Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight—say that five times drunk. In honor of Hellhunter having our record release show this Friday, March 14th, at the DNA Lounge, I'm going to be talking about, you guessed it, the new Hellhunter EP, Hellbanger.
I'm pretty stoked on how this turned out. It was recorded in Oakland at Subterranean Studios by the great Tom Gears. It sounds real trashy, evil, and kind of primitive—just how Hellhunter wanted it. I'm pretty stoked on the album cover especially; I think it looks great. The back looks pretty cool too, with photographs by Raymond Ahner, who's a pretty well-known photographer in the Bay Area music scene.
I want to talk about the photographs on the inner sleeve. For those of you who've already ordered the album and received it, thank you very much. You might be wondering, "Well, where the hell were these pictures taken?" I know I would think that if I saw these pictures because they're kind of interesting. So, we'll start off with this one. This is taken at the Odd Fellows Temple in San Francisco. Actually, all the photographs on the inner sleeve are taken there.
This is at the bar in the clubhouse of the temple, and it's a pretty cool spot to hang out. We blacked it out, but in the background, it's like an Odd Fellows museum. If you don't know who the Odd Fellows are or what the Odd Fellows is, you should look it up. I'm not going to get into that right now, but I'm an Odd Fellow. We blacked it out, but in the background, it's like an Odd Fellows temple—lots of interesting things hanging on the wall: weapons, masks, photographs dating back a hundred years and even earlier. There are a couple of pool tables in the background that you can't see, but it's a really fun spot to hang out at. We're drinking some really good whisky in this picture; I forget what kind it is, but it was fantastic.
Over here, more photographs in the temple. This is taken in the room I like to call the Room of Judgment, and what actually goes on in here, I have no fucking idea, but it looks cool, and the thrones are pretty metal, and it worked out. This photograph is taken in the bowels of the building; right there is the boiler room—watch out for Freddy Krueger. But yeah, very metal, dark, evil environment, just like our music. It fits our music pretty well.
These photographs were taken by my label partner, Dave Hecht, and yeah, pretty cool stuff. So, if you don't have your copy yet and you can't make it to the show, get it at hectic.com, and you won't be disappointed.
Headlining our record release show on Friday is Insanity, and these guys are the stuff of death metal legends. They're from Redwood City—at least they were back then; they still might be. This is like the first death metal I ever heard. In 1987, the demo came out in '85, but I heard it around '87, even before I heard Death's Scream Bloody Gore. So, this is the first time I ever heard a blast beat, and I didn't even know what a blast beat was, and I don't even think they called it a blast beat back then. I'm not saying it is the first blast beat ever—that's an argument or discussion for all the Matt Harvey’s of the world—but it's the first time I heard one, and I was like, "What the hell is that?" and I was addicted to this demo; I listened to it all the time.
I didn't see them back in the day, though; they didn't play that often because Insanity were plagued with a lot of inner problems, like just lineup changes and members dying and just a lot of weird stuff happened to them, so they didn't play that often. So, I never got a chance to see them until many, many years later.
But the first time I saw a blast beat was this band Plutocracy, also from Redwood City. They played The Stone; they were a grindcore band. They played The Stone—this is like maybe 1988. I was hanging out with a drummer named Sam Adato, a fantastic, wonderful person and drummer. He was in the band Wrekking Machine, who were like the biggest unsigned San Francisco thrash band from like '89 to like '91 or '92; they were the shit.
Anyways, he's like ten years older than me, so he wasn't too hip to death metal, especially in 1988, and he definitely didn't know what a blast beat was; he never heard that before. So, when the drummer for Plutocracy went into a blast beat, I was watching him like a hawk because I just never seen one before, and I wanted just to see how the hell you do it—how do you play that fast? But Sam's reaction after the guy did that beat was he turned to me and said, "What the fuck was that?" He was none too thrilled with it, let me tell you, but I was stoked to finally see someone do one and get an idea of how I could do it myself.
But yeah, these guys in Insanity are legendary. I'm really stoked they're headlining our record release show. Look at these angry young men back here. That's Dave; he's the sole remaining original member. He's the main guy; he always has been. But yeah, this is fantastic. I don't know if this will be available at the show or not, but I'm glad I have a copy. But yeah, I hope you have fun or had fun watching this video, and I'll see some of you on Friday. If not, I'll see you in the next video. Goodbye.
–Bleeding Priest