Oh praise be! The most miserable month of the year is all but over and it’s the weekend. This has been such a dry-mouthed hump of a month, but when Red Fang released their video for their super-catchy loose-minded stoner jam “Hank is Dead” the Deciblog made like Barney Gumble with the non-alcoholic champagne and got drunk soley on the power of suggestion. This shit’s the weekend enabler.
Directed by Whitey McConnaughy, the “Hank is Dead” promo vid is another victory for the comedic potential of hairy guys who drink too much, guys whose world view is so bent out of shape from riff-worship that what else could they be but God’s honest slackers?
Now, shamelessly cut’n’paste from the Relapse official press communiqué, Red Fang drummer John Sherman had this to say about the making of the video:
“Another great concept from the brilliant mind of Whitey McConnaughy. This one came together super quick with the help of some insane Portland locals and their sick air guitar skills. We basically just threw a big party and had a blast while a bunch of cameras ran. That is my shower Aaron and Bryan and Bobcat are in at the intro, btw. It still has a weird ring around it…”
Cool. Anyways, here is “Hank is Dead”
(Is that paper aeroplane shot has an homage that terrible Korn video, or is it just us?)
Red Fang might divide some of you for not taking their shit too seriously but they can still hold a song together, and besides it’s all about the lifestyle: Beer, guitars, weed… The essentials. Why sweat the small stuff? Hey, someone’s got to score the party record. But—seriously—what the Portland, Oregon might lack in fury and the bummed-out angst to win the Palm D’Or across the board for video output alone.
“Hank is Dead” is the third time the band has worked with McConnaughy, having directed videos for “Prehistoric Dog” and “Wires”, and long may this meeting of minds continue.
“Prehistoric Dog”
“Wires”
“Hank is Dead” is taken from Red Fang’s Murder the Mountains, available now through Relapse. Buy it here.
And have a right good weekend.
The band’s name may not be familiar to the majority of you and their moniker isn’t going to help them stand out from the crowd, but Toronto’s Nephelium is bound to garner interest solely based on the fact that they originally called Dubai home. And not the “new” Dubai where everything seems like it prolapsed out of reality television’s most audacious and extravagant butthole. When Nephelium started, Dubai was still in crackdown mode when it came to the evils of western rock music. The band’s driving force, guitarist Alex Zubair, persevered through fourth generation cassette copies of the Big Four’s classic works, the stink eye from the religious police and general across-the-board disapproval and eventually found himself and co-conspirator, drummer Alan Madhavan, based in Toronto where these days they’re churning out death metal akin to heavyweights like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Vader and Nile. We caught up with Zubair recently to discuss the obvious as the band works to promote their upcoming debut full-length, Coils of Entropy.
I must admit, what initially drew me to your band was the story of you hailing from Dubai before settling in Toronto. How much of your history goes back to being a band in Dubai before coming over to Canada?
Yeah, we were a band in Dubai. Nephelium was formed by Alan and I when we used to live there. We started the band in the late 90s, probably about 1998.
Everyone has an idea of what they think about metal in the Middle East, especially after the Vice doc on Acrassicauda and Sam Dunn’s Global Metal, but Dubai is a bit more liberal, isn’t it?
It’s more cosmopolitan. It’s extremely liberal. You have multi-cultural people from all over the world there. It’s very Americanized and westernized even though it’s an Islamic country. Things have changed a lot. I remember back in the early 90s, I played in a band before Nephelium and we were known as the first thrash metal band in the country, Anthology, but we used to do a lot of covers of Testament, Pantera, Megadeth and Metallica and that sort of stuff back in the day. It was very difficult back then; people used to have to smuggle CDs back into the country when we would travel to Europe or North America and there was a very small community of guys from different schools and different parts of the world who would do this. There was no internet back then and it was totally different; it was more word of mouth. If you went to a shopping mall or something and you saw another metalhead wearing a t-shirt, you’d talk to them, exchange numbers so you could exchange music. That’s how we did it. When Nephelium started off, there were a lot of people, families and kids coming into Dubai and more bands were starting. I was pretty much done with Anthology and I wanted to do something different, something heavier. I got introduced to Alan. He was pretty young, but had great potential as a drummer and we started from there. It was an amazing experience. Now, it’s crazy over there; you have the Desert Rock festival and so many bands are going out to play it and there are a lot of bands coming out of Dubai. Recently, Arch Enemy, In Flames, Melechesh, Obscura and a bunch of others have played there. That was way after I left the country.
