Black metal truth > Black metal fiction

It’s always easy to make fun of black metal, especially here on Metal Inquisition. When truth is stranger than fiction, it always hits harder when any satirical, sarcastic or cynical blogger presents cold, hard facts in place of any clever hyperbole. So, in an effort to bridge both the worlds of humor and reality I hit up Ula Gehert with some questions.

In case you don’t know who Ula is, let me give you the quick and skinny. Besides being an awesome human being, Ula has cut his teeth on some serious metal for years. Regarded as one the few honest and dedicated devotees of metal working in the business, he joined the ranks of Century Media Records back in the summer of ’94, this after extensive metal fandom that’ll make you’re head spin – read on for proof. He’s spent some serious time at the CM U.S. office before heading over seas to spearhead metal on European shores out of the CM German office.

One tiny, highly specialized niche Ula bore witness to – and helped mold – was Century Black, which was Century Media’s grab for black metal glory around the mid-late 90s. Although short lived, I’ve always viewed it as an unsung player in the proliferation of black metal, for better or worse, around the globe. (Sorry for the length, besides being a metal dork, I'm also a metal fan. Thanks for indulging me...)

So how did Century Black come about?

Ula: The credit for that comes down to Rayshele Teige, who was doing promotion for Century Media at the time and who was the person responsible for pushing Robert Kampf (one of the owners of CM) to do a black metal imprint, and she first started by pushing him to release the Mayhem album "De Mysteriis...". A good choice, to be sure, and it took a while to get out in the States because of delays getting things going, getting permission from Voices Of Wonder and working out the licensing details, etc., but she really pushed to make that happen and it worked. Not long after that she got Robert to release the Arcturus debut full-length "Aspera Hiems Simfonia", and so they worked out that licensing deal too.

(No joke, Century Media Record's entry on Wikipedia calls their Century Black imprint the 'Miramax Films of black metal...' I wish I could take credit for that analogy.)

Rayshele was really the driving force behind the black metal titles, and I think she coined the label imprint name as well. Once the floodgates started opening, so to speak, with so many titles being made available for licensing in the States, since so many albums were released in Europe only back then, it just took a life of its own.

Can you explain the state of Century Media at the time? From what I hear, around 96/97 – the main time of ‘Century Black’ - it was pretty bare as bones.

Ula: It was definitely bare bones. I started with CM in the summer of '94 and it was about seven other people working there in the US. The office was on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica, in a pretty drab office space. There was one of the owners working there, the accountant, a radio guy, Rayshele working promotion along with another girl, and a guy doing retail. At the time I started, I came in to do promotion as well, and at the same time a guy came in to do A&R for the States, and they also hired a warehouse guy. The second promo girl left, and they replaced the retail guy, and then hired a label manager. But generally you were looking at around 7 or 8 people back then, and so everyone was multitasking like mad.

The German office was the founding office back in ’88 and so that was running quite smoothly; the US office opened in late 1990 and it took quite a few years, and quite a few combinations of people, until things balanced out by the latter part of the ‘90s. If you compare that with how it was about 6 years later, when there were 30 people on staff in Germany and over 40 in the States, it was completely different. So yeah, if you contrast that when I began, when there was no mailorder or distro, no real warehouse (just an office room), and no website or e-mail address, it was pretty sparse in those days.

So when you joined CM and there was no website or email address for the label; I bet it leant a more "underground" feel and mystique to the music without the internet, versus today where Hot Topic goth-core kids wear 'The Joker' make up and are considered black metal.

Ula: Oh fuck yeah. It was such a weird time looking back to how it was then, especially since it wasn't that long ago, which goes to show you how fast technology has developed. You'd have bands that would sell 10,000 copies solely by word-of-mouth, and when I say "word-of-mouth", I mean literally, one person talking to another, face-to-face or on the phone with someone. Chain stores didn't carry metal back then, period.

You were happy if you could get into the bigger indies like Newbury Comics, and you just tried to sell to mom-and-pops, and there weren't as many distros or mailorders then either, but you tried to cover those all too. So when Century Black had new titles out, you just tried to make sure that Necropolis, Full Moon and Red Stream took copies, as even Relapse wasn't carrying black metal back then. Mailorder also wasn't nearly as prevalent, since it was really, really hard to get the word out. You didn't have a webshop, everyone had 56K dial-up modems at best, and so you tried to get word out there through the fanzines, distro booths and keeping a mailing list and mailorder catalog that you'd send direct to everyone a few times a year. When you saw someone with a cool shirt, or holding a cool album in a shop, you'd talk to them -- I made a lot of my best friends through common interests in music.

But now, as you said, you can probably get a Multiilation longsleeve or an Abruptum hoodie at Hot Topic or whatever. Okay, maybe not quite, but you know what I mean! Just finding records back then was such an event, but I loved it. It would sometimes take me two years, no joke, to find a rare album that had horrible distribution, but man, what a feeling when you had it in your hands. The death of independent and especially used record stores has really sucked, that used to be my primary reason for traveling. I remember going to Gothenberg in '93, opening up a phonebook at the train station, and asking people walking by what the word for "records" was in Swedish so I could look up all the stores, mark them on a map, and go hunting all day long. And later that day, I had Eucharist "A Velvet Creation" and At The Gates "Gardens Of Grief" in my hands... and when I bought the At The Gates, it was Tompa who sold it to me, working behind the counter at Dolores Records... holy shit!

