Los Angeles Metal Memories
Multiple participants in the flourishing local scene reflect on memorable moments from their time as metalheads
As part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival Los Angeles 2017, we’re turning a mirror on the city’s thriving metal scene with Todo Es Metal, highlighting the creative connections and artistic overlap between bands from Mexico and Southern California. Regardless of their geographical roots, though, the participants in Los Angeles’s multifarious metal community – whether musicians, promoters, videographers, writers or just rabid fans – are ultimately all connected and united by their shared passion for the music.
In celebration of this community, esteemed local promoter Daniel Dismal, of Church of the 8th Day, asked diverse contributors from various generations to reflect on their introduction to the local scene, highlighting key concerts and other memorable moments that made them the metalheads they are. Taken together, they are a brief but intimate glimpse into the tight-knit family that is metal in Los Angeles. It’s a world that at first might appear forbidding, but is in reality truly welcoming – once you can fend for yourself in the moshpit, that is.
Shedding Blood, Sweat and Tears
By Amber Trillo
I think where we should begin is the beginning: How I became part of a family that I’ll hold near and dear for the rest of my life.
Living in East Los Angeles, technology was limited and so were funds. Finding new music took determination and motivation, and being female made it much harder to get really involved in the scene. But there have been so many adventures, so many failures, so many fears conquered, so many injuries and so many days throwing caution to the wind.
As a teenager, I would listen to LPs I found in my garage. Wearing band tees helped strike up conversations with new friends that listened to the same music you did. In the beginning, the world was small, but as you developed friendships, the metal world seemed to get bigger and bigger. Tape trading helped you explore new sounds. Checking local zines for upcoming bands and writing those bands to mail you demos opened your world to what was out there for you to love even more.
Metal is the soundtrack of my life.
Hearing about which kid was throwing a gig, we would plot our course, taking a bus most of the time to where we needed to go, not really caring how we would get back when the busses stopped running. We would walk a million miles if we had to. Music is what brought everyone together, and you had to really love it to bust a mission to get to a gig, cramming the Geo Metro of the one kid that drove with eight people just so you could all go together. You had to be okay with strangers embracing you as you headbanged to your favorite bands, local or not. You could be shy or speechless when encountering your musical idols, but somehow develop long friendships with some.
Raided gigs, finding the next place to go, late night walks with your friends getting back from a show. Heavy metal parking lot before a big concert and donating blood to get your free ticket there. Making bad choices of drinking too much, some passed out and missing the show, friends laughing and family gathered together for the same reason.
Being a part of something like this was special. I wanted to share it with the world, so I started booking backyard gigs in East Los, C.T, Sereno, H.P... I did it for us poor kids that couldn’t make it to Hollywood all the time, the ones that were not 21+, for the bands that couldn’t pay to play, for everyone in the neighborhood that just wanted to be a part of this, and just because I love the fuck out of it.
The more I did, the more my family grew from temporary people who eventually phased out to lifelong friends who are still around. Each and every one, good or bad, contributed to stories and adventures that molded my life and who I’ve become. For me, this goes beyond “just” music. Metal is the soundtrack of my life. It has been there whenever I needed to be lifted, whenever I was sad and broken, whenever I was angry or in love and every time I felt like I could conquer the world.
We all have our soundtracks, we’ve all shared the same path at one time or another. We all relate to the music and everything that surrounds it. There will always be those that judge, that misunderstand and that condemn our choice to be a part of this, but to those who are true it means unity, brotherhood, friendship and love.
We’ve literally shed blood, sweat and tears for this!
Give us your poor, give us your hungry, give us your broken, give us the outcasts and the weird, and give us anyone else that truly wants to be a part of what we are, because once you’ve bonded, everything else falls in place and you are with it for life.
Speaking in Different Tongues
By Aquiles Ricardo Lemus Peleo
It was an Aborted concert at Studio 54 in Burbank, while the band played the song “Dead Wreckoning.” I snatched the microphone from the hands of the singer Sven “Svencho,” euphoric, and started puking the middle part of the song: “Who am I when push comes to shove? A madman investing exanimate matters. To descry anatomical enigmae? Or to deride what he has fathered...”
