SickDrummer.com, Perseverance Holdings and our friends at Relapse Records are among the sponsors of the DEATH TO ALL TOUR which kicks off tonight in that most metal of cities San Francisco, CA. The tour celebrates the life and music of CHUCK SCHULDINER of DEATH. With DEATH and later CONTROL DENIED Chuck blazed an innovative trail in music and has been followed by nearly every death metal that followed in his shadow. This is not an exaggeration, but widely acknowledged and not just by his peers and loved ones, but by many bands both from yesterday and the present. Performing music from a career spanning set list with be an all-star group of Chuck’s former band mates and giants of death metal like GENE HOGLAN (Individual Thought Patterns/Symbolic), SEAN REINERT (Human), STEVE DIGIORGIO (Human/Individual Thought Patterns), Scott Clendenin (The Sound of Perseverance), PAUL MASVIDAL (Human), Shannon Hamm (The Sound of Perseverance), and Bobby Koelble (Symbolic). Handling vocal duties will be by Steffen Kummerer of OBSCURA and Charles Elliott of ABYSMAL DAWN/BEREFT who are both greatly influenced by Chuck. Some of the guest artists who will join certain shows are RICHARD CHRISTY of CHARRED WALLS OF THE DAMNED (ex-DEATH), Alex Skolnick and Chuck Billy of TESTAMENT, Paul Ryan of ORIGIN, Craig Locicero of FORBIDDEN, Travis Ryan of CATTLE DECAPITATION,Trevor Strnad and Ryan Knight of THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER and Emil Werstler of DAATH/CHIMAIRA. GORGUTS will open most of the shows.
Not only will this be a celebration of Chuck’s life, but will help make a lasting impression for the future at every show. Each night is a benefit show to raise awareness for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund which provides support to career musicians in need of support while facing illness, disability or age related issues. This cause hits especially close to home for Chuck’s family and friends and one he’d gladly support. Please come out to this rare opportunity to pay tribute to a legend, see an amazing collection of talent and hear some songs that haven’t been performed anywhere since DEATH was active as a band. Please come out to support this tour and support live music, especially underground bands.
DEATH TO ALL 2012 TOUR DATES:
6/22/2012 – The Regency Ballroom – San Francisco, CA
6/23/2012 – House of Blues – Los Angeles, CA
6/26/2012 – House of Blues – Chicago, IL
6/28/2012 – Irving Plaza – NYC, NY
6/30/2012 – The Beacham – Orlando, FL
*Postponed until 2013* 7/01/2012 – The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
*Postponed until 2013* 7/03/2012 – House of Blues – Dallas, TX
Personal opinions tend to vary greatly when it comes to deciding upon a creative apex for the work of Chuck Schuldiner and Death. While the legacy, lasting effects and impact of Schuldiner’s work for the death metal genre-effectively blurring the borders of what extreme metal musicians can achieve when incorporating a progressive mindset into the framework-remain unchallenged, all of us possess our own preferences when it comes to the man’s body of music.
Yours truly offers up two very diverse selections when it comes to personal favorites: Death’s charmingly raw and unerringly brutal 1987 debut Scream Bloody Gore and this, musically mindblowing ’93 LP, the massive Individual Thought Patterns. Featuring the legendary Gene Hoglan behind the kit, fat string wizard Steve DiGiorgio on the bass and King Diamond’s main axeman Andy LaRoque, Individual Thought Patterns sit snugly in the middle between its compatriot tech-metal juggernauts Symbolic and Human, offering up mature songwriting sensibility alongside Schuldiner’s almost effortless knack for rhythmically punishing metal.
To be honest, the decision process between Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic and Human basically comes down to the question of which flavor ice cream one enjoys: in other words, there isn’t really a wrong answer. Individual Thought Patterns features a memorable set of songs, however-”Jealousy,” “Trapped In a Corner” and “Overactive Imagination” serving as certifiable highlights, alongside album closing classic “The Philosopher,” a song yours truly humbly covered in my own band back in the day-which eclipses the comparatively more sterile nature of Symbolic, while also coming across as a bit warmer when compared to the clinical precision of Human.
