Hails my friends,

I'm more than happy to give You another "Back to the roots" article before 2013.
It's written by Azahel from bands like Frost like ashes & Old man forest. I hope You'll enjoy reading.
Also thank You Azahel for taking the time to write for my little zine.

Btw. I don't want to see any kind of religious bashing.

What is birthed in the back pew of a church while listening to a sermon about the fact we are all dead to sin and then being offered to eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood? How about a horror punk band called Grave Robber? 2005 saw the birth...or should I say the *still*-birth of what is already a band of classic stature. If it were just a gimmick it wouldn’t work.

I have met the brainchild of this creation personally and this band is as authentic on every level as any band out there. Not only are the antics awesome and fun as they should be, the music is second to none. And then the quality of the story telling and the chilling messages behind the scripts (within and between the songs) are truly inspiring.

I am not a punk kid. I am a metal head. A black metaller. A headbanger. But from the first song live at C-Stone I found myself up to the front singing along. And then after studying the lyrics...(I will admit being skeptical about how they could swing the message through this medium and I am no lyrical pansy by any stretch)...I was blown away by the depth and the searing truth driven out through these songs.

I have had the priveledge to spend time speaking with Wretched about the band, the ministry, the message and our philosophy of music and these songs are some of the most rock solid presentations of Christ ever penned.

If you are into Misfits style punk or even GWAR style rock, Grave Robber is not just “the alternative”, they are the newest big thing in this genre. And if you are a metal head like me who wants to just have some fun you will find it in Grave Robber. And even if you are a timid theology student who would like some Bible studies that get the blood flowing a bit (inside and outside your body, I might warn you) then Grave Robber might be for you too! Either way, buy the songs, hit play and scare your parents. And get to know the real Christ, the Reanimator!

Azahel
Frost Like Ashes/Old Man Frost

Hails my friends,

I'm happy to present another "Back to the roots" column to You.
I hope that You'll enjoy reading this as much as I did.

And once again thank You Dave for taking the time for my little zine.

Hey guys!!!

Dave Wagner, bassist for Death Doomers EVOKEN, here to go “Back to the Roots”… For me, getting back to the roots means taking a look back at how things were in the early days of the underground Metal scene, back to my teenage years in the late 80s.  Back in those days before the internet, downloading and I Tunes, you often had to do a lot of hard work to track down the fresh and exciting cutting edge bands of the time.  At the time, I would eagerly read any underground fanzines or any column in a more mainstream Metal publication that would cover the Heavy Shit and I would pore over the thanks lists of the records and tapes I bought to memorize the names of any bands that made it on them… This is actually how I first became aware of such gods as CARNIVORE, BATHORY, DEATH, AUTOPSY, MORBID ANGEL, CARNAGE, MASSACRE, IMMOLATION and so on…. These simple thanks lists or magazine reviews and write ups passed the word along in their own indirect way… You received a clue that could set you off on a search and when you finally got the chance to listen to a new discovery for the first time, the experience could be so rewarding…  Now that I have your sight focused here I will take this opportunity to give you a clue about what I think is cool in the Doom underground these days…

 If desolate, monumental Doom Death is your thing, (and I guess it might be because you are bothering to find out what some guy in EVOKEN thinks about something…)  make sure to check out Australia’s INVERLOCH and their amazing “Dusk / Subside” MCD. Anyone familiar with the legendary DISEMBOWELMENT will certainly need to give this a listen as INVERLOCH members Paul and Matt were part of the godly d. As you might expect this EP is chock full of bleak and chilling atmospheres and crushing heaviness and the Death Metal aspect is in my opinion more intense than d. the riffs are just so fucking sick!!  Overall an amazing release and I really look forward to hear what they come up with next…

In a similar vein, “Netherwards” by Seattle, Washington’s ANHEDONIST is another massive dose of unrelentingly gloomy Doom Death mixed with a nice dose of Barbaric War Metal intensity that will pulverize your feeble soul into submission.  I saw these guys (and gal) live in New York City last year, opening up for HOODED MENACE and NEGATIVE PLANE, and quite frankly they totally stole the show…. Look the fuck out for ANHEDONIST!

Birthed from the filth ridden streets of New York arises a new beast…  Slithering like an anaconda that will surely squeeze the life out of you should you fall within the grasp of its coils; comes SERPENTINE PATH… SERPENTINE PATH is the twisted brain child of the prolific Ryan Lipynsky, Jay Newman and Darren Verni, all formerly in NYC’s UNEARTHLY TRANCE and Tim Bagshaw, formerly of Brit heavyweights ELECTRIC WIZARD and RAMESSES. It should come as no surprise that once again this is real fucking Doom of the highest order… Last year they released a self-titled 7” EP on Parasitic Records and their debut full length, also self-titled, will be out on Relapse Records shortly…  These guys have a bit more of a Death Metal edge to them when compared to the members former groups, and this only makes things better in my humble opinion…  I hope that EVOKEN has an opportunity to share the stage with these maniacs soon….

