A couple of new things out
posted on 28 Jul 2007 under category News
I should have blogged about this earlier, but I’ve been busy with work and a sick baby. How ‘metal’ is that?
Anyway, I have two Vic-related new releases out now - The Rampage/Chemkiller split tribute to Venom, titled Twelve Inches of Blasphemy, and the Death Beast demo compilation Prophecies of Doom: The Demos 2002-2004. Some comments and thoughts about each below the fold… As I’ve gone over before, the Venom tribute was something I originally worked out with ChorazaiM of Megiddo. After our Hellhammer tribute we wanted to do another split tribute to another seminal black metal band, and after discussion we ended up choosing Venom. Our first thought was to do the same thing we did with Apocalyptic Raids to Welcome to Hell, but that would have been five cover tracks apiece, which is a bit overboard. We ended up deciding to each choose four random tracks, with the proviso that they ONLY be non-album tracks - singles, EPs, and the like were fair game. When what he and I picked came together, everything was from various 12” EPs that Venom released, hence the title “Twelve Inches of Blasphemy” (Also, of course, because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing Venom would say…).
Well, you’ve seen what I chose, so that’s dealt with. Anyway, Chor never got his tracks finished, and then decided to drop off the project, which was fine, since I already knew another guy who is just as big a Venom freak - Ramrod of Chemkiller. In fact, he had ALREADY given me a CDR of four random Venom covers he did back in 2000-2001 for UHR’s online venom tribute project.
(So, as for why there are five tracks on there - I’m lazy. The day I was working on the cover I was too lazy to go from my desk down to the car to get the master for the tracklisting, so I did it from ‘memory’ - and somehow got crossed the fact that Ramrod did “Welcome to Hell” for the tribute. He didn’t - that was on Hellrockin’ Demos 2. But, the covers were already done when I started compiling the master, so I had to hide the last track as a ‘bonus’.)
Now, the Death Beast demo compilation. The liner notes explain it all already, but I’ll give the nutshell here. When Dementor and I started the band, we intended to just do an EP, and we got started, but Black Goat wanted to hear tracks PRONTO after the first sample I sent him, so we sent him the only four tracks we had finished at the time, plus a few covers we were working on for fun. Then we have three Ramrod-vocal tracks - two from his ‘audition’ (we knew we were going to ask him to join anyway, we just wanted BG to hear what he would sound like) and one that would have been on the album had we finished it on time.
Third, of course, is the audition tapes with me on vocals. I was never the ‘official’ vocalist. We did two mixes of the songs we did for vocalist tryouts - one with no vocals so the singer could try his own things out, and one with guide vocals just to let the prospective vocalists know the kind of thing we were going for and our ideas for where the words should go. Still, the musical takes are pretty good and so we figured to throw them on for shits and grins. And, so, now you’ve heard FOUR different singers for Death Beast. Fucked up, ain’t it?
(I don’t really have much to add here - the history of these releases is adequately covered between the liner notes and this blog post. I was happy with the way the discs and inserts turned out, though - it’s a shame that kind of money is hard to come by now, but not having the headache of business is worth the tradeoff.)