So, what was it like when you left?
There were a lot of fans and a lot of kids getting into metal. It was really good because the underground scene was way, way big. We’d throw shows and a lot of kids would come out but it got hard to throw private shows because a lot of kids would come out and the Islamic department would be pretty strict about things. We used to risk playing metal because you’d never know if or when the cops would come in and stop the show; and there were times when the cops would come in and stop shows and stuff like that. And people thought we were crazy for listening to extreme metal in the first place.
Speaking as someone who was born and raised in Toronto, grew up in and with the Toronto metal scene and knows how discouraging the city can be for anyone in a band, it must be asked: why the hell did you decide on Toronto as a home base?
That’s the question we always get! “Why Toronto? Why did you guys choose Toronto?” [laughter] Canada and Toronto is home; I’m Canadian. I have a lot of friends, family and stuff like that here and my dad was a civil engineer and traveled all over the place and when it was time to come back home, this was home. I thought that we couldn’t really push the band over there at that time when things were just taking off. So, Alan and I thought about it and this is what we decided; we even tried to get other members to come to Canada and they couldn’t. Our original singer and bassist were Lebanese and Turkish, respectively, and it was impossible or near-impossible for them to get visas to move them over here. So, I moved back in 2004 when things started taking off in the Middle East. In 2005, they had the first Desert Rock and Alan helped a band called Nervecell, who are now sort of huge in that region, by playing with them at that show. He also recorded the drums on their first demo. When he re-located here, Nervecell took off [laughs]. But, it’s definitely challenging because, unfortunately, it’s really bad to see how the local scene is supported here. It’s terrible, but it’s our city and we want to come out and represent our city. Maybe that will change the scene here?
After moving to Toronto, how long did it take to get started again and complete the line up?
It was a pretty hard. When I came back, I had a lot of friends here… the singer who sang on the record [Boyan Guerdjikov] was an old friend of mine who lived here and I got in contact with him, told him I was moving the band here and asked him if he was interested in joining and he was. Then, what I did was after I moved here was I went around exploring the Toronto scene and…well, you know how the Toronto scene is [laughter]. I went to shows trying to network with people, but it was all people who knew each other and were in bands who just wanted to play shows at the local clubs and try and get opening slots for bigger bands. You’re typical local band stuff [laughter]. I was a little disappointed because it was not like Montreal where there’s a huge scene and it’s the heavy metal capital of North America. I actually played in Burn to Black with Sam Dunn for awhile and saw Montreal in person and it was crazy. Everyone supports everyone over there. Toronto has great musicians it’s just…
Yeah, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve known the story for years…
[Laughter] Toronto is challenging for us because Toronto is home and we want to be known as a metal band from Toronto and Canada, but we just don’t want to be known as a local band or Canadian band. We want to be known internationally as a band representing Canada.
Since Coils of Entropy has been done have you gone back to Dubai with it to show old friends and fans?
Actually, the record gets released on February 7th and we’re planning on doing that. We’re going to line up a couple of shows in the Middle East then do a tour, hopefully, of Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan of course and go down to Bahrain and Dubai. The people are really, really excited; they’re waiting for this album and they’re waiting for us to play the Middle East.
What’s the story behind your having an almost entirely different line up now than the one that recorded the album?
The singer, after he recorded, he wanted to pursue his life. He went back to Bulgaria because he was really homesick and did his masters, which is completely understandable and respectable. Our bass player didn’t really want to pursue life as a musician. He left Toronto and moved back home to Peterborough, Ontario. Dan [Glover], the other guitar player, he had his own personal issues and he left the band.
How long did it take to revamp the line up?
It was hard because we had just finished the record and Alan and I had to go back to square one. We couldn’t do much. We had to look for good musicians, which is easy, but finding dedicated musicians is hard. In the end, we found amazing musicians; James [Sawyer] is an amazing guitar player and our bass player [Florian Ravet] is Belgian and he’s played in a couple bands out here but he wasn’t happy with them because he was too good for the bands he played in [laughter]. It just automatically clicked because all kind of knew each other before and we were looking for musicians. And honestly, the band has never been stronger.