(Life existed before 'Slaughter of the Soul')

I used to do that to every city I went to... and I know I had a lot of friends doing the same. There's probably not a single record I couldn't find now in 5 minutes on the web if I feel like paying enough money, short of some overpriced rare vinyl, but even that comes up with regularity. I miss "the chase" aspect of it, really... instant gratification is nice sometimes, but it makes you lazy too.

Back to Century Black for a minute: the line-up of black metal acts, looking back, is quite impressive, with many of the band's being in the pantheon of black metal, who sought out these artists for this imprint?

Ula: Once again I'd point to Rayshele, and Robert was living in Germany so he was also keeping his eyes open for whatever new was available and interesting (this was around the dawn of the Internet, so info was scarce, you really had to actively seek things out on your own or have someone send something your way). I remember Robert pushing for a long time to get the first Opeth album, "Orchid", and it took a long, long time to make that happen with Candlelight. I don't think Rayshele was quite as into Opeth, but it wasn't really what you would call 'troo kvlt' black metal either, so that's understandable. But when that finally came together and CM got the rights for that, it was great, although when it was released the few people that knew about the band already had the import, and basically nobody else cared. It took a long time and a lot of convincing to sell that band on people, but by the time they finally played the US (at the Milwaukee Metalfest around '98, I think, when "Still Life" was out in Europe) they had a pretty good fan base going already. And once you got one or two bands licensed, and other labels heard you were paying advances and accounting regularly for those titles, it became a lot easier to do the rest. The real keystone band around that time, of course, was Emperor. Rayshele was really into the band and used to talk to the guys regularly, and so Robert also dealt out with Candlelight that CM would get the rights to the Emperor titles as well, starting with the "Hordane's Land" split EP with Enslaved, followed up shortly by "In The Nightside Eclipse", and they sold a few thousand to begin with but it also took a while for people to take notice.

Did you personally deal with any of these artists? If so, who and what was it like?

Ula: Rayshele was the one dealing with the ‘true’ black metallers, so she was regularly talking to Hellhammer from Mayhem, Ihsahn and Samoth from Emperor, Garm from Arcturus and Ulver, etc. I knew of black metal but the ideology and a lot of the bands were new to me in that pre-Internet era, I remember going to Oslo for one day while in Europe back in ’93 and Varg was on the front page of all the Norwegian newspapers as he’d just been sentenced to prison, but I’d only heard a few of the bands when I started at CM. I remember picking up a fanzine that was sitting in the office filing cabinets, and there was an interview with Hellhammer from Mayhem, and he closed the interview by saying, “Black metal for white people!” And that was when I thought, “Huh, maybe I don’t really need to deal with these guys.” So Rayshele kept up the personal contacts, and when she was no longer with the label, around ’97 or so, I was already dealing with a couple of the guys, like Samoth, Satyr and a few others. By then I was starting to get a bit into licensing and the contractual side of things, and so I worked out a couple of the deals, like dealing with Avantgarde to release the Mayhem “Live In Leipzig” album along with two Katatonia records and Ophthalamia, and I was doing purchasing for the mail-order so I was working with a lot of those labels, from US ones like Necropolis, Breath Of Night and Full Moon Productions to the overseas ones like Moonfog, Head Not Found / Deathlike Silence, Hot, Avantgarde, Osmose, etc. I think a lot of those guys in the scene did and said things they regretted soon thereafter, and I don’t mean so much the multiple stabbings and church-burnings, but even just some of the right-wing affiliation, ego and imagery. They were all kids when they started out, basically, and as they got a bit older, most of them grew up. Some didn’t, but most did.

Please dish on any funny/amusing 'Hedwig And The Angry Inch' moments from this time period, the bands or the Century Black imprint.

Ula: Well, I still remember when Moonspell were in their demo days, they got a fax from Mortiis, who was in Emperor at the time, I think. Mortiis was threatening them, calling them the word that rhymes with ‘diggers’, putting a cute little swastika at the bottom and saying, “Heil Hitler” as a postscript. I still have a copy of that fax, and this is from a dude that would later go on to play industrial rock while wearing elf ears. I think if 1995 Mortiis could have time-travelled to 2003, he would have murdered himself.

Well, the most embarrassing thing that probably happened was the initial CD pressing of the Emperor/Enslaved split CD, which had the very cool and eerie Gustav Dore work “The Vision Of Death” on the front, but due to a color-separation film fuck-up it came out not in black but in bright pink. Try explaining that to the band. Then there were Ulver, who after two brilliant albums of folk/black metal, signed to CM, at which time everyone expected them to go even more commercial than they were before. Instead, they gave us “Nattens Madrigal”, one of the most primal records you could imagine, and they did tell us they recorded the album outdoors in the woods, and also that they scrapped the initial recording session because it came out “too good”. The other fiasco of sorts was the Malicious Records saga, where I worked out a deal with the German guy, Gerrit, who owned the label, and we worked out a decent advance payment for him too, in order to get the US rights for the whole catalog. We finished the deal and I told him in order to pay him, he needed to send us an invoice with his bank info. He just couldn’t seem to do that even though it was a fair bit of money, and I reminded him several times, but he just didn’t manage to send one. In the meantime, several of the bands got wind of the fact that we were about to release those albums in the States, and they let us know they’d never gotten paid a dime from the guy, and that he no longer had the rights to those albums, so we managed to cancel the Mortiis, Vond and Zyklon-B releases, but by then we already had the other 8 printed and being sold, which was records by Aura Noir, Borknagar, Dodheimsgard and Gorgoroth. The very lucky part is that we had never sent Gerrit a penny since he never sent that invoice through, so we were able to work out direct deals with most of the bands to pay them. If we had already sent the money to the guy, the bands would have been completely screwed. So the lesson I learned from that is, just because someone says they have the rights to something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Even better, that guy would reach out to me every year or so, asking when he was going to get his money, so I had to tell him, “You’d better talk to your bands.”

