Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Metal Inquisition Archives: Oh the memories


Last night, as I went down into the basement to do laundry (my butler is on vacation), I saw the Metal Inquisition archives sitting on the shelf ,where they have been for some months now. As you may all know by now, the Smithsonian has gone back on their word regarding admitting our files into their permanent collection. It's for that reason that the archives have been sitting there, collecting dust, waiting for one of the M.I. interns to catalog and sift through the endless amount of material that my brother and I collected over the years. Since that has yet to happen (Sergeant D has all of our interns busy washing his new car), I thought I should take matter into my own hands. As I began to wash my whites (aside from properly naming my mp3 files, I'm also diligent about separating my colored clothing from my whites during the wash cycle), I thought I would skim through the archives and see what I could uncover to share with you. I opened the lid, and this is what I found. Hope you enjoy it.



Right now you're probably thinking to yourself "What? A flower? Is Lucho one of them gays?" Well, let me explain. First of all, let me tell you that saying "them gays" makes you sound retarded. Second of all, if you were at all into true metal, you'd recognize the signature at the bottom. That's right bitches, this flower was drawn by none other that Obituary's Trevor Peres. Some of you may question my metal credentials...but let me ask you this: How many Trevor Peres original pieces of art hang on your walls? Zero? I thought so.

This fine piece of metal ephemera dates back to 1992. My brother and I had just moved from Miami to the god damned midwest. Within a week of moving, we saw that Obituary would be playing, and also doing an in-store appearance in a suburban strip mall. We boarded my mom's Subaru, and off we went to meet our metal heroes. I remember that that Obituary arrived in a slightly dated, slightly beat up white limo. You know what's more embarrassing than arriving in a sub-par limo? Well, how about arriving in a sub-par limo when there are only like eight people there to see you. That's exactly what happened. Since there were so few people there, we all got a fair amount of time to talk to the band...which I'm sure they just loved. What else would any band like more than sitting there talking to a teenage version of me. Doesn't that sound like fun? Because I had so much time with them, I got them to sign every single Obituary thing I owned. Due to the extreme boredom that the band members were enduring, Trevor mostly sat there drawing flowers. This struck me as funny, since he looked exactly like the Cryptkeeper's ugly brother. I asked if I could have one of the flowers, he looked at me kinda' funny..and gave it to me. I asked him to sign it, and he again looked at me funny. Was it worth it? Hell yes!





My brother and I used to sit at our desks for hours upon hours making beautiful artwork roughly based on the covers of our favorite records. This one was done by my brother, at a time when he was rightfully obsessed with Sacred Reich. I mean, aside from their awful name (seriously, "Reich"?) the band ruled his/our world. I love how the band's logo is dripping blood, the skull character is all creepy looking and yet "the american way" is rendered in such a happy, swoopy typeface. In case you're wondering, this piece dates back to 1992 also. Pencil on notebook paper. It will be available at the Metal Inquisition auction through Sotheby's next spring.





I never liked Flotsam and Jetsam. Did anyone? This picture dates back to 1993, when they were still being billed as "the band that Jason Newsted used to be in." They toured with Death that summer, along with Epidemic. I'm not sure how, but I got backstage at that show. I remember seeing Gene Hoglan trip as he went up the stairs backstage. He had a cane, and could barely move at all. I was told by two people, right after he tripped, that he had fallen off the drum riser two nights earlier in Detroit. The cause? Both people said Gene took massive amounts of speed, and would often loose basic coordination as a result. Who the hell knows if that's true. The other thing I remember about that night was how amazing Death were. They were touring for Human, and the audience was insanely happy to see them. Flotsam and Jetsam must have seen the writing on the wall. Thrash was over, and the best they were able to do was to try to look "grunge". They were so confused, and I felt so bad for them. Their music was slow, boring and went nowhere. Many would describe Death in the same manner...but that's besides the point.

I found this picture backstage, sitting on a small desk in a hallway. I looked at it, and noticed one of the guys from Flotsam and Jetsam looking at me. I felt bad passing up the picture as he was looking at me, so I picked it up and put it in my pocket. After the show, there was a huge fight between like twenty skinheads in the parking lot. Why were there so many skinhads at metal shows in the early 90s? These were not just metal dudes with shaved heads and boots, but full-on skinheads with stupid Vespa patches on their jackets. Weird.





Last but not least, I present you with this: my brother's book cover for his Chem 1 textbook, circa 1992. Although I was pretty good at bustin' out some metal art...my brother was the king. His lettering was always much better, and his pentagrams always looked way sweeter. I know you can't see this in the scan I'm posting, but "Lombardo" has a whited-out mistake. When I looked at it closely, it appears as though it was originally spelled "Lombrado", and later fixed. I had a few book covers just like this one, which my brother was nice enough to make for me. I loved them, but in retrospect realize that these things worked like girl kryptonite. Oh well. It was all worth it. Wasn't it?

41 comments:

  1. Awesome post! Drawing flowers? Very not-brutal. Who knew that Obituary was full of them gays?

    "Sergeant D has all our interns busy washing his new car"

    For some reason, this flicked a switch in my mind and brought up this extremely wiggerish In Flames video.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX1cHtdttHM

    Although the actual car-washing doesn't start until 2:36 of the way in, watch the whole thing for some GOLDEN arm movements from Dreadlock McSwede.