Back then, we spoke in different tongues. Active bands were Crematorium, Nema, Sepsism, Mummification, Epicedium and more, and we experienced the ups and downs of life and the underground movement. I remember at Tower Records on Sunset Strip, Hollywood, where Crematorium played live in the store. Where were the video cameras and cells back in those days?
The First Time Los Angeles Experienced True Norwegian Darkness
By Alex Distefano
Around 1999-2000, I was in high school and had a small group of friends who were into punk rock and heavy metal music. Greg was one of them. He was a pale, skinny kid with dyed black hair, who always listened to extreme bands with names like Doom, Anal Blast, Dissection and Cradle of Filth. We had a mutual friend named Andrew, whose older brother Rick played guitar and sang for a death metal band called Inhuman Visions.
One day during class, I couldn’t resist asking Greg what that loud buzzing noise coming from the earphones in his CD player was.
“Emperor,” he said quietly. When I looked at him, he handed me the earphones, and in that instant, my notion of heavy metal music was altered.
It sounded demonic; like a storm of machine guns as drums (called blast beats), with slight hints of classical music in the background. It was epic and like nothing I had ever heard. I was hooked and needed to hear more than the 20 seconds I listened to before Greg pulled his headphones back. “It’s this Norwegian black metal band,” he said.
Two weeks later, Greg, Andrew and I were attending Emperor’s first-ever live performance in California, at an old music hall in downtown Los Angeles called the Variety Arts Center. Several other underground black and death metal bands played that night, including Borknagar, Peccatum, Witchery and Sadistic Intent, a death metal band from the underground extreme metal scene in LA. But the very first band to play was Inhuman Visions, who won a battle of the bands to get the opening slot. The band went on early to a theater that was almost empty aside from Greg, Andrew and I, as well as a few other friends from school and random metalheads we didn’t know. During the other bands, we sat in the back of the venue smoking joints, only lighting up when it was dark and the fog machine would camouflage the smoke from security guards.
As mystified as I was by the band, I was enthralled just as much by the rabid metalheads on the floor.
By the time Emperor went on stage, it was past midnight and we were down to our last joint. I inhaled and watched the band in awe, mesmerized by the group’s stage presence, black leather and corpsepaint. The sound was raw and guttural, bringing out a sense of darkness that permeated the entire hall. The shrieking vocals and buzzing guitars were unwavering. There were rumors the bands were into the occult, and the music was certainly conducive to this notion.
But as mystified as I was by the band, I was enthralled just as much by the rabid metalheads on the floor, who were running in a circular motion and literally smashing the fuck out of one another to the point of blood. This was unlike any conventional moshpit. It was a swirling mass of bodies and bashed faces, and after Emperor’s savage performance, people came out of that pit looking dazed, bruised, bloody and lacerated. I was actually scared at one point of how intense it was. It all seemed evil and exciting at the same time.
I had never witnessed a band like Emperor until that night. The singer, Ihsahn, had an almost gothic, vampiric vibe, and the music produced an ancient spiritual darkness that made the performance haunting. The drumming was so fast it made me dizzy, and the guitars were like chainsaws mixed with cellos that made the hair on my arms stand up. The music hall’s dancefloor was saturated with sweat and blood, while the air reeked of pot smoke. Fans that night in attendance got to see Emperor tear through a set of just under an hour of classic Norwegian black metal, before it was a cool trend. This was a time when black metal was still underground and relatively unknown to the masses. I was left stunned at the intensity of the music, from this concert, and have been a converted fan ever since.
The Good Old Days of VHS Tape-Trading
By Arturo Gallegos
Los Angeles, circa August 1993: I’ve pretty much started to shoot concerts, and Death, Sacrifice and Gorefest are playing at the Variety Arts Center in downtown Los Angeles. It’s always hard to shoot in these big venues, but with some help I got my gear inside the club. As I start to film, the manager and an old lady came to me with a couple of security people, asking me very nicely to stop recording, and then they start to walk me out of the venue.