What sort of wrapped this whole time period together was The Firestarter compilation in ‘97, featuring very prominent acts of the second wave of black metal, however this comp seems to get no love or at least little recognition, why do you think that is?

Ula: Probably because I put it together, ha ha ha. I think it came a bit late to really be considered groundbreaking, as the die had already been cast with things like the “Nordic Metal” comp that Necropolis had released. But the comp did pretty well, actually, and it was a baby of mine, so I tried to make something cool out of it.

The name came about from a fax I got from Samoth, about some interviews or whatever, and at the bottom he wrote, as a joke, “I’m a firestarter…”, after the Prodigy song that was big at the time. I thought that was pretty clever, and I told him I wanted to use it as the name of a black metal comp, which he was OK with. Travis Smith did a great job with the artwork, and that one was one of his earlier works before the Opeths and Katatonias of the world started calling him, and it was the idea for us to release it cheaply, just to be a fan-friendly, zero-profit item that would hopefully introduce people to some new bands. CM sold over 20,000 of them in the end, and it was in shops for about $5 or from the mailorder for just $2, so I think a cool-looking package with some good bands at a cheap price made it irresistible to a lot of people. Weirdly enough I’ve had a lot of people tell me they got introduced to a few bands through that comp, as CM was doing the cheap label sampler “Identity” back then, and so I wanted to do the more extreme version. My favorite part was that I wanted to include the long wood match in the spine, and we found out it was both possible and affordable, so the first few thousand came with that match. OK, maybe it’s not as cool as the Zippo with the Burzum CD, but fuck it, even those cost you like $50 to buy one back in '93, so for a $2 price tag it was as good as we could manage!

Nowadays black metal seems to have a much more cheesy stigma attached to it, with elaborate corpse paint, glamour shot photos, etc. How would you compare and contrast the current acts to those at the time?

Ula: The glamour shots definitely leave me cold, I have never been a guy who got into bands with an image, unless your ‘image’ was wearing jeans and T-shirts. I think the initial wave had such a strong impact because it was raw, primal and done on a budget, all of which normally adds up to a kind of intensity that just can’t be matched. Some of the band photos now look like they must be airbrushed, or when you have Dimmu Borgir spending like $8,000 on a photo shoot complete with gothic nurses and naked chicks on dog chains, you know you’re a long, long way from their Fimbulwinter roots. But I blame that on Cradle Of Filth more than anything, ever since the release of their first album they were always one of the top-selling bands, and the more polished their image became, the more people bought into it. That, in turn, seemed to influence Dimmu and all the others, and when you look at pictures of the current bands, even those that have been around for a while like Dark Funeral, it’s hardly spontaneous, everything looks perfectly placed.

Some of those vintage photos were done in 5 minutes, you can tell, so even if they look a bit goofy, they seem a lot more sincere than some guys who are polishing up their nail wristbands and are worried if their shin plates will stand out properly against the ambient backlight. But what’s impressive to see is how far the US has come, as in the mid-‘90s, US black metal was, to almost everyone concerned, a joke. You had a few bands trying to make something happen, but even Havohej and Sarcophagus (who have one of the best bad band photos ever, just check Metal Archives) and the rest were just not being taken seriously. Then again, the thinking at the time was that if it didn’t come from Scandinavia, it probably wasn’t worth listening to, and bands like Enthroned were using selling points like, “Norwegian black metal from Belgium”, which always made me laugh. Flash forward 10 years, and it’s a totally different ballgame, and I’m glad to see that the US have come up with some very solid and often experimental black metal bands, and I’m amazed at how many one-man bedroom projects have taken lives of their own.

You brought up a good point. Don't you find it interesting that with black metal, for once it seemed that there was a trend going geographically "backwards"? I mean, instead of Europe catching on to what's popular in the U.S. three to five years later (with the UK being of course a little ahead of the curve) the music which was happening in the early 90s took three to five years to saturate enough to wake American audiences up to this music?

Ula: I guess it's just a matter of where that sound originates from. A lot of trends -- and a lot of bad trends, too -- originated in the States and spread outward, but there were some specific genre examples where the US was last to join the party. I think of punk rock from England in the '70s, black metal as you said, and probably the next example after that would be the Swedish death metal scene and how that wound up crossing over to US metalcore where you had pudgy short-haired dudes from Nebraska forcing pit-friendly breakdowns into the middle of At The Gates riffs. Americans are always reluctant to admit that someone else thought of something first that's better, but hey, sometimes you can't deny what's good. I mean, fried chicken and cheeseburgers are fine, but I'll take good Mexican food over that any day, you know?

Nowadays, black metal has changed a great deal and only Naglfar and Dark Fortress remain as relevant acts of the genre on CM. Is there really just not too much money to be made back on black metal like there use to be?

Ula: "Back on black" metal, I see what you did there, ha ha. I'm not even sure you would consider Naglfar wholly a black metal band, to me it's just Naglfar, they're their own beast, and few people would consider Old Man's Child a black metal band too. I think there were so many labels that specialized in those bands in the meantime that most of the larger indies just couldn't maintain a credible foothold. I mean, if you're looking for credibility, how can a label like Century Media, with bands like Lacuna Coil or Suicide Silence, have the same credibility as a NoEvDia, Drakkar and the likes? Forget it. You can't have everything. I'm sure there's still money to be made on black metal or else most of the labels wouldn't touch it, but let's face it, for labels there's not a lot of money to be made on most music these days. If you want to make money in music, you'd better be involved in touring, merch or maybe publishing. And for black metal, I think merch and maybe vinyl are probably the only two things that consistently bring the bands some beer money, since a lot of them don't really tour much anyway.