Nephelium on MySpace
Nephelium on Facebook
The sirens have sounded, and gears too big to comprehend are turning. In the wake of MegaUpload swallowing a massive Viral Load, it’s time to hurry up and download anything at all that you think you might need in your music catalog. It’s crunch time. Our laissez faire internet and “music is free attitude” may someday be shattered by whatever nazi-communist forces are fucking with the good vibrations. One way or another, our liberal pinko internet will go the way of tube televisions and everything else. So hurry up and cash in. Shit, you pay for the internet, don’t you?
To get you started, I had one of my favorite music blogs, Black Insect Laughter, present their top five DLs. Appropriately, most of his files got taken down yesterday, by “them.” Which only serves to illustrate the point that you better hurry up and make that lemonade.
Albums that I always think everyone has but have found out not to be the case:
1. The Stooges – Raw Power
In 1973, this album burst out with distorted metal/proto-punk guitar riffs and vocals that sounded like they had been lifted from a primal scream therapy session. Fuck all the music historians, this kick-started punk!
[not pictured]
2. The Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks
When was the last time you played this? Do so now!
Albums that were released last year that should be heard:
3. Rational Animals – Bock Rock Parade
Hardcore and noise-rock crossed with Greg Ginn guitar work from the later Black Flag era – thrilling stuff. (Note: This album really is thrilling. - FL)
4. Arabrot – Solar Anus
Jesus Lizard song structures meet Melvins style sludge – add lashings of hardcore with throat shredding bellowing and heavy as fuck guitar work, this is a fearsome beast. (Note: This album is also very good. It got a good review. - FL)
Album that I would normally avoid:
5. Wolves In The Throne Room – Celestial Linage
Does this prove the “hipster” tag is correct? BM leaves me cold but something about this album just did it for me.
As any old schooler can attest to, gender equality in metal has never been better. But that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a very vocal contingent of the ever expanding scene that thinks chicks are dumb sluts who only go to shows because they’re drawn by the arousing potpourri of dread, sweat and a beer shit someone took in the unisex bathroom.
So it’s nice to see a column such as Girls Don’t Like Metal, which aims to give a monolithic middle finger to every lonely chode who thinks only men can dissect the subtle nuances of pig squeals.
This particular interview is with Kim Kelly, who you may know from her incredible music writing, her PR company Catharsis or that one time I emailed her thinking she was a dude (again, sorry about that.)
This isn’t a puff piece, but instead shows that not only can women talk about metal but they can talk about it in a trvly inspiring fashion:
It’s hard to explain to the uninitiated, but that strangeness, otherness, the darkness that permeates our world and keeps us isolated from the mainstream—it’s really fucking special.
And no, she wasn’t wearing a bikini when she wrote that.
How does the commentary track thing work? Are you talking over the music in real-time or is the commentary track spliced in after it’s finalized?
Fenriz: Lord have mercy! Just listening to Viking’s Do or Die album from ‘87 on vinyl and starting the interview. Well, it works like a commentary track on a movie—I only heard the Futurama commentary, so I figured it would have to be a bit informative and funny perhaps—I reckon. I listen to the album the week before or day before or what have you, and then I plug my mic into my mixer and record my voice on Vinyl Studio recording program while listening to the album on rather low volume in headphones via a CD player. Ain’t nothing more to it. [Laughs] Splicing? We never/I never spliced anything in my entire life, we always did everything we could in real time. I don’t know any fancy tricks and I doubt Ted knows either on the studio we had since ’05, we only use the basic functions. If Saxon or Sadus didn’t need any more, we don’t either.
Can you give us a commentary peek? Maybe something you said about the track “Vinterskugge” or “Storm of Evil”?
Fenriz: What, you want me to listen to my own commentary disc? That’s perverse! [Laughs] No, I just cross (inverted?) my fingers and hope I said something festive and infotainment-like. It could be anything as far as I remember. I did quite a lot of them already, and on top of that I went up to Trysil area where Ted now lives again (he also lived there before, he [had already] moved away from the black metal circle in Oslo in December ’91, I think) and did three more albums with him there.
