The origins of heavy metal have been fiercely debated for nearly as long as its parent genre, rock 'n' roll, has existed, with examples of the Who, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and reaching as far back as Screamin' Jay Hawkins vying for the title of the first heavy metal artist. Late '60s progenitors Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, among others, are widely credited with defining the music, taking British Blues imitations—sometimes outright mimicry—and turning up the volume while adding occult mysticism to its lyrics and visual image. The established rock press has always been at odds with the music for reasons including its perceived anti-intellectualism.
This helped metal, incidentally, creating a grassroots relationship between performer and audience that continues to this day. By the mid—'70s, heavy metal was flourishing, selling millions of records across the world, and then punk rock came along and confused everything.
Here was a form that took from the same well of source material as traditional metal—the British invasion, most notably—but did away with the wizards and warriors imagery that superstars like Rainbow and Deep Purple embraced, replacing it with street-level grittiness and a political consciousness that unabashedly attacked mainstream values in a way that metal had previously only implied by its very existence. Furthermore, punk rock was met with nearly unanimous praise from music critics.
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal followed, with bands like Motorhead and Iron Maiden incorporating punk's speed—in the velocity of the music and its druggy lifestyle—into the sounds of their predecessors, or in some cases, blurring the line between the two.
Meanwhile in the U.S., two movements were happening simultaneously: hardcore, which was punk's mean and even angrier little brother, and the first bands that came to be associated with thrash metal, including Slayer and Metallica. Slayer, Metallica, and their contemporaries were one part NWBHM and one part hardcore, further blurring the lines between what was punk and what was metal. Other sub-genres followed in the '80s: speed metal, grindcore and death metal; later, black metal, stoner metal, metalcore, and countless other varieties that often offered the slightest musical differences to distinguish them from each other appeared. What all of these sub-genres had in common was a commitment to a perceived reality unencumbered by mainstream musical and cultural values, or at the very least, the very punk notion of autonomy of art and commerce.
In 2014, Tucson has countless acts that could fit in some, all, or none of these categories. North, for example (and featured later in this piece), owes little debt to any heavy metal offshoot that exists beyond a tiny footnote in rock's long history, but the band's pummeling rhythms and tortured aesthetic find it closer to metal than anything else. This article is by no means an encyclopedia or even a comprehensive overview of Tucson's metal and hardcore scene; it is a small introduction, where the only goal is to engage the reader to explore deeper into the rich musical landscape they might not have known about. In addition to the acts featured here, other bands very worthy of a listen include Territory, Inoculara, Anakim, Conqueror Worm, Chamber, Gatecreeper, Man Bites Dog, Vanish Twin, Genocaust and Magguts.
David Rodgers
Our story starts with David Rodgers. Rodgers is one of the metal community's most outspoken figures. He plays the guitar in scene heavyweights Godhunter, is the co-founder of Battleground Records, and a co-founder of Tucson's yearly Southwest Terror Fest.
Rodgers is 41, soft-spoken, friendly, and engaging, which counteracts his divisive opinions and mildly intimidating appearance. He moved to Tucson from Florida in 2004 to aid an ailing family member. Immersing himself in what he calls "Tucson's burgeoning heavy scene," he explains, "There's a lot of bands here who are getting a lot of attention elsewhere but not in Tucson, which is not really how it's supposed to go. A while ago, I was at a show that was featuring, I believe, Sex Prisoner, North and Territory. Some of these bands had just gotten off tour and we were just talking about how the worst show on the tour was the Tucson show and why was that happening.
"Tucson has always been known as a really good city for hardcore, going back all the way to UPS and Malignus Youth (in the '80s and '90s), and that's gone through to bands like Gat-Rot, who have been stalwarts in the scene for 20 years now, to (current) bands like Territory. Now, though, hardcore's branched out, there's so many different genres that have come out of it. So even though Godhunter, Sex Prisoner, North and Territory sound completely different, I guarantee that all these bands point to hardcore as a major influence on their band and that's Tucson's legacy."
Rodgers' enthusiasm and oversized persona ingratiated himself (some might say 'forced') into this murky grey-area of music that was, after the explosion of rap- and nu-metal in the late '90s, frankly embarrassed to be associated with the word 'metal', but still struck by its initial nihilism and catharsis. He formed Godhunter in 2009 and in 2013, founded Battleground Records to release the band's critically acclaimed City of Dust album.