What was ultimately Century Black's undoing?

Ula: I think the brand got stretched too far, I don’t even remember all of the records that got tagged as Century Black releases, but I remember it was used on a couple releases that you could only call black metal if you really broadened the definition of what black metal was. And I believe the last batch of Century Black releases were from the Malicious catalog, which as I explained was a nightmare and which seriously dragged on for years. A lot of those bands also moved on from what they were doing musically to other styles, or diminished the black metal elements in their music, either as their interests took hold elsewhere or in some cases they just evolved musically and didn’t wish to be pinned down anymore playing as fast as they humanly could on a shoestring budget in Grieghallen Studios.

Any other humorous or noteworthy stories from this imprint or era?

Ula: Well, it’s been printed a few times how pissed off Opeth were that we put the band logo on the front cover of the “Orchid” and “Morningrise” albums, but it was also pretty apparent at the time that since nobody in the States really knew who they were in ’96, the records just wouldn’t have sold well without a band name on the front, as we just didn’t even think some of the store clerks would be astute enough to figure out where the albums would go. Maybe that was artistically wrong and nowadays you could do a clear, see-through sticker with the logo on top of the jewel-case, but back then the options were more limited, and the band got over it, and the records did pretty well in the end, so it’s another case of art versus commerce, ha ha.

("Wait, wait, wait... I know it's 1996 and our second record JUST came out and no one really knows who we are, but still, putting our name on our album cover just screams 'Sell out!'")

There were a couple records that very nearly got released via Century Black, but fell apart at the last minute, like the first two Cradle Of Filth releases, “The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh” and “Vempire”, and also the Burzum “Aske” album (CM even had promo CD sleeves printed up before a last-minute snafu with Misanthropy Records axed the deal). As a personal experience, I definitely remember the 1998 Milwaukee Metalfest, which was the live US debut for Emperor. They had previously insisted that they use their own keyboard live, so they had it shipped over ahead of the show, and was brought to the venue along with the band. They got through customs with a letter I had written saying they were going to play a benefit show for Jeff Becerra of Possessed, which thankfully worked, as the band weren’t getting paid enough to afford work visas, and we were worried that Samoth’s record would cause problems but we could only cross our fingers and hope. Everything worked out short of Alver’s bass getting damaged on the flight (he found a replacement), and the band were in good spirits. About 45 minutes before they had to play, Samoth realized he needed batteries for some gear, so I hauled ass out of the venue, we tracked down some batteries at a nearby market, and ran back in time… no sooner did I hand the batteries over, with minutes to spare, that their keyboard player, Charmand Grimloch, just realized the keyboard he’d brought over wouldn’t function without a Europe-to-US power converter. I ran into all the dressing rooms, stumbling in on guys like Sodom and Destruction in various states of undress, frantically asking for a power converter. Either the bands didn’t have one, or they weren’t about to loan one to Emperor, but I came up empty-handed (and this was pre-cell phones, of course) and it was already time for the band to hit the stage. So it dawned on Charmand that they’d be playing without him and that he’d flown all the way over for nothing. He was just standing on the side of the stage, frustrated beyond belief, and so during the first song he just ran out and stage-dove over the security barrier into the audience. In retrospect, it’s amazing the show even happened, and that 4/5 of them got to play that day.

So to wrap up, please list your top five CM release of all time and your top five black metal albums (can be CM or not) of all time…

Ula: Okay, let me think about that. Top 5 CM, in no order: Samael "Ceremony Of Opposites", Strapping Young Lad "City", Only Living Witness "Innocents", Bloodbath "Resurrection Through Carnage" and either Morgoth "Odium" or Nevermore "Dreaming Neon Black". If The Gathering put out a comp of the best of the Anneke years I'd be all over that shit too. My top 5 black metal records: Ulver "Bergtatt", Satyricon "Nemesis Divina", Immortal "At The Heart Of Winter", Arcturus "Aspera Hiems Simfonia" and Emperor "Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk". Runner-ups for me would be Dissection "Storm..." and Watain "Casus Luciferi". What can I say, I like the melodic stuff more than the "grim holocaust attakk" stuff, but fuck it, I'm old and I think I'm right, ha ha.

90s power violence: A handful of diamonds in a sea of shit

Imagine you are kneeling in front of a bathtub, and it is filled to the brim with human shit. You're elbow-deep, fishing around in it because you heard there were half a dozen diamonds in this giant container of feces. This is what it would be like to sift through the glut of so-called power violence records that came out in the 90s: almost the entire genre is the worst kind of generic garbage, with a handful of releases rising to the top. Sounds like a waste of time, right? Not so fast: The good stuff is so, so good that it is better than almost anything ever recorded in any genre (if you have heard "Downsided" you know what I'm talking about). Fortunately for those of you who aren't as familiar with the genre as I (regrettably) am, we're here to help.

If you've ever felt like digging into power violence but don't know where to start, this is your download/shopping list. This isn't an MP3 blog, but all this stuff is easy to find on Google Blog Search.

Sarge, you fucking asshole/poser/hipster/homo, this isn't metal
First of all, I hate the term "power violence," but I'll use it because I can't think of anything better and it gets the point across.

