Bang! Bang!

In the heat of the late 1980s thrash demo trading fever, yes, it was possible to have a super-group of members from bands that were little more than demo acts themselves. Chicago area deathly thrashers Sindrome arrived with much fanfare in 1987, boasting formidable studio sound that rivaled most thrash vinyl of the day, a swanky color cassette cover, and a laundry list of resume credits that included legendary underground names like Master, Deathstrike, and Devastation (IL). That first demo “Into the Halls of Extermination” launched an impressive underground career — most bands today would love to sell 10,000 of anything — on the basis of tough, Dark Angel-style thrash with a corroded Venom influence and even some touches of Terrorizer. (And why not? Terrorizer were highly indebted to Master, Deathstrike, and Devastation.)

Though Sindrome were in touch with the times commercially and musically, nothing more happened. They sat out the first wave of small potato record label offerings, but failed to land an expected plum spot on the Combat or Roadrunner roster. Four years later, there was another demo, “Vault of Inner Conscience.” They were still better than lots of signed thrash acts, and a little more interesting, but for whatever reason — inflated expectations, poor timing, geography — they never managed to release a full album.

Fortunately, in 2002 someone from the band registered the Sindrome domain and uploaded full MP3s of Sindrome’s “Into the Halls of Extermination” and “Vault of Inner Conscience” demo tapes. The first demo was remixed in 1992 at Morrisound and re-released with a new cover — this is that version.

SINDROME * Complete 1987 and 1991 demos [EXTERNAL MP3 LINK]

Since 1992 there isn’t much to report. Bassist Shaun Glass went on to death metal stalwarts Broken Hope, then formed the alterna-metal act Soil in 1997, and recently left Soil for the more aggressive Dirge. Farther from the bright lights, Sindrome drummer Tony Ochoa plays in an aggressive modern rock-type band called Servitude.

I was lucky to meet Kevin Estrada while writing my Van Halen book, Everybody Wants Some. A lifelong devotee of the band, he had been photographing them since age 12. Weaned on Van Halen, Estrada came into his own as a professional rock photographer in Los Angeles during the glory days of 1980s metal. Now we are all lucky that he’s launched a blog to show off classic photos and tell charming stories about taking pictures at historical nights like Iron Maiden playing Long Beach Area in 1985, or the above shot of Rob Halford singing with Black Sabbath in 1992. Following is the unedited photographer’s note I wrote about his exploits, a shorter version of which appears in my book.

LINK TO THE KEVIN ESTRADA BLOG

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE

[Unedited text from Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga]

Photographer Kevin Estrada, who took most of the rare photos included in Everybody Wants Some, deserves special thanks and attention. These shots capture his lifelong infatuation with Van Halen, which began when he and his brother pooled their pocket money to buy Van Halen from a department store record bin – based solely on the band’s looks. As a sixth grader, he was suspended for squirting a VH logo on the school walls with mustard packets – also as a 12-year old, he shot the photos of Van Halen’s 1978 tour that appear in this book.

Raised in Arcadia, CA, Estrada grew up in Van Halen country, and the band tweaked his life in unexpected ways. Estrada was constantly bumping into his favorite band, asking them to autograph his bag of Dorito’s or his ever-present Van Halen albums.A family dinner at the local Mexican restaurant Peppers once led to a chance encounter with Michael Anthony’s birthday party – and Estrada’s dad mistaking David Lee Roth for Peter Frampton. Later, Roth nearly ran over Estrada and his friends in his red Mercury lowrider while filming of the “Panama” video.

In high school, Estrada befriended Michael Anthony’s younger brother Dennis, who supplied him with first-generation live tapes. Their principal had a signed Van Halen poster hanging in his office, which Estrada was eventually encouraged to visit without cooking up a reason to get in trouble. Estrada later took guitar lessons at Dr. Music, where Eddie Van Halen bought and repaired his gear. Eddie gave him a guitar pick and a pat on the back, but Estrada had other ideas. “All my friends wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, and I wanted to be the guy down there shooting Van Halen.”

Estrada began sneaking his camera into concerts, capturing hard rock acts like Scorpions, and of course, Van Halen. “I would tape my camera to the back of my neck with duct tape, hoping the security guys wouldn’t go up that far. My friend had a huge afro like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, and he would stick my telephoto lens under the neck of his leather jacket. I also had a friend who had a really large chest, and she’d stash the lens in her blouse.”

Incredibly, Estrada took most of the photos here from the audience, popping up and down quickly, keeping one eye on the band and one eye on security. When he was 15, a bouncer sent him flying across the room with a punch to the head. Other years, he got lucky – another school friend’s mom worked for David Lee Roth’s father in his medical office, and got tickets close to the stage. He only regrets that he could only afford one roll of film the final time he shot classic Van Halen, on the 1984 tour. “I had to be very careful that night.”