"My partner in Battleground Records is one of my best friends, Ryan Clark. He's the original drummer for Godhunter, and now plays for a band called Acidalia. It got to a point, when City of Dust was coming out, we were trying to figure out what label was gonna put it out, or were we gonna put it out ourselves, or whatnot. Finally, we made the deal with The Compound (a subsidiary of Earsplit PR) to put it out. They didn't want to do the standard deal—they pushed us to create our own label. We split the manufacturing costs 50/50 and then we split the profits 50/50. But we own the master recordings."
The first Battleground release was a late-2013 split 7-inch single with Godhunter and Anakim, another fantastic Tucson metal band with hardcore roots. While Clark and Rodgers had a less than pleasurable experience with pressing plants and other necessities essential to self-releasing a record, they cut their losses and moved on, a sentiment that seems to ring loud throughout this scene.
"Once we started Battleground," he continues, "Ryan and I thought, 'should we really do something else with this or should it just be Godhunter's label?' And we decided that we really wanted to turn it into something and started looking for other projects. We've put out Lethal Dosage's first official album. We have two more vinyl projects coming out this year: Powered Wig Machine, from Sierra Vista, and then a split between Fuzz Evil and Chiefs, from San Diego. We're doing Lago, from Phoenix. They have a European label putting out the vinyl album, but no North American deal, so we're putting out the CD for them. We're trying to get a little bigger with each release until we can find somebody big enough that we can actually back the entire project, from beginning to end.
"Ryan and I handle everything with this label; it's a job. You can't sit around waiting for things to come to you; you have to work for it. There's a running joke in town about how so many bands play a few shows at the Rock or Skrappy's (now 191 Toole), or wherever, and then they tell all their friends that Roadrunner Records is 'looking' at them. You have to do it yourself; you can't wait around for Roadrunner or anyone. This is underground. For example, the money that a band like Neurosis makes, 29 years into their career, is not enough. They have 9 to 5 jobs. There is still a mainstream metal audience that is making certain bands—Lamb of God, Machinehead, even Avenged Sevenfold—very rich."
The mainstream metal bands and their audiences that he speaks of, while adversarial to Battleground's ethic, are in certain respects actually helping the cause of the underground, if only for their oversaturation in an already crowded marketplace. Rodgers explains that "Metal ebbs and flows, and as it flows, you get a glamorized version of what's happening underground. Metalcore (and other of the glamorized sub-genres) is the new hair metal, and some of us are getting to the point where it looks like it's gonna dive underground again. The more abrasive bands flat line. Because you never hit those peaks, there's never any valleys. If you're happy with that, then you can have a lot of fun being in an underground band. People just want to stomp their feet and cross they're arms and say 'no one listens to me.' But you have to ask yourself, what have you done? You have to put yourself out there and you have to put out a good product."
His greatest achievement, perhaps, is the Southwest Terror Fest, an event that spans several days and features literally hundreds of bands from all over the world. This year's third annual Terror Fest will take place in October at both The Rialto Theater and The District Tavern.
"It's gonna be good this year," Rodgers says. "We've refined things from last year. The headliners are bigger names and they brought bands to our attention that are on there. We got some local bands and some regionals and we're good to go. We had a meeting with the people from Rialto and it fell into place. ... We're really shooting for the stars with it. Dave Carroll (Inoculara/Diseased Reason), Larry Horvath (Great American Tragedy), and I started the Terror Fest because no one else was doing (anything similar). Never wait around for people to do things for you; if you can do it, do it now."
Sex Prisoner
"We play powerviolence fused with hardcore, heavy metal, metalcore, other genres," says Kyle Kennedy, bassist and vocalist for the outrageously named quartet Sex Prisoner. "We like to keep it interesting, we draw from all different spectrums of hardcore. Powerviolence could be characterized as really short, aggressive songs, typically have tempo changes. Aggressive, short, fast, and loud."
The band formed in 2009 by then-high school students Kennedy, his brother Kevin (vocals), Gilbert Flores (drums), and Matthew Underwood (guitar) and issued its self-titled debut album in 2012. Sex Prisoner is absurdly short, confrontational, and succeeds as the most abrasive hardcore around and as a parody of the music itself. With song titles like "Unconditioned Hate" rubbing elbows with "Soft Skin" and "Snuff Film," the tracks, often less than one minute in length, reflect Kevin's explanation of his unintelligible lyrics.