My friend Bart saw this and realized what was going on before stepping in. The two of us started trying to convince the manager that we got permits from the bands and an OK from the tour manager – neither were true. After what seems like forever, but was probably 15 minutes, they finally let us video the show. The reason Bart stepped up to the plate, of course, was we had started doing video trades and things had been looking good. Ah… the good old days of trading VHS tapes.
Music doesn’t care where you’re from.
Knitting Factory, Los Angeles – April 2008
By Jon Valen
Showing up beyond buzzed at 11 AM to turn in ticket money was not how I imagined myself at the cavalier age of 17. By all means a runaway from a less-than-ideal home, surrounded by friends new and old, my only job that afternoon was to yell into a microphone, and I was well-prepared – aside from falling face first back onto the stage after inciting a moshpit.
The pissed-off, heavy and, in hindsight, rather mediocre band I was fronting at the time, were one of the first to hit the stage before the headliners. Although relatively new to the LA scene, we had worked considerably hard to make this infamous festival a stepping stone for ourselves, and to our surprise, we were suddenly moved to the main stage last minute to set the tone for the legends that followed: Napalm fucking Death!
Now writing and yelling well into my late 20s, what I’ve taken from that particular experience, that time in my life, is that it was a strong conflict of angst and personal responsibility, soon met with a sense of appreciation for the diversities which make a family, a family. It’s a feeling not many have the luxury of finding. More obvious to me than before, it revealed this truth entirely; these so-called outcasts gathered under one roof not just for a booze-filled, deafening weekend. Regardless of upbringings, regardless of ethnicity, we were together as one, simply celebrating life through our own expressions of death. “A hood within the hood” sounds silly, but I’m proud to be a part of this proverbial circle, which I’d be close to nothing without.
True Dedication
By Art Amalphas
One of the many great experiences I’ve had with the scene here in LA is seeing how much dedication fans have for the music. I remember going to shows like Murderfest, Bestial Legions’ Gathering of the Sick, early Summer Slaughter shows, and it was happening. Hundreds of people would be there supporting and going crazy. I remember going to some of these shows and having to worry if I was going to get my ticket, knowing it was going to be packed.
Metal [Actually] Saved My Life
By Rusty D. Reens
It was 1992 or 1993, and we were going to see Phobia at the Anti-Club. It was a night when I didn’t have my asthma inhaler. I was in the pit having a great time when I could feel my chest tightening up, and I started to panic, because I had had a couple of bad asthma attacks before that. I was in the doorway hunched over, trying to calm down and get my wind, when a Mexican biker came up to me. He yelled, “Are you alright?” I yelled back with everything I had, “I need an inhaler for my asthma.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out an inhaler. He put it in my hand and insisted I take a few hits from it.
That dude saved my life that night. If it wasn’t for him, I probably would have ended up in the hospital. When it comes to metal and Los Angeles, we are all usually looking out for each other.
Around the same time, we were all going to the Hong Kong Café to see our friend’s band play. Two bands from the headliner was a band called Entety, and I remember the vocalist was what seemed to be a hardcore gangbanger: He had a bandana low on his forehead; a Raiders or Kings jersey. The more he spoke the more I was afraid of him. When he was singing, his vocals were low, heavy and brutal.
After the set was over and they were breaking down their gear, I could hear him talking to people who had come up to him. I wanted to tell him how badass his band was, but I was still kind of scared. Then I said to myself, “Fuck it.” He had picked up a guitar and was about to pass me when I said, “Holy shit, that was a great set. You guys fucking rule!” He put down his guitar to shake my hand and said “Thanks homes, glad you liked it.”
It was at that moment I realized music had no borders. Not all Mexican dudes who talk a certain way are scary people. It taught me to not be afraid to talk to any musician if I enjoyed their music. Music doesn’t care where you’re from.
Church of the 8th Day
By Cesar Rosales
Attending Hollywood High School meant that I was fortunate enough to have been down the street from where the Knitting Factory used to be located. My introduction to extreme metal shows came from having attended Deicide and Vital Remains during the time in which Glen Benton was fronting the band for the Dechristianize release. That night remains special because I learned about the camaraderie that exits within the metal community – even moreso in the pit. I spent a good amount of my teen years attending shows at the Knitting Factory and other local venues after discovering Church of the 8th Day, who to this day remain the top providers for metal shows in Los Angeles.