Can you separate the three Isengard demos and talk about what they mean in context of Vinterskugge?
Fenriz:
A. Spectres over Gorgoroth
Well, I never meant for Vinterskugge (Winter Shadow) to be a usual album, it was bound to be a round-up of tracks from the get go. I always thought the Spectres over Gorgoroth demo from summer of ‘89 was too good to just wither away on some tapes, gathering dust in the global underground. Great to have it out on a real CD. The demo came to be because I had decided to quit doing vocals in Darkthrone, but I always wanted to do vocals, so I continued with the Isengard project. I also had some influences that didn’t fit into the new technical death metal direction of Darkthrone at the time. Isengard was a bit more groovy and primitive. I also had the chance that summer to fool around with Valhall’s 4-track studio (later known as Necrohell for Darkthrone) and learn to record and rig and engineer everything myself. So, it was a very true [Laughs] solo project, as I did everything myself. Calling the whole album Vinterskugge was a small tribute to the excellent Treblinka (or was it Tiamat?) demo A Winter Shadow, which seemed almost forgotten at the time. And also it was a very fitting title for the front cover and for the whole “Norwegian Language into the Metal Realm” -line many of us had at the time.
** OK, now I switched to Vio-Lence’s Eternal Nightmare album from ‘88, had to remove a bug from the grooves, one can do that with ones nails. The reason a vinyl usually skips is because some little bug is stuck in the grooves, real scratches are seldom. Still many people sadly don’t know this. I had that album when it came out but didn’t dig it much, Ivar had Necrophagia’s Season of the Dead, but he didn’t dig that much, I had already gotten that via tape trading from Nicke A. from Nihilist, So I knew it was good, so we traded. Later, I gave that vinyl away to an ex-girlfriend. During the last decade I had to buy them both back. Almost never get rid of vinyl—that’s the lesson learned. Oh well. Where were we? **
Oh yeah, the demo came out in secrecy, with a secret contact address, so no one could know it was me. It was also added as extra bonus demo on Valhall’s second demo Amalgamation. But nothing really came of it. I also had to quit Valhall and put Isengard on hold late in ’89, as we were landing a record deal with Darkthrone and I had to concentrate solely on Darkthrone, something I never regretted much. [Laughs]
B. Horizons
** Shit, now I gotta get my ass out of the bed to actually get the promo CD (I lost the real CD to Vinterskugge about 15 years ago and always only had the promo). [Laughs] **
Horizons are the tracks that were very different. Maybe I was uncertain of these tracks, but three of them turned out to be some of the seminal Isengard tracks—it’s easy to say in hindsight. “The Fog” was recorded in early ’91, I think. I was having a craving for playing black metal, although the track…well, OK, it actually is black metal, perhaps the first black metal track I ever made and recorded. I can remember another one that was very noisy and chaotic inspired by first Mayhem demo. It was recorded, but I decided to scrap it, could have been in January ‘91 or something. “The Fog” was the first attempt at making black metal anyway. “Storm of Evil” is still the track that stands out and I will always look upon it as real Isengard-kind of Sisters of Mercy inspired and then the totally killer metal riffs in the middle part there. Uh! Execute! Then, the last track must have been me being never satisfied with the drum sound I could get out of one mic—all Isengard drums are recorded with one mic, also Transilvanian Hunger and Panzerfaust drums were recorded like that—so, I probably tried something else, but the drum sound is so fucked that I thought no one would like the track perhaps, and promptly put it in the very end of the album as a joker. In the ‘00s, a lot of veterans with very cool taste in metal and doom told me that this was their fave track. Oh well, I probably talk about these things a lot in the commentary tracks anyway.
C. Vandreren
Maybe I did think of doing an Isengard album anyway? ’Cuz this, the first chapter is in a way the album. Don’t know why. I thought it was all hunky dory and fresh at the time I recorded it (perhaps ‘92-‘93), but now I think it is very, very uneven. But wait! I talk about this in the commentary tracks too, of course. And I probably only really dislike that “Fanden Lokker Til Stupet” track, and not super happy with the Viking metal either. But it turns out that this was the reason Isengard sold and sold and sold constantly, and inspired many to-be folk metal acts. God, I hate folk metal. I was inspired by Bathory’s Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods a bit, but mostly my inspirations for the Norwegian notes in Isengard was me just being Norwegian, playing and singing with a Norwegian twist. Everyone in mine and earlier generations heard traditional Norwegian music, so we can probably play something in this style if you hand us a guitar or a vocal mic. So, that was that.