"It's a way to vent," he says. "Everyday life situations: being in Tucson, songs about relationships, friendship issues; just cliché topics. It can come off as a little bit goofy, that comes with the powerviolence genre. We like to have fun with it. You can't take it too seriously. (The confrontational performance) comes off more at Tucson shows. I guess kids don't really go off as much as they should—I don't think we're entitled to anything—but just playing other shows, I see how people react to us and when we play out here, it's dead. I like to stir things up and try to get the crowd riled up, I don't know.
Flores adds, "There's a lot of young kids here who love hardcore, but they have no way of knowing it still exists and there's not a lot of venues where they can go. Hardcore starts when you're a teenager, when you need that outlet, that culture, or whatever it is. The younger kids are not yet jaded and standing there with their arms crossed. ... I think the records speak for themselves, beyond our live show or anything else, we just want to put out good records."
Sex Prisoner's second LP is scheduled for release later this year.
Discography: 3 way split (2012), Sex Prisoner (2012)
North
"We play very loud and we play heavy, and that in itself could classify as metal," explains Zack Hansen, drummer for the unclassifiable North. "We've had screaming and yelling, but you'd never call us a traditional metal band—I think that's what I like so much about what we do."
Hansen, bassist/vocalist Evan Leek, and guitarist Matthew Mutterperl started North in 2005. Since then, the band has put out a series of startlingly original releases, most recently this year's amazing Metanoia (reviewed by the Weekly in March). Hansen says that the group's music has progressively changed over time: "We released shorter EPs that were fully instrumental in 2006, 2007 and What You Were (2008) was our first full album with vocals." The Great Silence received stunning notices by semi-mainstream media outlets upon its 2012 release for its foreign and unorthodox sound.
Mutterperl says, "When the band started everybody was really into post-rock at the time, like Explosions in the Sky. I was also really into post-metal, like Pelican and all that stuff. That's a big part of it but the whole cliché of 'everyone brings in their own influences' is true with us. I guess it's more about what we'd like to hear come out of the band rather than the influences.
"People can say it's kind of like metal but obviously there's something in the music that deviates it from that or makes it unique, and if people can hear that, that's perfect."
North exudes an unnerving mystique live—another contributing factor for its success. Like most of the bands profiled here, North seems to find more recognition outside of Tucson.
"We just finished our last tour in March," Hansen says. "We did 12 shows in the northwest and it was probably our most successful tour ever in terms of everything—money, attendance, merch sales—we had a great response to the new material. We've been shipping out our record to people all over the world. We've been booking our next tour which is gonna be 22 dates to the East Coast, and the Midwest, and then back home through the south and that's gonna be in August. In the meantime, we're tinkering with new material."
Discography: Siberia (2006), Ruins (2007), What You Were (2008), The Great Silence (2012), Metanoia (2014)
Godhunter
It's hard to get Godhunter vocalist Charlie Touseull focused for an interview.
The latest issue of Decibel Magazine has come out and he's rightfully proud of his band's 8/10 review for their latest record, City of Dust. But once he gets started, the former Gat-Rot singer (whose metal-tinged '90s hardcore has proven to be very influential locally) has a lot on his mind.
Touseull accurately describes Godhunter's sound as "equal parts Black Flag and Black Sabbath," and along with Rodgers (guitar), Jake Brazelton (guitar), Ryan Williamson (bass), Andy Kratzenberg (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Davis, City of Dust may be Tucson's quintessential metal record.
"We're bringing a conscious message to a dystopian style of music," Touseull says. "Usually, there's not a lot of thought put into sludge metal but we're trying to approach it differently.
"When I got into hardcore music in the '90s, that was important to me—the political consciousness. You'd see a show and the band would give a two minute impassioned speech, and the kids would get ball worked up about social change and justice, and then play a 30 second song, and everybody would blow up."
This attitude is essential to how City of Dust functions as a complete statement. The lyrics among the album's eight anthemic songs cover SB 1070, Joe Arpaio, the Yarnell Fire, and immigration policy. Touseull explains that "the whole album is about the state of Arizona. It's about how we love and hate it—culturally, emotionally, spiritually—and the different stages of despair you feel as a resident. It's a really personal album that discusses the loves and hates, your wants and desires, and your shortcomings. The first line of the album is 'this place means the world to me; this place will be the death of me.' That sums up the first half of the album, which is called Hope. It's a conversation between Hope and Despair."
When asked whether hope and despair prevails, Touseull sums up his band, his album, and perhaps, the whole heavy music scene of Tucson: "It doesn't matter if you win every day because you have to wake up and fight again."
Discography: Wolves (2011), Teargas (2012), City of Dust (2014)