My appreciation for Church of the 8th Day – and specifically for Dan Dismal – go beyond his ability to bring international bands to Los Angeles. By senior year of high school, I was well aware of not just who he was but how busy he was, running his own events while simultaneously running sound for the Knitting Factory. Despite this, Dan stepped up and took time away from his schedule to help me fulfill a high school senior project. This meant having an annoying young metalhead in his home with a list of questions on a regular basis for a month. At the end of it all, I was required to set up my own show and pretend to know what I was doing. Despite having his own shows going on, Dan came out to the event and made sure everything ran accordingly. Dan helped with sound and refused to accept any payment at the end of the night. Although the Los Angeles metal scene is not always glamorous, there is a sense of community that I believe is hard to describe to anyone who is looking in from the outside.
A Lack of Judgment
By Nicole Bradley
My name is Nicole, and I play in Valkyrium. I am Mexican/Italian/Native American, born and raised in northeast Los Angeles from the ’90s until now.
Here in LA, we take pride in being a part of a city that has very rich cultural diversity, with haunted history imprinted around every corner. The metal scene has always been alive and well, despite the many challenges we have faced together. Some of the best memories I have are from my high school days, when backyard gigs were a huge thing. I played my first show ever in a backyard – we’d show up even if we didn’t know anybody, and walk away that night having made some new friends that became like family. Metal and punk were often played together, even though they were different styles. People would take turns moshing and sometimes both would mosh together. Nobody judged anyone: We were all there to enjoy the music and have a good time.
Being from a primarily Chicano community, I understand the struggles we face every day.
I also remember skating through the streets listening to my CD player, getting together with some friends to go to the record store, playing shows at venues that don’t exist anymore, like the Key Club, Knitting Factory and the House of Blues, to name a few. There was nothing like going to concerts to see our favorite bands at some of the most historic venues in Hollywood. Unfortunately, a lot of Los Angeles is becoming more corporatized, and false judgements about metal are leaving us with less and less venues to play. The younger generation, despite some losses, will still always stand strong. The underground scene has become dominant because we all continue to stand together. Instead of discriminating against each other and capitalizing on our youth, we support each other and resist conformity, because we have one thing in common: We all love music. We appreciate being able to have the intimate experience of a band right in front of us for an affordable price, as opposed to being hundreds of feet away for hundreds of dollars. I myself am inspired by that.
People look at us metalheads like we are satanic, but the truth is a lot of us are just down-to-earth, nature-loving people who want to separate ourselves from the illusions of modern society. Being from a primarily Chicano community, I understand the struggles we face every day. So many of us are happy to play because we want everyone – including the kids – to have a good time in a place where they can feel safe. Growing up in the Los Angeles music scene has helped me grow as a musician in so many ways. We really owe it to promoters, booking agents, local bars and venues like Metal Invictus, Church of the 8th Day, ADHD Entertainment and so many more who open their doors to us. They sacrifice so much to make it all happen. I owe it to my city to say, I love LA, and we will always thrive!
Cannibal Corpse / Cynic / Sinister with Entety and Rise – Los Angeles, June 1994
By Rajah Marcelo
I was looking for apartments in LA, as I was going to school there the next year, and while reading through listings in BAM Magazine, I ran across an ad for a show featuring Cannibal Corpse, Cynic and Sinister. This probably wasn’t that big a deal for the average LA metalhead, but for someone such as myself, who lived in a small Idaho town of 50,000 people, this was a rare opportunity to see a band whose only album I could find at the time was Butchered at Birth on used cassette. Cynic and Sinister were two bands I had only read about in Metal Maniacs, as the internet was not that widely available at the time, and albums from either of these bands were not available where I lived.
