Metal Archeology: Artifacts of a lifetime devoted to metal (Part 1)

Just as archeology draws upon the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics and paleontology, metal archeology draws from other sources...mostly old Wild Rags catalogs. How else can you perform accurate carbon dating on my Gammacide 12"?

Just as archeologists carefully dig through piles of rubble in search of artifacts that can give us further information about previous societies, I too have chosen to dig through my own personal rubble in search of answers and artifacts. After what has been nearly a lifelong commitment to metal (in one way or another), I have accumulated assorted artifacts which bring back memories of the past. I have discussed my homemade Morbid Angel shirt, my autographed Obituary drumsticks, my guitar pick collection and other items from my past in previous posts. I shall now continue in that direction, aiming to dig deep into my past (a sometimes embarrassing past) in order to make sense of just who I was at the time. Part archeology dig, part psychotherapy session, I hope this series of ongoing posts will prove to be both insightful and therapeutic to our devoted readers. I shall call this new science: Metal Archeology. Let's get started.


The autographed Impetigo Picture

What an insanely fashionable bunch. "Violate caskets"? Uh...okay.
Notice Stevo's variation on the "holding a grapefuit" pose...apparently the grapefruit he's holding is super heavy.

While at my brother's home only weeks ago I saw a small pile of metal rubble which, to a metal archeologist like me, seemed like an unmistakable sign that amazing finds could lay within its depths. I asked permission to go through the pile, and was quickly rewarded with the item you see above, a picture of Impetigo signed by Mark, and dedicated to my brother. As quickly as I found the picture, the memories began pouring in.

It was a very different time back then. The early 90s (for those of us involved in underground metal culture) was a time largely spent "doing mail", as we called it then. At the risk of sounding like a grandpa, there was no email then, or inexpensive ways to call long distance. As a result of this, all communication was done via mail, and if you were involved in a band, distro, zine or booking shows, you ended up doing significant amounts of mail. In the early 90s, it was primarily my brother who would spend entire Saturdays "doing mail." I did my fair amount of writing, mostly trading death metal videos with other weirdos like Pat from Hellwitch. Doing mail on Saturday, meant going through the envelopes and packages that had arrived all week, and fulfilling orders, answering letters and the like. Out of the suburban basement that we shared at our parents house, we ran what I guess you could call a label, and a distro, as well as a video 'zine, a band, and several awful side projects. We also began to book shows at some point, and did a weekly radio for nearly a decade. These were mostly my brother's projects, in which I played a secondary role. All these projects combined meant a substantial amount of mail was constantly pouring in, filled with all kinds of demos for trade, free shirts, and the occasional box of free CD's and 7" records from Wild Rags (as a result of me being in what today would be referred to as their street team.)

I would often find myself on Saturdays dubbing hours and hours worth of concert footage in order to trade a video with some dude in Ecuador, or Greece. My video list was extensive, and had a few choice pieces that were consistently requested by all kinds of people who sent me their video lists on an almost weekly basis.

When people say that a certain musical scene felt more tightly knit at an earlier time, I usually cringe...but in retrospect it may have been true. We didn't know any of the people we wrote to, so perhaps "tight" is not the right way to put it, but the sheer amount of time and effort that you had to invest into any project always ended up consuming a substantial amount of your days. In case you're wondering, all of our efforts (however awful they were) mostly revolved around the underground death metal and the noise/grindcore scenes of the day. Few, if any, of these bands had any vinyl out, and certainly no CDs. The only acceptable format was cassette. In the case of noise bands, all the official releases were dubbed onto TDK 60 minute tapes, along with cheap, photocopied covers.

See, like any real metal fans back then, we concentrated our efforts primarily around unsigned bands whose demos we would get in the mail. Along with the demos, flier trading was common and popular. As such, we would often send individuals as many as a hundred fliers for our radio show, which they would then send out in each package and letter they sent out to other people all over the world. It was this way that bands from Turkey and Sweden would end up sending us their records and tapes so they could be played in a station they would never hear. If anyone was heavily into trading back then, you'll probably remember that the band Phantasm easily had the most fliers in circulation. Those guys must have all worked at Kinkos or something.

It was in this climate that my brother and I would often befriend (if only by mail) members of bands that we loved, such as Impetigo. I'm not sure how the correspondence with Impetigo began, perhaps my brother can clarify, but I'm sure it was something like us buying their VHS video through the mail, or them sending us music to be played on the radio show. Either way, Mark from Impetigo's letters and packages became a fixture in our mailbox. I distinctly remember him being the first person I knew who asked for his stamps back whenever you wrote him. At first, I didn't understand why he would want his stamps back, but quickly realized that he was coating them with a thin film of Elmer's glue or soap, making the ink of the post office's rubber stamp come off with water, thus making them usable once again. My brother and I quickly adapted the trick ourselves, making our budget for stamps and postage suddenly become much lower. As a result of this latest trick, our small basement bathroom sink was usually filled with water, in which stamps were left to soak in order to be reused. I distinctly remember our hand towel (which hung under our Order From Chaos poster) being used for endless rows of stamps that were left to dry by the sink.

It was in one of these exchanges of mail with Mark from Impetigo that he sent the picture to my brother.

The picture hung above my brother's desk for many years, the desk where he would sit for hours on Saturday mornings and afternoons to "do mail."