    Does this video accurately portray a day in the life of the Metal Inquisition staff?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh, that video is awful. I bet the concept for it was pitched as "a day in the life of In Flames". Driving a Hummer? That's not metal. has the whole world gone nuts? everyone knows that drawing flowers at an in-store appearance is the most metal thing ever. god, things have changed.

    btw, i don't think the video is too far off from our daily lives actually. I usually prefer the automatic touch-less carwash myself...and i wash my bike with diluted Simple Green degreaser...but aside from that, it's pretty much dead on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was about to ask many times during the last months what happened with all the drawings and all that stuff you found at your parents house, but I didn't do it. Nice to see you found them (again) and now we have another piece about metal archeology.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's a pretty sweet Chem 1 book cover. I didn't have a slayer book cover. I did have the chance to "spray" paint Slayer on the road I lived in suburban MD. I say "spray" because just before I decided to use it to write slayer on the road, my friend and I thought we should throw it at the curb until it exploded. (we would often do this with lighters that didn't work) needless to say the spray paint did not explode. instead the can sort of leaked/sprayed white paint out the top. It was at this point I decided that what the road was missing was the slayer logo. I was right.
    There was also a Pizza Hut nearby that had slayer carved into almost every table in it. I think it's gone now, but those tables were some pretty great tables.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I used to cover my school books in Metal logos. My mates did the same thing, one of them, he was a fucking great artist then and still is, drew a Cliff Burton flipping the bird with 'FUCK OFF AND DIE' written above on the cover of his maths book. Needless to say the Meathead PE teacher who was head of year had a very dim view of the whole thing.

    Another non-metal friend of mine misread Sacred Reich's logo as Sacred Belch. A name that suits them much better I think.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Does this video accurately portray a day in the life of the Metal Inquisition staff?

    The other day I went to see Machine Head, Megadeth and Suicide Silence with the usual Weedsteeler/Homage Clothing gang of idiots. I was late getting there and didn't want to look for a parking spot, and said under my breath "I hope they have valet so I can just fucking pay somebody"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yes, the hummer was a very non-metal touch. The only thing missing from the L.A. music video cliches handbook was a scene with gangbangers or firearms. Because the music is tough and urban, yeah?

    Keep posting these drawings, they're awesome... though I doubt anything you can post will beat 'Welcome to the hell'.

    Sgt D, presumably you got to witness the very first victim of Rob Flynn's Disease in the flesh, unless you left after Suicide Silence. How was Rob's wardrobe? 3/4 length pants? Big zips everywhere? A hoodie perhaps?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rob Flynn is sponsored by the YKK zipper company.

    ReplyDelete
  9. DUDE! CEREBRAL HOLOCAUST!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I guess the flower drawing was a bit early to be some kind of Opeth-inspired deal. That's what I thought of when I first saw it.

    I never did do anything to my books in high school (hell I didn't even open half of 'em.) I used to put the page-size posters from Metal Maniacs in my locker and all over my room. I stopped with my room after I realized Scotch Tape doesn't hold stuff to the walls very well.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I work at a school and it's kindof sad to me that there aren't really any kids who make bookcovers like that anymore... or tapecases or whatever... I remember discovering clear contact paper and covering all of my binders and bookcovers with not only sweet band logos and drawings but also with actual pictures cut out of metal magazines... also discovering that you could unscrew a cassette tape and color in the little gray slips of plastic with permanent marker and tape in little pictures of t shirt designs clipped from rockabillia ads or whatever...
    oh, the memories...

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm glad 'the condor' brought that up. There was train bridge in my area that, as teenagers, we would go to in the summer and drink beer, smoke weed and jump off of into the canal. You could only get there by bike, so we weren't wooried much. During the early-mid 90's, all the kids would spray paint "Nirvana" or some other miserable grunge logos all over it. I was that asshole who sprayed over them with Slayer and Megadeth logos. :-D This is what I did to kill time in and around Niagara Falls, Canada....

    ReplyDelete
  13. There was train bridge in my area that, as teenagers, we would go to in the summer and drink beer, smoke weed and jump off of into the canal.

    We had something like that at my high school; we called it "Drug Trail." My friend Austin fucked his girlfriend Charity on a mattress there in some bushes, next to an overturned shopping cart.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Awesome piece Lucho. Paper book covers were so sweet. For some reason I used to use the brown paper bags (BEFORE plastic ones!!) from the grocery store.

    I think I wrote the Anthrax logo in school more than a wrote my own name. Duh.

    ReplyDelete
  15. how come the "skull character" on top of the Sacred Reich,in between the d and the R,looks like a sad toucan sam bird with a shoestring hanging over its beak?

    ReplyDelete
  16. i've heard Sarge describe his friend banging Charity on the mattress by the overturned shopping cart like ten times before...but I still giggle every time. there's something so picturesque about it. I can imagine the scene...it's just amazing and still makes me laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  17. When I first looked at the Sacred Reich drawing, I thought it said "Sacred BELCH," which I thought was a pretty funny way to adapt that ridiculous name. Then I read below, and saw it was more a wishing on my part. Sigh. The flower pic/story is terrific!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Thanks Lucho, I threw mudhoney away and listened to some Gorguts, Obituary and Death. Im cured!

