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."