Creeping even a bit more into the Death Metal territory I bring you New Zealand’s titans of Harsh Black Death Doom War Metal WITCHRIST.  Though these guys are obviously weaned on tits full of warlike extreme Black Metal like ARCHGOAT, BEHERIT, CONQUEROR and BLASPHEMY with a good measure of brutal Death like INCANTATION thrown in, these guys can slow things down and Doom the fuck out like  nobody’s business…  Their latest slab and debut for underground stalwarts OsmoseProductions , “The Grand Tormentor,” is an orgiastic feast of destruction and death steeped in Eastern mysticism… The fearsome god of death Yama awaits you…

Well, I hope you enjoyed taking this look into the underground to go “back to the roots.”  Many thanks to Rob from Music of Shadows for offering this opportunity to spout off on some cool shit… Stay sick, stay underground and please make sure to check out the new EVOKEN album, “Atra Mors,” now available from Profound Lore!!

Hails my friends,

I'm so happy to present the first "Back to the roots" column to You.
I hope that You'll enjoy reading this.

And once again thank You Kostas for taking the time for my little zine.

Going back to the time I started my band Pantheist, I can only recall pleasant memories. Not unlike the experience of university students, who spend their time at the University moaning about their unsurmountable workload and the hard life they have, but

once they find a job and become familiar with the pressures of the rat race realize that this was actually the best time of their lives, I don’t think I realized then what a great, pure era it was.

Yes, there was no money in it. Yes, musical equipment was expensive and musicians who wanted to play this type of unpopular music, hard to come by. Recordings took place at improvised home studios for a minimal budget.There was no comfort in traveling and touring, no expectation of a label deal, no worries or time pressure about releasing anything at all. There was no payment for gigs, other than the reward we got out of our excitement of playing a venue for the first time, of having the privilege to share our music with an audience. Our cds were seldom to be found at cd stores, and people had to come to our gigs to buy them. Communication with other people of the scene was usually taking place through online forums like doom-metal.com, and we were making arrangements to meet each other whenever we attended gigs. Gigs of ‘bigger’ bands and festivals we all attended were usually also the place to discuss setting up our own gigs, almost like a microcosm of underground musicians operating at the fringes of the wider world of metal music.

But there was endless charm in our boundless optimism, our carelessness and desire to start up our own scene rather than relying on one made at the terms of others. Except of the inevitable romanticism that grows with the years when one is looking back at the ‘unspoiled’ past, I believe there was one fundamental element making this simply the most enjoyable time of playing in an underground band: it was all about the music, and our love for it.

Fast forward ten years later and things have changed, and yet they remain the same. Gigs are still being paid with peanuts (except of England, where even peanuts are hard to come by, it seems). The comfort of traveling and touring has only improved slightly, and we have finally started to acquaint ourselves with the joys of air travel.  There is still a hard core of people who buy our albums and merch, but most prefer to download it for free. Labels have come into the equation, and money is taking a central role in dealing with them, because we now record in professional studios that cost a lot of money, and quite understandably labels want us to sell albums so that they can get their money back.

Very often I look back at more recent years with a mix of cynicism and despair. Things have definitely become more difficult. Our genre, which was already quite divided when we started, has further splintered into more minor subgenres and people who listen to such a subgenre, will often shun and snub the rest. A new type of ‘doomster’ has made his/her unwelcome entrance: the hipster, who will like Sunn O))), Esoteric or St Vitus not because of the unique characteristics of the music the play, but because Terrorizer and Rock-a-Rolla tell them that these bands are now ‘cool‘ and ok to listen to (Esoteric and St Vitus were definitely NOT cool when I started listening to them).

CDs are now usually bought online, as the original enthusiasm in our subgenre has subsided and less people come to gigs, unless they are bigger ‘festivals’. With so many bands and genres around, competition is stiff and those that survive do this not necessarily by the grace of their music, but by their self-promotion skills (or the promotional skills of their labels). The world has become more confusing than ever with countless bands, magazines, labels, genres and promoters claiming that one should listen to the music they promote rather than someone else’s, but why should one?

All this fluff has affected my view on music, -even underground music- fundamentally. I have lost my ‘innocence’ so to speak. I no longer believe that good music will eventually surface, and mediocre music disappear by their own qualities. I now understand the importance of negotiating with promoters, selling my music, and ‘socializing’ at the right places. Just like the feeling evoked by the genre people say we belong to, doom metal, all this should be utterly depressing, hopeless and bleak.

But once in a while, I still dare scrape all the dust and grime and look underneath their surface for the reasons I got involved with this music and the independent underground ‘scene’ in the first place. And then I see the flame burning again. The same flame that drove us in the beginning to pick up our instruments and make music, without labels, without money, without  expectations and with only our imaginary audience in our head. And I know that I will always continue making honest, uncompromising and emotional music that comes straight from the heart. Because despite everything, I must. And I owe it both to myself, and to the people who speak the same musical language I do. Because that’s what it’s all about: our music, and our love for it.

Kostas Panagiotou
July 2012