I know how angry it makes you jerks when I post about anything that isn't fucking Iron Maiden or whatever, so maybe you are getting butthurt about this post. Maybe you are thinking, "We don't want to read about these dumb hardcore bands from 15 years ago, we want to see pictures of Charlie Benante's spoon collection." If that's what you're thinking, I actually agree with you, and I would post them if I had any, but I don't. So you'll have to settle for this.

Excruciating Terror: Punk as fuck, right? You can tell by the Cypress Hill shirt.

Anyway, a lot of people now think of this stuff as "old school hardcore," but it certainly wasn't seen that way at the time and probably shouldn't be now. Most of the people in the bands and running the labels were sleazy dudes with long hair, Slayer shirts, and meth habits- metal as shit! It's probably hard for any youngsters reading this to imagine it, but in 1992, it definitely wasn't cool to wear Slayer or Metallica shirts to hardcore shows. Hardcore kids have only been seriously jocking metal for maybe 5-7 years- Skullkrusher and I went to a Youth of Today reunion show in 1998 or so wearing Anthrax and King Diamond shirts; we got LOTS of funny looks.

Where are they now: Chris from Apartment 213/Ringworm chilling in his backyard, complete with Larm shirt, folding chair, and plastic playground for the rugrats. One of the best dudes ever!

Punk rock ruined power violence
The thing that turned power violence into such a sea of shit was when PC emo/punk kids started flocking to it around 1997 or so. Spazz is probably to blame for this, as well as Charles Bronson. Actually, it's not their fault they wrote really fun, accessible songs that suburban kids liked, but it definitely made the genre less scummy and dark than, say, Excruciating Terror and No Comment did. Also, they weren't completely fucked up scumbags like most of the people in the early bands, so they were much more approachable and kids could relate to them more.

I have no idea why this dude from Plutocracy/No Less is in jail, but it's pretty much par for the course when it comes to the winners who started all the early bands

Within a few short years, though, what was once a wretched hive of scum and villiany had become flooded with copycat bands and what Nate from Creation Is Crucifixion once called "Locust wizards." It was completely ruined for me at that point. Instead of a bunch of fucked up losers who started bands because they hated life and didn't know what else to do with themselves, it became choked with uptight No Fun Club types who wanted to save the world and write songs about being vegan or the plight of native farmers in Antarctica.

Excruciating Terror with porn actor Randy Spears. This is the kind of awesomely scummy shit that got lost once the Locust wizards invaded.

There were way too many rules and it just got too close to the whole Ebullition/MRR scene for me. Too many assholes with spock haircuts and Swing Kids shirts, not enough alcoholics who worked at gas stations and listened to Ozzy. It was getting way too punk, and I mostly hate punk, especially the extremely dogmatic, shrill kind that was predominant in the late 90s. I got into this shit in the first place because the bands didn't give a fuck about the rules or being the next Noam Chomsky, so I was lost.

Where are they now: Dan from Spazz (right) is focusing on the hip-hop stuff he's been doing since forever as DJ Eons when he's not working as a Matisyahu impersonator.

The gems
When it comes to this genre, you really need to know what specific releases are good. Most of the bands were very inconsistent because they blew what little money they had on drugs, so what you often find is a very hit-and-miss catalog- you can't just pick a band and buy all their records, unless you want to end up with a bunch of crap. Here are the handful of records I consider mandatory. If you know the genre, none of them are surprises, but I'm not trying to impress anyone with my knowledge of the obscure.


Apartment 213 "Vacancy" 7"
This was one of the few good power violence records from a non-California band, and really came out of nowhere. Hailing from Cleveland, these guys were fucking pissed in a way that was different than the West Coast but no less brutal. They changed tempos on a dime just like the West Coast bands, but their slow parts had a downtuned, sludgy feel that added something new to the mix- I always thought they sounded like Infest meets Bloodlet, if such a thing is possible.



The first song on this record, "Mutilation," is absolutely punishing. I still don't think anybody's exactly duplicated it. They re-recorded it for their split with Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but the version on this 7" is much better if for no other reason than it includes what is one of the best samples of all time. It's been a long time since they told me the story behind the answering machine message they sampled, but as I recall it is something like this: Their original drummer, Ron, was banging some girl who dumped him. Ron was calling up her new boyfriend (who I guess was like 18) and threatening him relentlessly. Eventually the poor kid's dad caught wind of it and called Ron, leaving the message that you hear on the record.

Also, I once went to this crappy chain Mexican restaurant called Chi-Chi's with A213's singer, Steve, and his then-wife. As we were saying goodbye, he turned to his wife and said, "You better hurry home, that chimichanga didn't sit too well with me. The toilet's gonna look like the inside of an empty peanut butter jar when I'm done with it." He's a classy guy like that.

Despise You - Discography
Looking back, Despise You and No Comment are the two bands from this era that I listen to the most, probably because they have similarly bleak takes on life. Despise You also takes the cake as the most consistent band of the genre: all their releases are A+ material, in contrast to a band like Capitalist Casualties who has a LOT of crap in their catalog. Usually it's not so much bad songwriting that ruins their records, but awful production.

That is what Chris Elder's normal handwriting looks like, it's fucking amazing.

The other thing is that I appreciate DY even more as I get older, probably because I also get more bitter, jaded, angry and disappointed in myself. DY's singer, Chris Elder, also ran the label Pessimiser, and put out several 16 records in the 90s (check out our interview with them, I think it is pretty great). I've known Chris since I was about 15, and I think I was 18 or 19 when he sent me "Blaze of Incompetence" to review for my old zine. I certainly liked it, but mostly only because it sounded like Fudge Tunnel. I definitely didn't "get it." A couple years ago, I rediscovered that album. With 10 more years of shattered dreams, disappointments, heartbreak, and living around angry poor people under my belt, I "got it" much more than I wish I did. Instead of just rocking out to the riffs, I alternate between crying and punching the wall, in keeping with the "angry surrender" spirit of their lyrics. I called Chris and told him the above, and he just said, "Heh. Yeah dude... now you get it."

