Saying farewell to a sadist
posted on 08 Oct 2015 under category History
Like many others into the underground death/black metal scene today I am mourning the loss of Jim Konya, perhaps best known as Jim Sadist, drummer of death metal gods Nunslaughter. While that was one of his most prominent gigs, that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of his involvement in the metal scene. He was a guy who was dedicated to metal, as the many tributes to him I’ve seen so far already attest. Beyond being a great player and performer, what shines through most in all of the remembrances I have read is his friendliness. By all accounts he was the quintessential nice guy - personable, friendly, and all about the fans, not in the way of a celebrity and admirers, but more a fellow traveller in the ways of metal fandom.
Eh, fuck it. That sounds too grandiose. The simple truth is the guy loved heavy, underground metal, and he got along with anyone who was into the same thing.
Now, what follows should not come across like I was a good friend or anything like that. In fact, I only met him once a few months ago, and I share this not so much to trumpet that I was a guy who had once met a metal god who has fallen, but rather just to reinforce the stories everyone else is telling about him - he was a great, friendly, funny guy who could play the fuck out of a drum kit.
It was early 2015 and Kevin from Gravewurm had told me that they were doing a short eastern US tour with Sathanas during the first week of April - stops in DC, Atlanta, and Tampa, then back home. I had seen them several years before when they played Atlanta with Watain, Angelcorpse, Nachtmystium, and Negative Plane, so I was looking forward to seeing the band again. I arranged to meet up with Kevin in Little 5 Points and hang out/grab dinner before the gig.
After work I drove to Little 5 and met up with Kevin and Andrew, Gravewurm’s bassist. They were waiting on me because we had arranged to go for pizza, but the other guys were already eating at a Mediterranean place nearby. We walked in and I was briefly introduced to everyone - Paul, Jim, and Bill from Satahanas, plus Jim Sadist, who was just introduced to me as ‘Jim’. Then Kevin, Andrew, and I walked up the street to a pizza joint that had an outdoor patio near what used to be “The Point” in Little 5, ordered dinner, and then talked while we waited. It was only then that I realized that ‘Jim’ was Jim Sadist of Nunslaughter, because I had never asked Kevin who he had found to play for Gravewurm for the tour.
We had dinner and talked, and then when we were nearly done the other guys had finished and walked up to meet us and hang out a little while longer before heading down the street to Club 529 for the load-in. Jim sat beside me and immediately started asking about me - who I was, what bands I was in, what I played. He was clearly interested in what I had to say - not like he was making small talk, but like he wanted to get to know me. All seven of us sat and people-watched while we talked and finished dinner, and Jim gave me a bottle of soda (I think it came with dinner but he didn’t want it) and a CD - Blood Coven’s 2012 disc Blood and Battle. I thought that was really cool - he had just met me and here he is giving me a Coke and some heavy metal.
We drove down to Club 529 in East Atlanta Village, I helped the band load in, and then we all just sat around various places in and out of the club just hanging out and chatting. After a while I pulled out my laptop to see if I could get online (I couldn’t - no wi-fi) and to copy over some mp3s to Kevin’s thumb drive for him to listen to. While Kevin and I are copying over the files Jim comes over to our table and sits down just as I’m telling Kevin about my time in college - specifically, how I had switched my minor and electives just in time to graduate with a new minor without setting me back, and I mentioned that the original minor I was going for was German. That’s when Jim asked “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” in very good-sounding German.
“Ja, nur ein Bisschen,” I reply, without even thinking about it - Yes, but only a little..
Then Jim goes on, in German, and all of those classes I took nearly 20 years ago came back, and we have a short little conversation, half-German, half-English. Again, he’s all about asking questions and finding out about me, which I thought was really cool. I got to tell him about how I had most of my courses with the director of the German foreign language department of the college at the time and how his exams would be part written and then also a five-minute conversation, completely in German, about something we had learned in the past few weeks and about something in the news. Thinking back on it now, I feel bad that I didn’t ask more about Jim. He did say something about how he had been working on his German because he was planning to go back there at some point, and so he liked to practice when he could. Again, nothing earth-shattering, but just a really cool, friendly moment between fellow metalheads.
The show started with the two locals first: Ancalagon did a pretty good job - a hooded-corpsepainted black metal trio who did the whole thing with a candelabra and skull arrangement on a table in front of the stage. Next was Wolves and Jackals, a four-piece who had a more technical two-guitar sound. Then came Sathanas, who I had heard but never seen live. They kicked total ass - Jim Strauss behind the kit just running his feet and hands with easy speed, Paul screaming and ripping riffs out of his SG, and Bill just dominating the stage with his big Dean V bass.
Gravewurm was last, going on stage about 1:15 or so. Still, despite the late hour, they destroyed the place. Funeral punished his Warlock and screamed his blasphemies, and “Von Sligow” banged his hooded head while pounding out his basslines, but the consummate showman was behind the kit. “Lord Mazillion”, like Von Sligow, wore a hooded cape, but he also had on a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. He mugged for the crowd constantly as he played, always raising a fist or the horns between every snare beat during the slow and half-time sections, and then just banging away as he slammed through the blast beats. It sounds trite to say, I know, but there are enough videos of Jim playing drums online that anyone can view if they don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s like heavy metal drumming was just in his blood, and it came as easily as breathing, and so live he concentrated on not just delivering a good performance, but a good show as well.
The show came to an end, of course, and I had to leave quickly because it was so late and I had to work the next day. I climbed on stage to thank and congratulate everyone for a good show and give best wishes for the rest of the tour. I told Jim specifically that I liked his stage presence and showmanship and he shook my hand as he thanked me for sticking around so long and for the good comments.
And then I left, and that was that. Again, I’m sure that there are thousands of stories like mine, of Jim just hanging out with fans and fellow metalheads, so I share this not to say that I’m particularly special. Rather, I share it to say that I saw a little sliver of what many people who knew him better saw all the time, and I’m proud and lucky that I got to see that, at least a little bit. He was a great metalhead, a great musician, and a cool guy, and he will be missed.
And somewhere down in Hell, there’s a practice room with Jim on a drumkit, Cliff Burton on bass, and Ramrod on guitar, and they’re making a hellish racket.