Hey Metalhead! Episode 1: Vintage Flesh – Hour of the Night Gaunts Video Album Review
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011General Blaspheme’s new video channel gets it’s name proper: Hey Metalhead!
The first episode plays below:
Posts Tagged ‘Vintage Flesh’
Vintage Flesh – Hour Of The Night Gaunts
Monday, May 30th, 2011
Genre: Black Metal, Gothic, Progressive, Thrash, Doom, Your Mom
Label: Independent (But honestly shouldn‘t be)
Yet another entry in the Funeral Rain archives that start out with “I honestly didn’t know what to expect from _____…” But seriously, the ghastly cover art for Hour Of The Night Gaunts and the rude, crude and full of ‘tude approach that the lads in Vintage Flesh have on their Facebook page immediately paint them out to be wildcards capable of anything under the metal sun!
I’ve never been so dead on before. Vintage Flesh is (er… was, as they are now known as Inverticrux) capable of ANYTHING and they show it on their very last album! And while I was scanning the ‘net for intel on these guys, I managed to find nothing but iffy reviews about their “played out” and “why bother” style of metal… but what the hell do “they” know? Hour Of The Night Gaunts is a heavily complex album, full of material that any true metalhead/gothic whatsit should be drooling over by the first note!
Vocalist RayPissed chooses to go down a path that you don’t hear very often in metal of this caliber: falsetto. I’m sure a lot of you are thinking King Diamond right about now, but you’re way off. It’s more of a blackened shriek mixed with a woman in a 60’s sitcom who just saw a mouse. Now those of you who thought King Diamond are all frowny faced. But guess what? Fuck you! I like this style. It’s unique and plays off the rest of the band very well. But Mr. Pissed also manages to throw in these over the top, dramatic semi-soliloquies that HAUNT as well as entertain. Oh, and there’s some excellent growls thrown in there from time to time, generally as an accent or background vocal. At any rate, the vocals are top notch!
I’m not really sure how to continue this review since all I’m going to do is verbally jizz all over the tight musicianship and the virtual ghostly opera that goes down from begin to end. The twelve car pile up of genre melding can go from doomy funeral dirges that give way to scorching black metal riffs that make room for pseudo-power metal melodies in just one track! Substance. This album has it.
Overall: Hour Of The Night Gaunts is a fun, haunting ride from Follow Me To The Grave to While I Wandered Away With Death. If you don’t get what these spooky cats are laying down, then kindly remove the stick from betwixt yer buttocks so that I might replace it with my boot!
10/10
Inverticrux On Facebook
An Interview With RayPissed Of Inverticrux
Monday, May 30th, 2011Hails and horns, ye godless heathens! How goes the virgin hunt for the big summer solstice sacrifice?
No. Sadly we are not above the law. So no sacrifice for us. Virgins are nearly impossible to come by anyway.
What brought on the name switch? I mean, Vintage Flesh was a pretty sinister fucking name. Why with the switcheroo?
The name change was unavoidable as i see it. What set it off was the departure of a key and crucial member that made it Vintage Flesh. Rev. John Hex, the main guitarist on both full length releases and the only guitarist on most songs. His truly haunting riffs and keyboard sections mixed with my vocals is all that made it V.F. Terry Savastano came in towards the end but didnt have enough time to really integrate and take over Hex’s parts. Hex allowed his negative energies to get the best of his social skills and was no longer able to work with other artists at that point. So we were forced to let him go. Me and Terry thought it best to begin with a slightly different approach to morph the sound, name and direction. Our next demo will have six songs of a less bizarre approach then V.F. almost like V.F. that you can party too. Though it will still maintain some very creepy shit there and there. The new name is a play on the words inverted cross but cross is replaced with crux because the religious cross is a crux to us all! Vintage Flesh was the preferred stage of decay that a corpse would have to reach before a necrophile would be willing to fuck it. Like a vintage wine. I have deep necro tendencies as an active Taphophile. Though i do settle on the living as a lover. It’s just easier.
How exactly would you describe the brand of skull fuckery that you play and call metal?
Well most the musicians I mesh with are within my age group. I am 40 years of age (I got into playing music late in life). I have been listening to metal of only the most genuine forms as far back as 81-82. So many styles of metal manage to sneak into our sound (still so w/ Inverticrux), but ultimately we intended to be a gothic horror, suicidal black metal act with certain doom bits. I have been a gothic horror poetry writer and performer for over twenty years. This band is the first time i was able to put it to metal. I turned Hex on to the under ground misanthropic Black metal when we started as a psychobilly/metal act. Hex took to it and the change in direction was inevitable.
When is the Hour Of The Night Gaunts? It’s not going to interfere with my M*A*S*H Rerun-A-Thon, is it?