"Puppet" has all the pieces that make DY such a sick band: Blasts on the china, lyrics that makes you want to stick your head in the oven, and a breakdown suitable for moshing holes in the walls.

Along with me, Max from Spazz, and occasional MI contributor Awakening, Chris was one of the handful of people in the mid 90s who were into No Comment, Meat Shits, and Phobia as well as Abnegation, Raid, and Mayday. Crossing genre boundaries like that was definitely NOT common back then, so I was super stoked that they didn't give a fuck and just listened to whatever they liked. That's why I was extra bummed when they No Fun Club started listening to this shit and trying to enforce their rulebook.

Here's a pretty good, new interview with Chris.


Psycho/Agathocles split 7"
J/K LOL! This record is so bad it's like something I would have made up in 1994 as a sarcastic joke.


Crossed Out/MITB split 7"
I like MITB just fine, but I don't worship them like all the proto-beardos did/do. They have their moments, but are pretty inconsistent, especially when they got into the noise shit (a complete waste of vinyl if you ask me). This is their finest release by far in my opinion, with songs like "Snake Apartment" and "Screwdriver In The Urethra Of Tomas Lenz." The people who were way into MITB were/are usually weird, annoying people with poor social skills and bad hygiene... just like the band! I interviewed Eric Wood when I was 15 or 16 for my zine and was very, very confused. He reminded me more of my parents' burned out hippie friends who did too many drugs than someone who would be in a hardcore band. He didn't even like Youth Of Today, WTF! Here's a newer interview with him from Vice of all places; he seems as weird as ever.

"Instantly Bent" is a long, sludgy intro riff followed by what sounds like an out-of-context sample from a jazz song, like if you took 2 seconds from the end of a Jack Dejohnette solo and looped it a few times.

Someone once described this to me as, "It sounds like he's having a tantrum." Pretty accurate!

I like this song because the snare sounds like a sprinkler when he plays the fills.

Crossed Out were legends for good reason, essentially picking up where Infest left off and making it even more pissed off. In the same way as No Comment was the bleakest band, Crossed Out was the most angry. They didn't really last long or hang out much, so I don't have any funny stories about them, sorry. Their 7" is also excellent, but the basement-level "we recorded this in 45 minutes on my sister's old Fischer-Price tape recorder" production on this record makes it a little better for me. This kind of music is almost always better with shitty production.


No Comment "Downsided"
This is the soundtrack to having the fucking gun in your mouth, razor at your wrist, or rope around your neck. It's also arguably the best hardcore record ever made, no joke. Think of it as the desperation and despair of Black Flag "Damaged" with the pacing of early Napalm Death.

Here are about half the songs on this 7". Have a phone handy with the suicide hotline on speed dial, this shit makes Neglect sound like New Found Glory.

I don't really know what to say about this other than what I did already... I've consistently listened to this record for 15 or so years and it still gives me chills. Nothing else quite captures the feeling of being at the absolute bottom... Nice attention to detail in the packaging, too: the lyric sheet folded out into a 2x3' poster of a slit wrist, and the inscription on the matrix was "Do dilaudid, flip your lid" on one side and "Quitarte sus problemas con Vicodin" on the other (which means "solve your problems with Vicodin" in Spanish). Like I wrote about the other week with regretcore, it's clear that this record was made by people with legit, crushing dysfunction, not angsty teenagers.

Definitely check out this interview with Brent for more background.



Capitalist Casualties "Art of Ballistics"
This was one of the first super DIY records I ever bought, back in 1991 I think? I bought this, MDC "Millions of Dead Cops" LP and No Comment "Common Senseless" 7"- not a bad way to start, right?? Speaking of unpunk shirts, I remember being extremely puzzled by Mike's Slayer shirt in the pictures on the lyric sheet. "WTF," I said to myself, "I thought these guys were punk?! You can't wear a Slayer shirt if you're punk! That's like petting the cat backwards, it's just not done!"

This is actually from the "Raised Ignorant" 7", which I don't really like, but this song is one of CC's best. Really brutal both lyrically and musically.

Unlike most of the other records I've talked about in this post, this is pretty much a straightforward hardcore 7". As many have said before, it's just the next evolution of first DRI LP: no frills hardcore from a bunch of pissed off kids that doesn't claim to be anything other than that. While they've evolved the formula a little, you can see that they're firmly rooted in 80s hardcore when you see song titles like "My Dad Kills For The USA" and "Nuclear National Park." What's next, "Honey, I Moshed The Kids"? "Crass Ventura, Punk Detective"??

Their split with MDC is another one of my favorite releases, as well as the tracks from "Bleearrrrrgggghhhh."


Spazz "Dwarf Jester Rising"
I'm guessing that many of you are already familiar with Spazz, but if you aren't, you definitely want to check them out. They started in 1992 or 93, basically the first of the second wave of power violence bands, and had members from a strange variety of bands: Sheep Squeeze, Plutocracy and Stikky. Chris Dodge was also in a very early incarnation of No Use For A Name and worked at Fat Wreck Chords for years, which I always thought was pretty funny since it was definitely "against the rules" to like both Fat bands and power violence.

