Must see show coming soon!

Wait...is Iron Maiden playing? No? Oh, it's Paul Di'Anno who's playing right? No?
Oh...it's the guitar player in Paul Di'Anno's band. Got it, got it. Color me there.

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...

Sacred Reich

What a swell looking bunch of guys. In 1991 I thought Sacred Reich were superstars, who probably toured in fancy double-decker bus. In reality, they looked like child-molesters traveling around the country in this horrible wood-paneled monstrosity. Nice trench coat, oh...and nice Hustler magazine in the back as well (under the speaker.)

This post is kind of long. I understand if you don't want to read it, or if you hate the stuff I post....but do me a favor. If you are not going to read it, at least watch the video at the end of the post. For real. You'll thank me. Okay, now let's get started:

Sacred Reich used to be one of my favorite bands back in the day. I was always drawn to pseudo-political bands within the realm of metal. As I've said many times before, I grew up in South America, I grew up during a time when extreme violence was a daily occurrence. As a result, songs about devils and satan never seemed all that scary to me. Everyday reality, and the things that actual humans (not demons with tails and horns) were doing around me were far scarier and very real. Perhaps for that reason, bands that talked about actual situations seemed cooler to me. In retrospect, the views that such "political" bands put forth were half-baked, idiotic and in keeping with their age and level of education...but back then they seemed so damn profound to me.

Check Phil out, 548 pounds ago. I always loved the cholo graffiti writing they used in their records. It gave them a certain edge over bands like Toxic. They also had that cool mascot. You can read more about the macot here. Man, if guys that looked like this had gone to my high school, I would have had huge man-crushes on them (in a very hetero way, dont get me wrong). Check out how Phil and Wiley (what a name) are posing the exact same way...even the angle of their feet is the same.

As good as they were, they fell victim to the classic thrash metal trap. They wrote the required "goofy song". In their case, the song was called "31 Flavors", and was meant to teach us about how we should listen to all kinds of music..but mostly Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The lyrics alone are enough to make you dry-heave for a few hours. Note the awful sexual double entendre. Even Dave Mustaine had to cringe upon hearing it, and he's the guy responsible for the most cringe-inducing lyrics ever. Remember his sexual opus Mechanix?


Vanilla is smooth
chocolate is kickin'
strawberry is sweet
all deserve a hearty lickin'
have em all
three scoops piled high
variety is the spice of life
Well you can have soft serve
and hard sugar cones
root beer floats
or my banana split
do you like nuts
or some sticky whip creme
come lick it off
and be my dairy queen
I love the Chilis
freaky, uplift, mother's milk

If you haven't listened to the song before, here it is. Again, get ready for major douche-chills.





So what happened to these musical and political geniuses over the years? Has time been kind to Sacred Reich? Hell no. Phil looks like a cross between a fat little league coach and Fred Flintstone. What can you do...time does that to you. Dark Angel was right. Time Does Not Heal. Apparently, it just makes you fat. They have a MySpace page, but I think it's way more fun to look at their official site, which is hosted by the one and only Angel Fire. Check it out. It was put together by Wiley himself.

Note the heavy crease on his neck as a result of being fat and having gravy running through his veins.

So over time, they may have deteriorated. What can you do. I pretty much stopped caring about Sacred Reich after "Independent", which is when they embarked on some lame pro-pot tour sponsored by NORML. I was bummed about them doing that tour back then, I'm not sure why. What can I tell you....to say I've had an overactive super-ego from a young age would be an understatement.

This picture hung on my wall for many years. Check out Barney's sweet Zubas.

Around the time that Sacred Reich went out on the "legalize it" tour, I bought my brother a sweet Sacred Reich shirt for his birthday. I believe I've written about this before, but I'll mention it again. He wore it to school on the day of his birthday, and got into bad car accident on his way back home from school. He got blood all over the shirt. I was bummed about the crash, but also about the shirt. The back of the shirt had a Socrates quote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I'm incredibly ashamed to admit this, but I'll tell you anyway. I have actually quoted Socrates to really smart people before, and I only know the quote because of that shirt. So even though I could make fun of Sacred Reich for ages, and mock them (and I often do), I have to thank them because they made me feel cool in a group of smart people. Perhaps they weren't impressed, but I was certaily pleased with my use of the quote. Thank you Phil Rind!

Say what you will about Sacred Reich, but how many bands will help you quote Socrates at a dinner party?

Oh by the way, do you remember how Lemmy had a Sacred Reich patch on his denim jacket back in the early 90s? It was a Sacred Reich patch, but he only had the part that said "Reich"? He always talked about how he was a collector of WWII Nazi stuff, but always cleared up that he was not racist or a nazi. I get it, and I understand how this is possible...but walking around with a "Reich" patch on your jacket and a Nazi officers cap is kind of a douchy thing to do, to put it mildly. No? Come to think of it, Sacred Reich is kind of a messed up name for a band. I mean, it could easily be the name of a white power band, you know? Perhaps that's what first attracted Lemmy to the patch. I know many of you think Lemmy is rad, and everything he does is amazing, and perfect....and you probably think the Cocoa Puffs on his face are sexy...but come on. Damn it.




Okay, let's get back to Sacred Reich. I will now leave you with the best bit of Sacred Reich material available on the interweb. This is an excerpt of the Sacred Reich DVD, and its a winner for sure. This clip is filled with amazing treasures, because it's a perfect time capsule of the era. I won't even try to comment on it, or point out things about it. Just please watch the whole thing and enjoy it. Please. If you are too young to know what metal shows were like in 1991, this should give you a pretty good idea.

"I've worked on some of the stuff you guys told me to, like the screeches"

Last month we posted this video of a fine young man practicing his death metal vocals. With the help of substantial youtube feedback he has practiced, fine tuned, and is now back with an improved offering.

Based on the decor that can be seen behind him, I'm guessing he's doing this at his mom's house. I feel so bad for her. Can you imagine having to put up with your retarded son practicing his "mid and low-range growls"? "Mom, I need to put in like ten more minutes into my screeches and then I'll go to bed." The woman is a saint.