Ramrod, may you rape the angels
posted on 12 Nov 2010 under category History
It was a weekend of rare good fortune. I didn’t have to bring work home, my birthday was Monday, so it was nothing but well-wishes, good fortune, gifts, and a great steak dinner to look forward to. I was even buoyed by an email in my inbox on Friday morning at work - an old friend from my childhood, whom I have not seen or spoken to in 24 years, emails me to reconnect.
Fate is a vindictive bitch.
And so, in the course of my normal internet rounds, I turn to Fa(e)ce(s)book, and receive the worst news.
“Ramrod” Ryan Weiss is dead.
I could lament the many musical things about him, and I will in a bit, but first I have to acknowledge the greatest tragedy, that this brother, son, father, and husband is gone. Family man, and friend to many.
And I’m not going to bullshit like I was one of his best friends. We knew each other a while, shared quite a bit in common, even worked together (culminating in ultimately futile attempts to collaborate in each other’s main bands) on occasion, but there are others who knew him better, saw him more, were there with him in his life and at its end.
And yet I do feel the loss - because that’s the kind of guy he was. He knew you and remembered you.
Not to mention he was a big Venom fan, which is what ultimately drew us together. (this is where the reminiscing starts for all those who were wondering)
It was back in 1999 or 2000, when both Rampage and Unsung Heroes Records were in their infancies. I had just started the idea for an online Venom tribute - get bands to record a song for a tribute (because the tribute album trend was just starting) - but fuck the trend by putting it up online, for free - a true labor of love. I got a few collaborators, and then I got an email from Ramrod - he had not one but FOUR songs he wanted to contribute. At the time I was writing for the Eternal Frost webzine, and so he also included a three-song demo of Chemikiller, the “Delaware Black Metal” demo along with the four Venom covers.
Needless to say, I was hooked. EFW is now in the digital dustbin (Goden, if you’re out there, put it back online!!!), but I remember writing a very good review of it, and before hosting bandwidth killed the project his four Venom covers were the highlight of the online tribute.
We stayed lightly in touch over the years, as he sent me newer demos of Chemikiller as well as other bands of his - The Nasty Nymphos stick out the most. Finally, in 2003, at the urging of Aerik Von, I decided to see if Ramrod would be interested in releasing anything on UHR. Up until then he had releases on several other labels and he was quite happy to also dub and burn copies himself, so I wasn’t sure he’d need or want to deal with us - but he was quite eager, and so he compiled the “Hellrockin’ Demos” collection for release in early 2003, followed by the 70+ minute compilation “Hellrockin’ Demos II” later that year. They both did pretty well, as did the live album by the Nasty Nymphos and the first demo of his collaboration with Aerik, The Von Frankenstein’s “Blood Sucking Freaks”.
Ramrod also did the cover art for the Black Moon Rising/Gortician split release “Double Penetration”. Knowing the sick depths of depravity Ramrod was capable of, the cover was surprisingly non-censor-worthy, yet still managing to convey the shock and horror of the title’s implication. But, again, that’s just the kind of guy he was - he lived and breathed the raw, rude, fun, laugh-til-you-puke-or-die iconoclastic attitude at the heart of where rock and roll meets metal.
That’s what makes it a shame we never got our collaborations together. Technology was what did us in - my computer couldn’t record on his software, and importing his songs into my software wouldn’t get the music and my recordings to synchronize properly. Sadly, he had the same problem on his end. Could you imagine Death Beast “The Wakening” with Ramrod’s throaty rasp? Or my thumping basslines on “Evilspeak: Passion of the Antichrist”? At least there was a taste of that on the Death Beast demo comp, featuring the few songs that technology could not subvert.
And so we end where our collaboration began - those four Venom tracks he sent all those years ago. I had some tracks set to be a split tribute to Venom with Megiddo, but ChorazaiM could never get his songs recorded, and then it was too long we felt like it was best to just let it die. I still had these four songs, though, raw and about 90% finished, when one day I came across the original CD Ramrod sent me of those Venom tracks for the online tribute. I asked if he’d be interested in finally getting a split with Rampage and Chemikiller completed, he said yes, and thus Twelve Inches of Blasphemy was released.
In 2007. When I was in the midst of what would turn out to be a creative Sargasso Sea. Though one largely of my own making.
I’m not going to bore you with what I was going through - this post is about Ryan, not me. Suffice it to say that motivation dropped, and I could have worked through it like I have every time before, but I let days pass, and days became weeks, and weeks became years. And during the time I would talk to all of the people I was involved with musically, Ryan included of course, and we’d chat about the old days and what I was ‘working on’, and then I’d go back to sleeping, or playing the FPS-du-jour, or just not much of anything but drinking myself into a stupor and watching my life stagnate and rot.
And I heard Ryan was sick, talked to him a bit, but filed it away under “well, I’ll talk to him again soon.”
Sometimes Fate, bitch that she is, changes ‘soon’ to ‘never’. And all that time you thought you had vanishes just like that. I never got the chance to say good bye. To tell him how much I loved his music and the chance to work with him. I did tell him I wanted to cover one of his songs as a bonus track for the next Death Beast album, and he had my blessing (said “It would be an honor” - exact quote) - but now he’ll never get to hear it. Unless they have iTunes down in Hell.
So, at least I have this lesson - maybe Fate will make my ‘soon’ into ‘never’ tomorrow, or the next day, so do what you can while you can. And maybe when I croak someone will wish they had the chance to say good bye to me and tell everyone about how much they’ll miss me.
Because you never know. You just gotta do your best while you can, try to get those kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
Rest in peace, Ryan. You are missed.
(Okay, so it’s not exactly Marc Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar, or Kanwulf’s song of tribute to Grim. I still stand by this post as one I’m most proud of, in the sense that it adequately captures what I felt and still feel about Ryan and his absence. RIP brother.)