Estrada now lives in Burbank, CA, with his wife and two daughters. He has photographed professionally acts including Nirvana, The Cure, and Slayer and his work also appears in Johnny Cash: From the Editors of Rolling Stone and The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx

[photo caption: Eddie Van Halen’s cigarette butts. “I was talking with Eddie and he was chain-smoking. When he left, I just picked them up and grabbed them. When you’re a kid, that’s like having the shirt off his back.”]

LINK

The pressure is building already, and it’s so early in the day. You feel the twitch in your temples. Why won’t the phone stop ringing? How are you going to finish everything in time? If you have another coffee, you’ll crack, but you can’t concentrate. You’re killing yourself!

No, wait — I think I hear skateboard wheels riding a pool. The keg is tapped, and all your friends are there. It’s the heat of summer. But there’s a shady spot just under the Slayer logo calling you. Somebody’s got a joint, and that girl you’ve seen around in a Beherit shirt is just hanging out. Everything’s going to be just fine.

Visualize it: You are in the Slayer bowl.

Does the place where you hang out and listen to metal have a massive garish wall mural covering its entire fucking face, and make you feel like you live in a Sepultura or Iron Angel album cover from 1985? Unless you answered “Si!” — I don’t think so. Tyrant is one of several total metal clubs ringing the open sublevels of a housing complex northwest of downtown Madrid, Spain. Exactly across the courtyard is Club Lemmy, a hard rock bar open since 1980, boasting its own eight-foot tall picture-perfect Motörheadbeast mural.

Unfortunately for me, Spanish bars and restaurants open and close seven times a day — just in case the Moors decide to invade again. I missed the action at Tyrant several times, but I went on a 14-mile walk instead and watched a bullfight, found the squatters at an enormous street fair, took a nap in a park, ate fried bacalao and drank tiny beers and cava, and stumbled onto a mythically cool building that turned out to be the General Society of Authors and Editors [SGAE]. Madrid is a great sprawling maze of a city, an easy place to get lost and find a prize.

I’m pretty sure Cop Shoot Cop is the best band New York City ever produced, based on the caustic metal-scraping Headkick Facsimile record from 1988, and then the slick gallery of nightmares Ask Questions Later from 1993. With two bassists thrashing under a dangerous tower of metal percussion, this big giant barbed middle finger of a band decorated their sound Lower East Side Chainsaw Massacre style with all the best elements of no wave, upscale “new music”, punk, and maybe even thrash metal. This was the angry, amped-up pinnacle of a scene that spawned Sonic Youth, Swans, Unsane, Prong, and Pussy Galore. Most importantly, they felt like a grief-stricken junk monster rising from the smoke, sweat, and grease of New York City. During the glowering days of 1988-1993, they orchestrated perfectly the reality of the crack epidemic, bums roasting pigeons in trash cans, blood-soaked heroin tissues tiling bar bathroom ceilings, random late-night shootings, nervousness all day, and burned out cars everywhere. And they transcended that with Ask Questions Later, when they became more like the Bad Seeds and less like the Birthday Party.

Hip enough to tap the vein, Strapping Young Lad did a bad metal cover of “Room 429″ from Ask Questions Later, but the original is really a masterpiece of drug/torture/suicide narrative. Great lyrics, great rhythmic overkill, great band.

The man in the metal cage, C$C drummer Phil Puleo, runs a retrospective site which includes several dozen MP3s spanning the band’s career, including album and live tracks, demos, and a Peel Session. I saw them play several times in the early 1990s, and I used to see the guys around a lot, but I was too far on the periphery to even began to tell tales now on the turmoil they went through in those days. I remember their tour van was an out-of-commission special education “short bus” with a military camo paint job. That was pretty funny.

LINK to copshootcop.com and updates on the veterans.

How brutally overconfident do you have to be to name your band Soggy? These French freaks come to NWOBHM power-riffing by way of an advanced Stooges fixation, complete with rubberized, writhing, and shirtless frontman. If rock and roll is really about shoes and haircuts (as David Lee Roth claims), then Soggy are true rulers, judging by this 1981 clip from French TV. Messiah Marcolin — eat your heart out.

Thanks Brian Turner!

[Click image to enlarge]

Hey look, it’s our founding fathers (and mother Kira Roessler), the ones that really matter. This excellent info-graphic charts the 11-year history and changing hairs of fundamental psychotic California hardcore band Black Flag, If I could get this printed onto disposable paper placemats, I’d take them with me everywhere I go and eat every meal blessed by these people I consider to be as holy as monks.

Artist unknown–but the Henry Rollins head is obviously copied from a sketch of Charles Manson, and that’s pretty goddamn funny!

Nope, not David Bowie, and not Gary Numan, either. Here he comes now!

Who do you think? Close your eyes and comment…

“Celtic Frost singer and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer has left Celtic Frost due to the irresolvable, severe erosion of the personal basis so urgently required to collaborate within a band so unique, volatile, and ambitious.” 

LINK

Taking advantage of the occasion of the new Iron Man movie, The Boston Globe has posted an awesome long-form multimedia inquest into the origins of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Delving way beyond “Can he walk and talk?”, reporter Joshua Glenn offers a handful of interpretations–all of them smart, and all funny.

LINK