4. Do you know why track sequence is in mixed chronology? You start off with the Vandreren demo and follow it with the Spectres over Gorgoroth demo.
Fenriz: Yeah, I don’t see why it should be anything within some set of rules. I am a DJ and I spread it out like I know how. And according to sales and how inspirational it became, it was probably right to start with what I thought was my freshest material at the time. As explained above, I think a lot of the other tracks were more daring and fresh now, but that’s the way it was.
A lot of people say they hear Joy Division in post-”Spectres over Gorgoroth” Isengard. Were they influences?
Fenriz: [Laughs] Great question! No, hadn’t even heard them at the time. I acknowledge them, but my fave Joy Division track is a cover song of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Squarepusher. It’s sacrilege to say that, I know, but it’s the truth and I can’t lie, so. Not my fave band, nor is Throbbing Gristle or that band who had that “The Wait” song…Killing Joke? I first heard that song covered by Metallica. Metallica did a lot to try to make people understand where their ‘extreme metal’ came from, but no one took heed. Same with Slayer. They did an entire punk album to get the point across, but to this day there are millions of metal people denying that ‘80s metal came from punk and prog rock; and heavy rock dating back to the ‘60s even. I’m talking about grown men here. For shame.
Why did you decide to perform Isengard by yourself? Was it more who was available or unavailable at the time?
Fenriz: No, I had solo projects since I could. Summer of ‘87 I started that shit. Making a song on guitar. Then having that song in my head while playing and recording drums onto a tape deck. Then playing that tape with the drums on stereo in the reh[earsal] place while playing the guitar stuff to it and growling while it was recorded on the cassette deck again. Sounded horrible. And got caught up in Darkthrone after that. But I did two demos (luckily lost) that way before starting Darkthrone in late ‘87. So, then I took it easy with the solo shit until I could learn the Valhall studio in ‘89 and so do the Isengard demo. I remember I had around nine inspirational sources written down for Isengard at the time. Nihilist, Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Necrophagia, first Immolation demo (those two tracks still rule in hell!), Candlemass (last riff on the demo), and then I don’t remember any more now.
** Gotta go turn the Vio-Lence album over…Intense stuff, like Viking too, but the new Nekromantheon [click HERE to stream a cut] album is the best all-intense thrash album ever recorded. Nothing slow on it. Even Darkness Descends has a slow song… **
I think the Vandreren demo became kind of a blueprint for folk metal. Not just the stuff that’s currently making the rounds, but at the time nationalism (whether extreme or not) was sweeping underground music. Do think Isengard (and then perhaps more concretely Storm) was one of many catalysts for folk metal as it exists today? Of course, Bathory predated Isengard a bit and had more of a profile.
Fenriz: Wasn’t a demo, that was recorded for the Peaceville underlabel Dreamtime. I think maybe, or was it called Deaf? Yeah, Quorthon went totally against the grain and did two slow Viking metal albums when no one else even thought along those lines. That’s why he is one of the few in the scene I always respected. So, he deserves a lot of credit. Then there was Skyclad, but I wasn’t inspired by them, you see. They were so pro anyway, but it was a bit too jolly or merry if you like, and that’s where most of those making folk metal fucked up. Soon, it sounded like some up-metalled Irish folk music, very bad taste. So, I always just stuck to ‘70s folk rock and those two Bathory albums, because that was all that was out there. Except Skyclad. Which was OK. But after Storm, I didn’t listen to any other upcoming bands of the style, except to the extent that I had to take it off my player in dismay. Later, I came to like a project by that guy also playing in Zemial. That was decent Viking/folk. I’m sure there are many out there that doesn’t suck, but triggered bass drums fucked up most of that genre as well, I’m afraid. Gonna shut up about it now.
Do you remember why you (and other members of the Norwegian black metal scene) were so elusive to the press? Did it have to do with the way the media treated the murder of Øystein Aarseth and the church burnings? In his METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries book Jon Kristiansen hints that the media and the police brutalized the naiveté of then-young black metallers to get what they wanted.
