In 2008, when I was 15, I had accomplished some things on the great checklist of life: I had a driver's licence, I had a summer job, I had drunk my first beer. I had bummed outside a liquor store and asked a guy to buy some liquor for our friend group. I drank my first entire bottle of wine, which incidentally was during the 2007 Grey Cup.
2008 also sowed the seeds for accomplishing what few people accomplish in their lives: being the singer in a death metal band.
In 2008 I had shoulder-length hair and an axe to grind. Before YouTube and after Limewire, Soulseek was a computer program that gave you access to the wide world of music. I liked the fast metal, the slow metal, all of it. It’s why before I go to sleep I hear the faintest droning “eeeee.”
I decided to take up guitar and my parents paid for lessons. My teacher was a guy named Andrew who plays jazz bass now in Toronto. I was a bad student. We’d kind of agree what I was supposed to practice for the next week, but I wouldn’t practice and Andrew was fine with that. We’d sit there and noodle and shoot the breeze.
One day we got to talking and Andrew said he was in a death metal band called Corpse Vapour. They were trying to get a full-length album together but they didn’t have a singer. You wouldn’t actually call it a singer: with that type of music the vocals are anything from screaming, snorting, squealing, gargling, spitting, and all the sounds a human can make short of throwing up.
I asked Andrew if I could audition to be their vocalist. He said, “Sure, man.”
I met the band at the house of the guitar player Logan who lived on an acreage. The band practiced songs about gore, guts, and hostile alien takeovers in an old building that used to be a country church.
Logan on guitar, Andrew on bass and Kenny on drums started playing a song I was supposed to memorize but didn’t, except for the chorus which went “Zombie Face Stomp.” They said I was in.
Our first gig was at a performance space in downtown Edmonton that used to be a hardware store, and where people hosted metal shows, sold Boxer beer, and lived in the back. We got up in front of a few dozen sweaty metalheads and hacked out a few songs. I still hadn’t memorized any of the lyrics, but no one seemed to notice, not even the band members. My dad, being the dad he is, showed up at the show. He was the only person not wearing black, and he wore his old Macklin Mohawks jacket. He tried to buy a beer but was questioned by the guy selling beer named Leather Dave. Dad figures Leather Dave thought he was an undercover cop.
Kenny left the band and Logan started writing drum parts on Garageband. We couldn't find a drummer who could play the drum parts fast enough, so after Kenny quit we hooked up an iPod with the drum tracks on them to an amp for our live shows.
There was a venue/bar in west Edmonton called Mead Hall, which was busted in 2014 and about $308,000 of drugs were seized. One night, our set was scheduled to be near the end of the evening, and they didn’t let me into the venue until we played. Logan and Andrew partied it up while I waited in my dad’s Toyota Yaris as he slept in the driver’s seat. Close to midnight we got onstage, but at that point there were only about ten people left and a dog. Right at the front was a bald guy who had drunk a lot of rye. In the middle of a song I’d slap his big bald head and he’d get more into the song. Meanwhile, the dog howled along to our songs. It’s a long way to the top if you want to play death metal.
While we were writing our album, Andrew quit the band, so it was just Logan and I. Our album had 15 songs with lyrics I never memorized. We were rolling, and we had a tour planned that’d bring us all the way to Winnipeg.
We recorded the album in the old church and pressed it. Logan spelled my name wrong on the album, but it didn’t matter. We made an album! I sold one to my French teacher for ten bucks and in said in front of everybody in class it was the worst music he’d ever heard.
The vocals were getting to me though. There’s a proper way to scream in a metal band so you can perform consistently night after night and so you don’t wreck your voice. My technique was to push until I didn’t have a voice left.
Our CD launch show was at B Scene Studios off Whyte. It was also our last. I invited some friends from junior high, and only one left before our set. Logan and I put on doctor’s outfits covered with fake blood, and let ‘er rip. Leather Dave was there, as was the bald rye guy. We played old and new songs, and the crowd wanted Zombie Face Stomp as an encore, so we played it again.
But I had enough and wanted to move onto other things, like trying to keep a girlfriend and doing less underage drinking. Last I heard Logan was doing design work and made electronic music.
And if anyone wants an autograph, send cash to the News-Optimist.