Where are they now: The sad tale of Black Army Jacket. Drummer Dave Witte (left) is still keeping it real as fuck and plays in the popular neo-thrash band Municipal Waste. Bassist Carlos Ramirez (far right), on the other hand, has retired from hardcore and spends most of his time chilling on a boat with some AZN bro and his guera wife. List of people who nobody cares where they are now: The original drummer for BAJ.

Many people will disagree, but I think the best Spazz material by far is the early stuff, like pre-"La Revancha." After that they started sounding a lot more, for lack of a better word, "hardcore," like Straight Ahead or something. The earlier material is more pissed and slightly grindy, which is probably why all the suburban emo kids like the later stuff better.

One of their best songs, "Loach." I have no idea what it's about.

"Hairfarmer" is about how Max Ward had a giant, curly mop when he was in Plutocracy. The second part is about this guy Rob Beckstrom's son, also named Max. Rob started going bald early, hence "Max Jr flowing on top, growing more hair than his pop." As an aside, if you know anything about 90s Bay Area graffiti, it's pretty funny that both Rob and Dan from Spazz were early members of US. If you happen to know Rob, I lost touch with him a while ago but it would be cool to hear from him again!

Here are a few funny Spazz memories:

• Max was briefly in the Meat Shits with Kindred from No Less/Plutocracy, and someone asked him to sign the record he played on for a joke. I think he wrote something like, "Fuck you, Robert Deathrage is a nazi."
• Going to Gilman with Max when I was 17 or something in his dad's Acura Legend. I was holding his snare on my lap and he said "Dude be careful, if you scratch the leather my parents will be super pissed.
• Shopping for Mecca and Wu Wear gear at some wigger store in Cleveland with Dan

Cry Now, Cry Later 1 and 2
These two compilations are absolutely mandatory, especially if you want to get the sleazy, scummy Southern California take on things. Maybe I'm imagining things, but I feel like not enough people are into these records. I mean, people definitely still jock MITB, but when was the last time you heard some brainded crust punk say, "Bro, fucking Iabhorher, bro... that song is fuckin hella mass tight bro!!" They definitely aren't checking out Meat Shits, the Fear Factory demo track, Crom, or any of the other great shit on these comps, either. If you haven't given these a listen lately, you probably should. Vols 3 and 4 were OK, but by then it had been diluted by the copycat bands who just ripped off Charles Bronson and didn't listen to Gut or Malicious Hate.

If only all Excruciating Terror records were like this: The filthy production of the 7", with the "polished" songwriting of the LPs. Probably their best song.

Featuring Municpal Waste/Discordance Axis/Black Army Jacket drummer Dave Witte, Iabhorher definitely got overlooked. I think this might be the best song on all of the Cry Now comps, and their 7" on Slap A Ham was equally crushing.

Crom is simultaneously the most brilliant and most retarded band of all time. Long before Max from Spazz started the trend of jocking Hirax, Crom's mind-blowing cover of "Hate Fear And Power" appeared on "Cry Now, Cry Later." I can't believe they managed to make a band as fucking awful as Hirax sound this good!

Malicious Hate is a perfect example of an "Honorable Mention" band, especially this song that was on that weird 8" comp that came out on Ax/Ction (I can't remember the name of it).

Honorable Mention & Stuff I Forgot
There are lots of other bands that were interesting and worth digging up if you're really into it: Stapled Shut, Agents of Satan/Radioactive Lunch, Plutocracy/No Less, Benumb, and other random shit like Avulsion, the one and only Bludgeon song ever recorded, or Noothgrush. But then I would have to start mentioning bands like Black Army Jacket and Praparation H, and nobody wants THAT to happen!! I'm sure the comments will have some good suggestions and/or things I should have mentioned but forgot to.

Stuff You Will Hate: Blessed By A Broken Heart

Please pardon the interruption, but I would like to use this space to promote my other, vastly less popular blog, Stuff You Will Hate. This is a post that went on SYWH because it has scene-related content, but may be relevant to the interests of Metal Inquisition readers as well:

Blessed By A Broken Heart is my favorite post-ironic Christian hair-metal crunkcore scene band from Canada. Nobody likes a tryhard, and BBABH definitely try way too hard to impress you with what I'm sure they think are their hilarious antics. Look, I get it: they're "in on the joke." The fact that their entire image is a big ironic joke is fine, the problem is that it's not funny, it's just a tiresome, transparent cry for attention from a bunch of churchy dorks who are so painfully square that they feel guilty for drinking a Diet Pepsi.

Read more at Blessed By A Broken Heart has potential to be the most hated band on Earth (please comment there, not here)

Also, follow Stuff You Will Hate on Twitter and get a free yo-yo (with proof of slain poser).

Guest post: Behind the scenes at Century Media

Early this morning, I was awoken by the sound of breaking glass at our Midwest Technical Center. I quickly scrambled the S1Ws, my first thought being that someone might have been after our extensive archives of Wild Rags trivia. But no- instead, I found the following guest post scrawled on a My Own Victim flier, with no author given! With that said, we present it to you, the reader, in its unaltered state. We make no claims for or against its authenticity, although I did personally see some of these things a couple of years ago when I was at Century Media for a peacekeeping summit that I chaired (Despise You frontman and Century Media warehouse manager Chris Elder was the keynote speaker, although an OSHA raid of the CM warehouse prevented him from attending [the OSHA inspection really did happen, it was one of the most unmetal things I've ever witnessed]).

Much like the unwritten motto of Metal Inquisition (that is, exposing metal’s soft, often pudgy, underbelly of hilarity) I thought it’d be good to follow suit and further debunk some myths of the metal world. For this post let’s take a quick glance at Century Media Records.