    ReplyDelete
  19. My friend and I used to draw all over our book covers in 7th grade - I remember learning to draw the pentagram from the Morbid Angel album covers and drawing on the cover to my math book. I was showing it to my friend, when I heard a voice behind me say "Can I see it too?" It was the math teacher - who was also the principal - and this was a Catholic school. That didn't end well :D

    ReplyDelete
  20. oh man..memories..i had logo's and blood/sword/skull art on my books, my book bag, exercise books and my denim jacket. i used to make my own cassette art too. combined with a mullet and glasses I was THE biggest girl repellent :)

    sadly all those art treasures are all gone, except maybe for one or two cassettes i still have

    ReplyDelete
  21. Death Race,
    Glad I could help. I was a little worried about you.

    ReplyDelete
  22. That flower is better than anything I could draw at all. I fuckin suck at drawing, Trevor's art is cool, instead.

    The coolest thing I came up with in high school is the MORTAL FUNGUS logo, a complete Morbid Angel rip off!

    And..are you sure Death was touring for "Human"? Have you seen Santolla playing that night?

    ReplyDelete
  23. "Rob Flynn is sponsored by the YKK zipper company."

    hahahahaha

    ReplyDelete
  24. Re: Flotsam and Jetsam, according to their webpage, they once lost a bass player to Prong. How humiliating THAT must have been.

    ReplyDelete
  25. death toured for human..i saw em with viogression..pestilence cancelled..it was with the cynic guy on guitar,who had a weird guitar playing style where hed get all crouched on the ground..weird.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Flotsam & Jetsam were actually pretty damn tight, they might have sounded a bit 'dated' or not fast enough for the semi newer crowd that thought faster and indecipherable was 'cooler' but we all know where that lead Metal, down the drain with a new crop of bands that all started to sound the same and ended up killing the whole damn genre all together. Yeah awesome, now we have Hatebreed and a legion of other generic offerings thanks to kids like Lucho not being able to realize the greatness that was Thrash Metal.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I believe thrash pretty much killed itself, in a certain way...all aggression was gone when half-thrashy albums like "The ritual", "The black album" (easy target), "When the storm comes down", "I hear black", "Countdown to extinction", "The american way", and so on came out.

    In that period, Death ("Spiritual healing" -era), was thrashier than most thrash bands...

    ReplyDelete
  28. Flotsam and Jetsam was pretty much a poor man's Forbidden.

    ReplyDelete
  29. thrash died when all those stupid hair farmer bands started getting big. all those pretty boy bands like testament and forbidden,with their big white shoes and side parted hair. theyd take their pictures with their head leaned to one side,so their "sweet" hair would cover one eye. thats when it died..just like when all the hair farmers from florida turned "death" metal just like bay area thrash.

    anything good gets shitty when the pretty boy hair farmers take it over.

    ReplyDelete
  30. thanks to kids like Lucho
    I think he is 32?? When does he stop being a kid?

    ReplyDelete
  31. Flotsam and Jetsam and forbidden both suck major ass!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Bobovdeath, your theory is a bit twisted, but I can see your point. I too noticed that some thrashers leaned their head to one side during photosessions...

    ReplyDelete
  33. I used to put brown paper bag coers on my text books in the mid-80's just to have to space to draw band logos. Not that I could a straight line, but I still snjoyed it. Then like a month later I'd flip the book cover inside out so I could do more rough looking logos and poor drawings on that side too.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Nice post.

    I have a bunch of metal drawings from high school as well. found a bunch of KISS from Jr. High as well too.

    I used to piss of the art teacher and sit there and draw huge poster-sized bands logos (Scorps, Ac/DC, Metallica and my fav to draw OVER KILL yes with the metal "bat)!

    I wish had more of these but I always gave them away.

    Take care....sweet blog.

    Peace,

    Curt King
    Demolish Fanzine
    http://demolishmag.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  35. great art. reminds of my folders and book covers back in high school when I tried to write every metal name(s) from the Wild Rags catalog. ha ha

    ReplyDelete
  36. Yearning for trendy looking even under the cold weather? cheap north face jackets would be your choice. The great warmth and comfort offered guarantee you to gear up for cold-weather work or play.Now you can buy north face products online,you can find cheap northface jackets much cheaper.There is no reason to look dowdy in the cold weather with this fabulous buy.

    ReplyDelete
  37. I dugg some of you post as I cogitated they were very useful very useful

    ReplyDelete
  38. Hey man ,
    Glad great post you have one here . Like and admire your post .

    ReplyDelete
  39. Interesting post. I Have Been wondering about this issue, so thanks for posting. Pretty cool post. It’s really very nice and Useful post 카지노

    ReplyDelete
  40. I do trust all of the concepts you have presented to your post.
    They’re very convincing and can certainly work. 토토사이트

    ReplyDelete
  41. I like the valuable information you provide
    in your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. 토 토

    ReplyDelete