Fenriz: Metalion was the press, but remember I’d been doing the UG [underground] thing since all ’87, ‘88 and ‘89 and ‘90, and I was fucking tired of it in ’91, so I needed a break. Also no journos understood black metal in ‘91 or ‘92, but when shit hit the fan in ‘93—oh, suddenly, everyone was covering it. The style they didn’t understand. They would have needed to listen to first Sodom and early Bathory a lot before writing. But most did not. So, I took a long break. Which led to a lot of rumors and misunderstandings that I started sorting out through interviews starting ‘98 and I never stopped since then. I did some interviews ‘91-’97, but not many. Having a regular job (which I still have since ‘88) in that media circus wasn’t exactly a field day. It was a pretty dire situation over here, I can tell you. But I held court in public at the Elm Street Rock Café [in] downtown Oslo all those years (‘91-‘97) when I didn’t do many interviews, so people could meet me face to face and also people started visiting there from literally all around the world from ‘94 and forward until I pulled away year by year ‘01-’05. I had enough of that circus as well. In ‘05, as you know, I started doing a lot of work for real metal in the global underground again, like I did in ‘87-’91, but now I could promote other bands even more, which now has culminated in the three years and running Band of the Week bonanza and Live Evil festival in England; and now my own vinyl series BotW Fenriz Presents by Cargo Records Germany. The most important thing about interviews is always were people talk about other bands. That’s how I often felt.
** Gotta go change record again. Hmm…be right back…Ah, Endless Pain by Kreator, that’s never wrong. Got it as back patch on one of my three metal vests, woohoo!! **
When Vinterskugge (and let’s not forget the Neptune Towers debut) came out in ’94, it kind of shocked many Darkthrone fans to the core. I remember reading ‘zines and many editors couldn’t get past the fact you were doing music different from Darkthrone. What do you recall as far as feedback was concerned?
Fenriz: I can recall nothing, doing interviews since ‘88 I didn’t often ask for a copy myself as many were in languages I didn’t understand and also I was too busy recording albums and working shifts full-time and spending a lot of time at Elm Street. I probably also thought it was wimpy to always wanting to read about oneself. I got royalties and spent it on beer and taxis and my girls over those years. ’95, I also got interested in DJ-ing, not only thrash metal (one of the styles I know best), but buying turntables and learning how to beat mix, making DJ mix tapes from ‘95 and onwards… Still DJ-ing all kinds of stuff, one night isn’t like the next one, to say it carefully. [Laughs] Anyway up here, it was always encouraged to be open-minded. Liking only one style was a rare exception from the rule. In horror, I would slowly learn that metallers from many other countries were only into metal and felt it was a war against other music. I was always open-minded as hell. Evil has no boundaries and if they wanted to chain me I would break those chains. People should break their musical head-chains. Wow, that came out clumsily. [Laughs] So, I don’t remember feedback from Isengard, just got plenty of royalties. Satanic royalties. [Laughs] Midnight reference, his new album, good song.
In a ’94 issue of Terrorizer you were interviewed by Rob Clymo and said, “As I said, we [Darkthrone] don’t give any interviews and we don’t want to talk about anything, especially the Isengard album which is not an especially interesting piece of music.” Still true?
Fenriz: Well, I had other things on my mind. Recording other albums, for instance. I always forged ahead, and what is most interesting is that when I started doing interviews in ‘88 and I sometimes got the magazines like let’s say three months after, I was like, “Did I say that?!” Oh boy. I always change so fast, and this still happens a lot. Like it will with this intie, too. If I read it again in half a year I would go, “Who’s that rookie talking?” [Laughs] Anyway, I figure I was right in just not commenting on the album. It went fine on its own. Still does, I reckon. But thank you for caring and interviewing me! Don’t forget to listen to Manilla Road.
** Peaceville has re-issued both Isengard albums as 2-CD sets, with a bonus commentary disc. You can order them HERE. Trust us, if this little ditty above, where Fenriz stars as himself, is entertaining to you, the commentary discs for Isengard are damn near comedy gold. Fenriz stand-up world tour, opening for a reunited Dark Angel? That would be sweet!
