leading an unsuspecting troupe of blond Midwesterners into Central Park. I got across the street, got off the phone, and realized I’d been street-teamed by Exciter. Holy hell! The funny thing is that when I was in 9th grade, I fully expected Exciter to have this kind of monster promotional machine.

So pass it on — Exciter’s new album is out now on Massacre Records:

EXCITER MYSPACE

The Gear of Satan

Demolition Hammer’s excellent “Skull Fracturing Nightmare” sits here ready for rescue, but I’ve been battling my infernal analog-digital converter for over a month now. Stupid Yamaha. The box is outstanding, but the software completely sucks. New firewire card on the way, for no logical reason it’s supposed to restore stability. So then we will rage.

UPDATE [7/26]: Okay, enough whining, problem sorta solved by routing the Yamaha inputs through a second firewire box. Let the hammers ring!

When Lemmy Dreams, He Dreams of Shadows

My dad doesn’t historically have the coolest taste in music, but a funny thing happened when he came to New York last year for a visit. I took him up to Sirius for a survey of the 36th floor view and more importantly a gorging on gear, glamor, and satellite tech photo ops. While we were talking to Jose Mangin, telegenic Hard Attack metal channel founder and prophet, a dapper clean-shaven Andrew WK walked in and started shaking hands. Before Mr. Hard Party Kit Kat could get a word in edgewise, though, an idea popped into my dad’s head and he sprung into a lecture to us young ‘uns about the Shadows and Hank Marvin, the original guitar hero. That’s Hank with the long face with 1960s instrumental outfit the Shadows up above.

I inherited a Shadows CD somewhere, but I really only knew them from interviewing Tony Iommi for Sirius. Turns out he’s an unsung hero of the Sabbath sound, I think his rapid-fire approach to the Strat is an overlooked indirect influence on metal guitar playing. Joe Satriani covered a Shadows song, so he knows. Tony Iommi knows. Look at the synchronized steps the Shadows use in the video — you can bet the Scorpions know. The suspenseful James Bond theme used from Moonraker through the N64 Goldeneye game is played by Hank Marvin, so 007 knows. Now you know, too. I’m impressed that the Shadows were a hit machine as an instrumental guitar group, that’s uncommon. I guess I like the gunslinger approach to the six-string, from Hank Marvin to Link Wray to Andy McCoy. Add your own distortion, and those triplets are Slayer.

Hip hop music cut its teeth on the drum break in “Apache.” So did Lemmy Kilmister, who began his life on stage doing Shadows covers. If you see him at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Hollywood, and want to drag him away from the video poker, pull his ear about Hank Marvin.

Swedish Death Metal Book Trailer

The book is always better than the YouTube, but with a few weeks to go before Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal book is available, at least this video preview offers a quick fix.

“He Likes My Shirt!”

Just for you, a photo of the spiffy Burzum shirt worn by a gay German dude getting off the subway in Brooklyn after the gay pride parade in New York last weekend. No, he had no idea who Varg Vikernes is — and yes, he assumed I was hitting on him. When Varg is out on weekend furloughs from prison in Norway, does he see this shirt in swanky boutique windows while out shopping for CDs? He was denied parole again recently, by the way. 

Cut off head! Cut off head! Cut off Head!

Here’s a juicy bone plucked from the death/thrash/black metal cauldron of 1985. Toronto quartet Sacrifice were nearly as fast and lethal as any other band on the planet when they spewed forth this highly impressive debut demo. They had quickly absorbed all the nuances of Slayer’s Hell Awaits, and pressed the accelerator pedal to climb to D.R.I. Dealing With It speeds. The panic and energy never relent. The hyper instrumental title track makes Death Angel’s “The Ultraviolence” sound as old-school as Iron Maiden’s “Phantom of the Opera.” This demo version of the cut “Decapitation” is still one of the craziest thrash outbursts I’ve ever heard–intense as hell, and sick with evil. While thrashing with insane abandon, the band’s shared lineage with early death metal is undeniable. The semi-epic “Beyond Death” sounds like a matched pair to “Blood Runs From the Altar” by Tomas Lindberg’s old Swedish death metal band Grotesque — but that was years later.

This demo is Diabolic Force 002, the second release on the label best known for unleashing the Canadian band Slaughter on the world. In fact, I bought my copy of the tape on that basis, snatching it from the small demo rack at the legendary Record Peddler in Toronto during a family trip there in late 1985. (My mom found us cheap lodging on the top floor of some kind of insane asylum/hospice where they locked us in at night!) For a little historical perspective on the environment that spawned Sacrifice: every bootleg T-shirt stall on the main strip Yonge St. — and there were dozens — sold Venom and Metallica jerseys, along with a bizarre design popular with Canadian punks that read “Destroy!” above a crucified Jesus with a giant red swastika in the background. Venom’s Possessed and C.O.C.’s Animosity were in every record store window. And the Record Peddler had the Mentors’ You Axed for It and Oral Sex hanging on the wall. For Anvil, Slaughter, Razor, nearby Exciter, and Sacrifice, Toronto deserves a lot of credit for forming underground metal as we know it today.

If you’ve never heard this early Sacrifice stuff, it’s like watching Cannibal Ferox for the first time.

SACRIFICE * “The Exorcism” 8-song demo 1985 [40.2MB .rar]

Thanks to Sacrifice frontman Rob Urbinati for giving thumbs up to this post. By the way, I asked him what they thought about “Decapitation” after laying it down, and he said: “Hmmm, “Decapitation”? I just remember we thought it was the fastest ever!”

The band reunited for shows in 2006 and 2008, following a massive high-quality reissue campaign by Brazilian label Marquee Records. Those South American lunatics have repackaged Sacrifice’s classic Metal Blade albums Torment in Fire, Soldiers of Misfortune, and Forward to Termination, adding tons of bonus tracks including this demo and others. Visit the official Sacrifice site built by Marquee for info, along with extensive band history, videos, vintage photos, and yes — guitar tabs, to help you thrash with real diabolic force.

LINK

Swedish Death Metal Book Update

Man does not live by blog alone, and in fact the monster project for the past six months has been getting all the pieces in place to publish SWEDISH DEATH METAL by Daniel Ekeroth in a fat, dark new edition. The cover test and page proofs arrived from the printer a couple weeks back–take a look for yourself. By the end of July, every household of ghouls around the world will be able to own a copy, suitable for endless obsessing and secondary use as a butcher’s block. More to come, in the meantime check the pulse here:

Swedish Death Metal book site