I convinced my brother to take me to the show – he was born in the ’60s, so the Doors and the Stones were more his speed – and together we charted a path to the Gotham Club. There was no Uber, Lyft, GPS or Google Maps at the time (or Mapquest, for that matter), so we had to get there the old-fashioned way. We took a map out of the phonebook, as well as a more detailed map of LA on his wall, and along with an MTA schedule we planned our route to the gig. It was a sweltering day in June, and after walking, hopping on a bus, making some transfers, doing more bus riding and more walking, we finally made it to the club.
The place was dark and poorly lit, with the only brightly-lit areas the stage and the bathroom. Everything else was black or red. There was already a band on when we arrived, sounding like they were playing at the end of a tunnel. The riffs were super fast and the beats approached grindcore speeds. It all flew over my brother’s head, but I was basically sticking my head in, taking it all in. The vocals were unintelligible, just harsh and completely over the top. I couldn’t understand the inhuman growling, but the band just attacked, throwing caution to the wind. At the merch table later I asked who they were, and the guy said “Entety.” I figured they were so underground even Metal Maniacs hadn’t heard of them.
Meanwhile, it was getting increasingly hot. The central air offered little help as layers of sweat from the crowd mixed with the heavy, thick cloud of smoke, from both nicotine and weed – there was no Clean Air Act in Cali yet – creating this weird moisture on the ceiling that made it look like the club was sweating. I was then starstruck when I ran into (drummer) Gene Hoglan carrying his large 8 Ball cane. My brother wondered who he was, and I had to explain to him, “He’s the drummer of Dark Angel!”
Sinister hit the stage. The vocals were low and inhuman, but much more controlled than Entety’s. I got into them more when I picked up Diabolical Summoning, but at the time I thought that was just how they sounded, sort of blurry and muddy, but heavy. When Cynic came on, they stood out because they had a keyboardist set her equipment onstage. Many of the crowd members were skeptical, but I wasn’t complaining. The band’s progressive time signatures and atmospheric fusion sections offered a different dynamic to the harshness of the rest of the bill. Paul Masvidal’s guitar playing was killer, although the robotic vocal effects were a little odd. But Dana Cosley, who was also handling keyboards, offset the weird robot voice with death metal growls. The band used a little projector similar to what you’d see in science class to project Robert Venosa’s psychedelic artwork, which they changed for each song. I was a little disappointed when I got the CD later that only the cover was included, but maybe Roadrunner didn’t want to pony up for eight Venosa artworks for each song.
Finally, Cannibal Corpse was ready to roll. The band was all onstage, except for Chris Barnes. After a few minutes, he was escorted up, flanked by four burly bodyguards twice his size who walked him through the crowd up to the stage. I thought that was odd and wondered, “Maybe he’s a superstar in LA? The Michael Jackson of Death metal?”
The band went through and crushed it, playing “Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead“ and a full set of songs that everybody already knew. But since I hadn’t heard them yet, many of the songs were new to me. We walked out and I took home flyers for shows I wouldn’t be able to attend, just as souvenirs. I returned back to Idaho telling my friends and band members about songs like “Fucked With A Knife,“ “Hammer Smashed Face” and “I Cum Blood.“
People know what happened next: Chris Barnes was fired and started Six Feet Under, to great success. Years later, I found out the reason for his offensive line of bodyguards at the show: apparently one of the opening band’s members had pointed a gun at him on the tour bus. Barnes has gotten a lot of flak for a lot of reasons over the years, but the fact he was able to headline a show after that happening is pretty hardcore.
Cannibal Corpse became the biggest band in death metal. Cynic broke up and later reformed with a much more progressive, melodic sound, discarding their death metal influences before disbanding again. I did get to see both Reinert & Masvidal play on the Death to All tour many years later, along with Gene Hoglan! Hoglan not only went on to Death, but now plays in Testament and has done everything from Fear Factory to Strapping Young Lad and countless other bands.
Sinister broke up, but have since reformed with a new album in 2017. I ended up meeting this bass player named Bobby Cardenas year later. In addition to flying the underground flag for Engrave and Coffin Texts for years, I found out he was Entety. He has since gone on to play in Agent Steel and now plays in Possessed, one of the originators of death metal.
I still live and work in LA, going to shows and supporting the scene. 23 years later, I guess we have all come full circle (pit) in the metal scene!
