In the first installment of Bleeding Priest's Bay Area Metal Spotlight, all about Vicious Rumors' "Digital Dictator" album [1987].
Bleeding Priest talks about hair metal, his impressions of seeing Vicious Rumors live in 1988 with King Diamond, and accidentally getting a gig through air drumming.
Transcript
What's up, everybody? Welcome to the first edition of Bleeding Priests Bay Area Metal Spotlight. I'll come up with a better name. It's the best I could come up with at this point in time. What we're going to do here with each installment is talk about a significant record that was released by a Bay Area metal or rock band over the years. Very important albums to me and to many others.
For this first edition, we're going to do Vicious Rumors – Digital Dictator. Great album. Criminally underrated, and the band is underrated as well for many reasons, which I'll get into in a second. This is a fantastic album, one of my favorite Bay Area metal albums to ever come out.
How I discovered this record is kind of funny. I saw Vicious Rumors open for King Diamond in 1988, shortly after this album came out, at The Omni in Oakland. King Diamond was touring for Them. My first time seeing King Diamond, actually, so I was pretty excited. Vicious Rumors were opening. I had heard the name before, but I was not familiar with their music or their image or anything like that.
When they came on stage, I was blown away immediately because I had never seen a local band look so professional. Granted, I hadn't seen too many local bands by 1988, but I started going to shows in '87 and saw those smaller local bands. Vicious Rumors came out like they were Judas Priest or something. They had the look, the sound, the moves—everything. It was super professional.
Speaking of the look, this was '88, so I was full-on into thrash and wasn't really listening to glam so much at the time. I guess I still was a little bit, but when Vicious Rumors came on stage, their image struck me as kind of glammy or hair metal—even though I hate that term "hair metal." For lack of a better phrase. So I didn’t know what to think of them at first because of the big hair. I think they were probably wearing makeup, but I could not deny the music, the professionalism, and the players. Everyone was smoking, great dual-guitar attack. Larry Howe was a killer drummer. Carl Albert, the late great Carl Albert, was one of the best vocalists I’ve ever seen in the flesh. He blew me away.
I was shocked by how killer they were, even though I wasn’t into the way they looked. I was still way into their music. The next day, I went to The Record Vault in San Francisco—long gone now, but a pretty famous heavy metal location in the city back in the day. I found this album. I was stoked. I was going to get it, but when I flipped it over and saw the pictures on the back, it almost lost the sale. Just because I wasn’t into that image at the time.
I was way into thrash and starting to listen to death metal a little bit. I was already into Death, so it wasn’t what I normally picked up. If I saw a band wearing makeup with big hair, I would usually avoid it in 1988. But I took the chance and bought this album, and I’ve been thankful for that decision ever since. This album is incredible.
Like I said, Jeff Thorpe and Mark McGee—the twin-guitar attack—no one did it better than them at the time. They were just the best. Carl Albert’s voice. The production is great. It was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California. I don’t think that’s around anymore, but a lot of classic metal and rock albums were recorded at that studio.
This album blew me away. I still love it. I still listen to it regularly.
Fast forward to 2001 or 2002, I met Jeff Thorpe at a house party one night in San Francisco. Late night. Everyone was partaking in adult recreational activities at this party. Jeff and I got to talking, and I told him how much I loved this album. I was having fun, I was a little high, and I ended up air-drumming this entire album to Jeff Thorpe. He just sat there and watched me. I had him cornered.
I was like, "No, no, no, this part! And this part! And right here—this drum fill and this chorus!" So I basically air-drummed the whole album in front of him. He was so impressed by that, he called me a week later and asked if I wanted to go with Vicious Rumors to Wacken and play with them. Drum for them.
I was shocked. And I did. I ended up joining Vicious Rumors and playing with them for maybe three years. Unfortunately, I never recorded anything with them beyond demos, which you can actually hear on YouTube. But because of my love for this album and my unparalleled skills of air-drumming, I got the Vicious Rumors gig. A month later, I was playing in front of tens of thousands of people.
My favorite song on this album is Towns on Fire. When I told Jeff that, he kind of laughed at me and said that song was an afterthought. They considered it their '80s Kiss song, like something you’d hear on Lick It Up or Animalize, which is exactly why I love it. He said they never really played it live very much. It certainly wasn’t in their set in 2002.
But I demanded it. They brought it back to the set, and we started rehearsing it. Literally, a week after meeting him at that party, I was rehearsing with them and rehearsing Towns on Fire. Jeff actually saw the light. He was like, “Yeah, this song is pretty awesome.” I added some double bass, made it a little more aggressive, and we ended up playing that song at every show I did with them for three years. They still play that song to this day. So you can thank me for that.
If you’re not familiar with this album, you should pick it up. Vicious Rumors, like I said, are a very underrated band. They’re kind of ignored when people talk about Bay Area metal. People focus on the Bay Area thrash scene, rightfully so, but Vicious Rumors came out in, I think, '82. They were around before a lot of these Bay Area thrash bands. They were one of the fastest, heaviest bands at the time.
Once thrash started picking up and that sound started coming together, Vicious Rumors—God bless them—stayed the course with their traditional heavy metal sound. Sometimes they’re lumped into the Bay Area thrash scene when people talk about Bay Area bands, but they really shouldn’t be. They never really were a thrash band, even though they have really fast songs on each album. On this one, A Minute to Kill is really fast, almost thrash.
Vicious Rumors were almost thrash, but they were more like an aggressive Judas Priest. They stayed the course over the years, and they still sound exactly the same. They’re still great live. That’s probably why they get ignored—they didn’t follow suit with the thrash sound.
Like, take Lȧȧz Rockit for example. They were a straight-up heavy metal band when they started, like Vicious Rumors. They played together all the time. But then, when thrash started picking up speed—no pun intended—and people started recognizing the Bay Area for thrash, Lȧȧz Rockit went in a more thrash direction. They became a lot thrashier than Vicious Rumors ever were.
Vicious Rumors stayed the course. For better or worse, they probably would have gotten more recognition if they had thrashed up their sound. But they stuck to their guns, and I respect them for that. It’s a shame they never got their just due over te years.
You should check them out. Check out this album. It’s one of my favorite Bay Area releases of all time. Vicious Rumors – Digital Dictator.
--@bleedingpriest