Epically reissued by Relapse, the grooves of “Mentally Blind,” “Destiny” and “Nothing Is Not” can now be enjoyed by a whole new generation of tech-death wizards, here graced by a double disc presentation which also includes a bevy of live tracks and a studio outtake of “The Exorcist,” for good measure. Does all of this add up to ‘essential?’ You bet your ass it does.We still miss you, Chuck.
Charred Walls of the Damned-Cold Winds on Timeless Days (Metal Blade)
I’ll fully cop to totally missing the boat on Charred Walls of the Damned. It was if I had permanent earmuffs attached to my ears right around the time this project from Richard Christy, Steve DiGiorgio-both of Death-and former Priest frontman Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens first hit the shelves with their self-titled debut from 2010.
Whether it was the trepidation over their somewhat silly name or just the simple fact that about 27223928078 different metal albums are released every day, Cold Winds On Timeless Days is my first experience with Charred Walls of the Damned. While I’m not exactly kicking myself over prior ignorance, this sophomore effort does come out kicking and screaming with “Timeless Days,” an epic amalgamation of Christy’s precise drumming-actually sounding a bit restrained compared to his work on Death’s Sound of Perseverance swansong-Owen’s soaring screech and DiGiorgio’s expansive bass playing.
The real star of the show is the guitar work of Jason Suecof, however, which comes across as decidedly tasteful and melodic most of the time, while presenting just enough heaviness to push this traditional-minded metal over the cliff into slightly extreme thrash territory. Suecof’s production also does Cold Winds some excellent favors, achieving an excellent balance of dynamic and flavor. Composition-wise, however, Charred Walls of the Damned never quite scale the same heights as “Timeless Days,” with many songs here blending into one another, without much deviation or real identity, other than above-average, involved metal.
“Cold Winds” ups the ante a bit more-evoking a similarly electric vibe as the album’s opener-but overall, it’s tough to really claim that Cold Winds on Timeless Days sticks with the listener on anything other than a smile-and-nod, superficial level. In other words, it’s pretty good, but not going to go down as a minor classic or anything-just workmanlike metal goodness.
Metal Army caught up with Steffan Kummerer backstage in New York City during OBSCURA’s recent tour stop there opening for CHILDREN OF BODOM and the DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT. Here is an excerpt of our candid chat.
Another contender for top album of the 2011.
MAA: Why do you think the response to Omnivium has been so postive?
SK: Omnivium is the first record where all the song writers really worked together. The songs in Cosmogenesis where mostly written before the other members joined. Hannes Grossmann wrote a couple of songs, Christian wrote, I guess one song and I did the rest. But on this album everything merged way better together. For example this song “Septuagint”, the opener, it’s like equal work of everyone and you cannot tell who wrote which riff. So that just shows that everybody knows exactly how the sound of OBSCURA should be. From my perspective it sounds more metal. That is at least my intention, my feelings. The feedback so far is very good, better than expected because I feel the new album is a little bit more complex and not as easy to get as a couple of songs on Cosmogenesis have been. All in all we are quite happy about it.
Steffan Kummerer leads Obscura in concert in 2010.
MAA: Why did Jeroen leave the band?
SK: He had to leave. We fired him.
MAA: How did you rebound by finding Linus and have you had to adapt the set at all from what was planned?
SK: Absolutely not. Linus is one of the subs we’re working with since Jeroen played his last show in October 2010. Since then we’ve worked with several subs like, Jacob Schmidt of DEFEATED SANITY. Linus Klausenitzer of NONEUCLID and on the Japanese tour we had Steve DiGiorgio stepping in. Great person! He’s a story teller and it was really cool tour together. To come back to your question we haven’t had to change any of our sets, songs or whatever because Linus can play everything. I mean, he played in NONEUCLID. If you can play in NONEUCLID, OBSCURA is like a walk in the park!
MAA: I would never say OBSCURA’s music is like a walk in the park!