An actual hour of the night gaunts started for everyone involved in the album. Soon before recording of that CD began we all experienced some kind of malevolent haunting between the hours of 3:30 and 4:30 A.M. My girl who wasn’t involved was also victim to the thing that visited me at that time. This confirmed it for me. We are certain our music incapable of opening portals to the land of the dead. We don’t feel the second album is as haunted as the first. Though T.E.T.G.A.M.A. didn’t produce any haunting for us, yet it did seem to capture spirits in the actual recording of the CD. Disembodied voices can sometimes be heard on that CD that may not be heard a second time. As if spirits are trapped in the recording… some how we manage to agitate other wordly forces when we unite to record. However we don’t think that will continue into the INVERTICRUX project because Hex is gone and the music is not as dark and demented. Though we feel the new sound is more likable to a wider audience without being to easy on the ears.
How is the whatever-the-fuck-you-guys-play scene up in New Hampshire? Beautiful in Autumn but boring the other eight months of the year, right? Or is that just the state itself?
We are 40 minutes from Boston just on the southern edge of NH. 40 minutes from the ocean as well. Many small historic towns dot the land in between and keep me interested with my surrounding. We are thick with haunted history here in New England and I like to tap into that. The Metal scene is up and coming. It boggles my mind why we are not the metal capital of America with the gloomy environment and all the bloody ghostly history we have here. But it is coming around now a days and we hope to be a leading band in the extreme N.E. metal U.G. We just went live May 21st. the Doomsday that didn’t happen. They never do. We told the audience the crazy Christians said that would be the day the world ends because they got word that we were going live that day!
How much criticism do ya’ll get for your vocal choices and how often do they think that you’re failing to be King Diamond, but not as a joke?
Don’t think I understand this question. With bands like Ghost, Portrait and In Solitude coming out and trying to sound like K.Diamond, I feel we have a place in that scene but I know I sound a hell of a lot more original than the boring singers in those bands. Plus, I can hit Kings notes. I have yet to properly do so in my recording. I am a self taught singer so I sing from the heart and I don’t care for tempo or key. As long as I don’t crack a note I am fine. The studios have not yet known how to deal with my unorthodox vocalizations as of yet so I have yet to show what I can really do. With INVERTICRUX this crux will be dealt with directly. I aim to put the listener in a state of uneasiness and to feel my pain and inner turmoil through the mock situations I write about. To many singers are afraid to sing with real passion and sincerity in our times. As a singer, I have to make them believe in what I am saying through the lyrics. To act it out. Perhaps people aren’t ready for me yet. Maybe when I am dead. I have gotten far more good feed back then bad on this issue anyhow. I like to upset the traditionalists. I got your attention didn’t I?
Most definitely. This is more of a compliment than a question but, you guys have some of the most emotion/thought provoking titles for songs that I’ve ever seen.
The song titles are inspired by my favorite authors. New England authors such as Poe , Lovecraft and Hawthorne. All very haunted souls like myself. This land seems to breed that kind from under rocks.
How theatrical are your live shows? I’d imagine that there is quite a bit going on between songs and maybe even a little bit during. But I’ve been wrong before…
Vintage Flesh never performed a live show. INVERTICRUX just did our first show in Mass on May 21st. The theatrics were over the top. My mic is not unlike K.Diamonds in the sense that it may be cursed. I have an inverted cross roughly tied to it. This was a N.E. grave marker from an unknown grave in a shore point Nh town. I reinforced it because it is old and brittle. It marked a Christians grave and that I do not respect. So now it serves a greater purpose as my mic handle. I use knives, antique dolls and many religious artifacts are implemented for to destroy and disgrace. As Inverticrux we are not of any religion. We are anti-religion including pagan gods. They are all a source for control of the masses. So the live theatrics are all based on that theme.
Does the line, “Get inverted!” work on the ladies at your shows?
It is actually, “Lets get inverted!” Typhon. It is a good old school way to open a show not unlike the way Ozzy would say “lets get crazy”. But I doubt it’s gonna help us much with the ladies. Good thing I have a steady!
Obligatory Stupid Question: Do you’re moms know that you play this shit and are they proud of you?
Early on, about 4 years ago, I played the demo for my Mother while driving in her oh, so metal mini van on the Florida highways while paying her a visit. The look on her face actually hurt me inside to see. I will never forget it. It seemed painful for her to sit and listen to it, but she wanted so desperately to like and support what i do as a musician/illustrator. I only put her through a small portion of each tune. That was enough! As for Hex’s mom, I wouldn’t know. Never met her. But I would assume the same.
Is there anything you’d like to add for the Funeral Rain audience?
I would like to mention a project i have been working on. It is actually 5 years in the making. Though, I got involved much later. I have been asked to write lyrics for and sing the next Mystic Forest album. Mystic Forest is a side project of Stefan Kozak who is the soul founder of the better known band Eiken Skaden of France. My parts have been complete for some months now and mixing is in the works at this time. it is an extremely intense piece of work that can use no words to properly describe it. I have been a major fan of this mans music for many years. Best known as suicidal black metal yet fast tight and intricate. Unlike typical primitive S.B.M. He had been searching for the right vocalist for all those years he worked on it. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was asked if I could. Much of his music can be purchased on Blackmetal.com as it was his last label.
Aside from that we enter the studio soon for the first Inverticrux release which is easily my other proudest moment to come. Much in the works and much to look forward to. If you like this sort of self destructive material. Thanks for the chance to chat!
Forever may the Funeral Rains fall!