This record has twice as many sawblades on the cover as "Human Waste" does!

This label can be very polarizing depending on who you’re talking to, and to better understand this label’s range and scope it’s wise to review the bands they’ve worked with – if only briefly. On one hand, they’ve released some solid “classic” metal albums back in the day (Grave, Unleashed, Tiamat, etc.) around the early 90’s. The label also had some cult classic releases that didn’t quite fit in with the label’s typical fanfare, bands like Eyehategod, The Gathering and Candiria to name a few random acts. CM even played a significant role in spreading black metal, especially in the U.S., with releases from bands like Emperor, Marduk, Mayhem, Ulver and many more. Unbeknownst to many, they actually had some decent mid-to-late 90s hardcore releases, most predominantly in Europe, from bands like My Own Victim, Only Living Witness, Cro-Mags, Meraurder, Crumbsuckers and others.

However, they’ve also produced some outright laughable acts that have helped bolster the mallcore/ozzfest generation (Lacuna Coil, In This Moment, Nightwish, etc.) I haven’t even touched power metal or their recent wave of pseudo-slam/metalcore bands like Winds Of Plague and Suicide Silence, let’s save that for another post.

In This Moment and Eyehategod: labelmates?! Yep.

In any event, there’s often a stigma of record labels in metal being somewhat larger than life. Further from the truth this could not be (see Wild Rags for a previously blogged about example). In fact, for a closer look at reality, and this is no joke, please rent and watch-if you haven’t already-‘Hedwig and The Angry Inch’ and ‘Spinal Tap’. These two movies are far more accurate than any magazine or sensational fairytale of metal glory.

But I digress; CM is no exception to metal misconceptions of skyscraper offices, big payrolls, and glamour. At the epicenter of CM is its robust warehouse where all of the above bands’ releases and thousands more reside. I learned that it’s actually a major watering hole for metalheads to buy their metal (I’ve been to Relapse Records and Victory’s warehouses among others, and CM’s is nothing to sneeze at). It’s your typical industrial-looking warehouse, like if you’ve ever seen the TV show ‘The Office’, with super high ceilings, hanging fluorescent lighting, Costco sized shelves and more.

Here’s a video of the band Warbringer jamming in the CM warehouse that might give you a better idea. Unfortunately a surly Chris Elder is nowhere to be found.

If you’re new to working at CM you must help with a yearly inventory check. It’s kinda like their way of “jumping you in” where EVERY SINGLE CD GETS COUNTED. It’s a pain and takes a dozen or so people several days to accomplish. This is where I first learned the existence of terrible metal bands like Green Carnation, Raven, Exciter to name a few. However I also discovered some real gems along the way. Chris Elder, of Despise You and Pessimiser Records fame – whom I’ve seen mentioned on here before, is the God of the warehouse. He’s like that guy on ‘Family Guy’ who Peter works with, the “bad ass with a heart of gold”. He’s quiet, nice and also intimidating when you first meet him (then again, being brought up in Inglewood will most likely give you a 1,000 yard stare easily).

Anyway, CM is located literally a few streets from the ‘Welcome to Inglewood’ sign. It’s not the best neighborhood, but certainly not the worst either. However, the car wash directly across the street did get held up and robbed in broad daylight and the Shotgun Crips frequently tag the area.

One thing, though, about the warehouse that was brutal was there were a row of offices out there as part of the warehouse, separate from the front actual OFFICE area (think of it as office overflow from the REAL office area and into the world of the warehouse). These were offices for accounting, IT, graphic design/advertising and others. An important part about warehouses is that they aren’t very well climate controlled, and CM’s was the worst. If it was summer time, you’d walk out of the front part of the building and into the warehouse-office area and instantly feel the sweat come to surface, it was HOT! In the winter people were wearing coats, beanies and scarfs – how crazy is that?! You go to your desk and sit down in front of your computer and you can nearly see your breath. There were space heaters everywhere; I even saw a blanket or two for some people. You’re supposed to work in this environment for eight hours a day, so everyone’s immune systems were put to the test.

The icing on the cake was the building CM occupies was intended for a staff of around 15-20 people (I believe it was a factory building originally for machine equipment); at this time, there were 50+ people working there. The power was so strained from everyone using so much electricity that the power would blow out spontaneously. So there you are freezing in the warehouse with next to no natural light (like many warehouses, there were only a few windows) in darkness and silence for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. This was tolerated for months, sometimes happening up to a few times a day, before getting properly fixed.

In the last few years the CM office has gone through some renovations and those “warehouse offices” have now had a great facelift and are actually comfortable to work in instead of being the record label equivalent of bums warming their hands over flaming garbage cans.

One a brief side note, the warehouse requires special insurance since it does require a little more physical labor and it’s a more dangerous environment to work in so no one was allowed back there except for the warehouse workers, and anyone who was given permission to go there (or had a specific task or work question). Once in a while, though, certain celebrities would be able to check it out and basically “shop around”.

Century Media's PR whiz George Vallee (left) and Marco Barbieri (right; ex-No Glam Fags) with Casey Chaos

Celebrities is kind of a lose term though, from memory it could be someone like Casey Chaos of Amen to Satyr from Satyricon. So, take the aforementioned rough-around-the-edges neighborhood + crazy warehouse conditions and then throw a self-important metal band in the mix and it’s kind of a funny scenario.

Thanks to this anonymous reader for sharing some info on Century Media! Stay tuned for more CM-fellating in the form of an interview with Winds of Plague...