SK: I’m (being) honest.
Steffan solos on his custom made RAN guitars.
MAA: Who are you main infleunces as a guitarist and a songwriter?
SK: My personal influences, I would say Jon Nodtveidt of DISSECTION, Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert, CYNIC, is I guess an obvious influence of our band, EMPEROR, like Ihsahn, and since Christian Muenzner joined the band, a lot of prog rock influences came to the table. Of course I also like bands like SYMPHONY X. I just got into a couple of years ago, it’s an old band, but it’s quite impressive. I guess you can hear it, here and there a couple of influences from that band as well.
MAA: I imagine it takes a lot of dexterityt to play these songs live. What kinds of warmup exercises or scales to you play before you go on stage?
SK: I just play a couple of songs, from ourselves, and play them a little bit slower so the left hand can warm up a little bit better. Especially if you have some short progressions and take them slowly. I feel it works better than just shredding around.
MAA: Do you have any favorite modern bands?
SK: My favorite band is not metal actually. It’s PORTISHEAD. It’s just fantastic, this band. All three albums. I bought the last album doubled, just try to support. Just bought two copies of them. Anyway, metal wise actually, they’re still the same favorite bands I had ten years ago: EMPEROR, DISSECTION, CYNIC, DEATH, ATHEIST all those bands. CYNIC is fantastic, I’m looking forward to their new album. I hear they will enter the studio by this year. Looking forward to the new line-up, but I don’t have a clue who will join them though.
Guitarist Christian Muezner and Drummer Hannes Grossman were integral parts of the writing process on Omnivium.
(Special thanks to Steffan Kummerer, Relapse Records and Return To The Pit for the live photos.)
Richard Christy may be known as one of Howard Stern’s sidekicks by many, but to a lot of us metalheads he is possibly one of the best metal drummers of all time. His playing with DEATH helped influence many, and he along with Ripper Owens’ helped create ICED EARTH’s best album to date. At least as far as I’m concerned! For those of you that don’t know Richard formed a new project called CHARRED WALLS OF THE DAMNED, with Owens, bassist extraordinaire Steve DiGiorgio, and producer/guitarist Jason Suecoff.
1. How different was it for you to prepare for this tour as opposed to touring with other bands in the past?
Well with this tour I not only had to practice the drums several hours a day to make sure I was in good shape and knew the songs well, but I also was involved in all of the behind the scenes decisions, like renting a van and trailer for the tour, merchandise for the tour, etc. so it was a lot of work but well worth it.
2. Do you feel that there is added pressure on you due to the notoriety you’ve received from the Stern show?
Ya probably a little bit but there’s also added pressure from people who know me from DEATH and ICED EARTH because those are two very popular heavy metal bands and I definitely want to make sure that I meet all of the expectations of all of the fans who know me from my former bands because I really want people to like Charred Walls of the Damned too.
3. Some people may refer to this as a solo project, or “Richard Christy’s band” due to said notoriety from the Stern show. What would you say to them?
I want them to consider this a full band and I want people to know that every person in this band is equally important. We all worked equally very hard to create our album and we’re all very proud of it. I’m honored that some people are curious about this band because of me but when they hear our music I want the important thing to be that the music is heavy and very catchy and something that headbangers can bang their head to!
4. Given your day job, how often do you get to practice?
I get to practice about an hour or two hours a day in the afternoon. By about 3 or 4 in the afternoon I’m usually getting a little sleepy cause I get up at 4 in the morning but after having an energy drink and sitting behind the drums something just takes over and I catch my second wind!
5. Do you feel that you need tons of practice to keep your chops up or can you just get behind a kit and pick up where you left off?
I think practice is always super important to keep my chops up and drums are something where no matter how many years you’ve played, there’s always something else that you can learn, and it’s the same way with any instrument, you’re always learning. It’s also important to practice to keep up my stamina which is something I wanted to work on a lot before our tour because we did at least an hour and a half a night and I wanted to make sure that I had the same amount of energy at the beginning of the show that I have at the end of the show. (more…)
