BLISSFUL BLOODSHOWERS & FULL MOON SYNCRETISM

Metal history abounds with tales of unfortunate separations that later turned out to be not so undesirable after all. Dave Mustaine fell out with his fellow speed-thrashers in Metallica, and launched his own lucrative ‘killing business’ in Megadeth. Mike Browning came to bitter blows with Trey Azagthoth in the earliest incarnation of Morbid Angel, and Nocturnus was summoned forth from some unknown star-encrusted abyss. Chris Barnes was thrown out from the splattertastic festivities in Cannibal Corpse, and Six Feet Under rose from the tainted earth of a minor necropolis. Max Cavalera hastily amassed a few tribalistic brainwaves to side with his purple-haired missus in the embittered Sepultura conflict, and Soulfly became a jungle spectacle alongside red-fan parrots, malaria and the Kayapó Indians.

Call me a cold-hearted speculator, but in truth I tend to look on such rifts & ruptures in a positive light. When it was announced in January 2003 that three fourths of the Floridian death metal act Diabolic had resigned to form a new band under the moniker of Unholy Ghost, and that mainman Brian Malone had secured himself a fresh batch of bloodthirsty blastmasters to boot, there was no real incentive in me to orchestrate some kind of flamboyant funeral feast. Why, on the face of it we could have the cake, eat it too and then even settle down for maraschino cherries afterwards!

True to their usual workaholic style vocalist/bassist Paul Ouellette, drummer Aantar Coates and the string-shredding couplet from hell Jerry Mortellaro & Kelly McLauchlin issued a stark-berserk longplayer in high summer entitled Torrential Reign, which bodes well for a future without the now late lamented Diabolic. A month after the following interview was conducted, however, Aantar chose to leave the band in order to pursue further extreme-music hurtles with his two fellow cohorts in Blastmasters (featured elsewhere on the Evilution website). Yet a little more than a week ago, Unholy Ghost revealed the name of their new skin-beater David Breazeal, whose earlier credits pertain to his work in the two fairly nondescript outfits Cauldron and Trokar. Furthermore, the refurbished Unholy Ghost line-up have written and arranged two complete tracks, respectively entitled “Venomous Habitation” and “The Suffering Church”, for their future follow-up to Torrential Reign. Aye, much bodes well for the future indeed...

But while we all await the next white-hot, cauterising chapter in the furious cloudburst of new-school Florida death metal, take a moment to read the following interview with Unholy Ghost six-stringer Jerry Mortellaro, who started off with a succinct evaluation of how their debut album had been received so far by the US metal fans.

“It has been very positive so far. The album has been released in the US, but we have not released it in Europe yet. I hope the European fans will like it just as well as I do, and reflect the positive things that I have been reading about in the reviews. As far as the touring goes... Yeah, we did some festivals, and the music – which no one had heard before, of course – went over pretty well live. There was a great feeling and we got to try out the songs a little before we went into the studio, and the result was pretty awesome in the way it came out in the studio with [Juan] ‘Punchy’ [Gonzalez] and all.”

# Have these live experiences influenced the songwriting directly, like ‘this part works better than that part live’?

“Yeah, of course. That’s exactly it. Some of the things that were involved in the writing process were influenced by the extensive touring we did as Diabolic. As you know, there are three former members of Diabolic in Unholy Ghost, namely Paul [Ouellette], Aantar [Lee Coates] and me. The touring we did together and the feeling we got playing live influenced our writing for the Unholy Ghost album. Definitely.”

# In my opinion one of the absolute fortes on Torrential Reign is the wide range in tempo and melody, which has likewise been characteristic for Diabolic since the debut Supreme Evil. Was diversity a kind of deliberate approach for the band during the songwriting process?

“Yeah, some of it was and some of it wasn’t. The live feel and the stuff you can bang your head to, you know. That feeling comes from way back when I started playing guitar, and was listening to the old bands of thrash and death metal. They had that feeling where you just couldn’t control yourself and just had to bang your head and go crazy [laughs]. That was the feeling I wanted to get out. When we’re practising with the band I can’t keep my head still. I just get into it – and that is what metal is all about for me. We are going deeper into this dark imagery and spiritual realm much less than any aspect of reality. But diversity was definitely part of the way we wrote the album as well as the direction we are heading towards.”

# As mentioned earlier, Unholy Ghost was formed by three ex-members of Diabolic together with Kelly McLauchlin from Pessimist, who was similarly a part of Diabolic back in the days before the City of the Dead demo. What musical impulses has Kelly contributed with specifically to the songwriting of Torrential Reign?

“Kelly brought a lot, man. He was the founding member of Pessimist, and as you said he was in Diabolic before Aantar moved to Tampa again. I played with Aantar back in 1991 in Eulogy, and that’s where I met Aantar. But he moved back to the Washington D.C. area. They came up with some songs for a demo under the name Diabolic that was never released, and Kelly played guitars on it. Then Aantar moved back here and hooked up with Paul. Aantar was the one who came up with the name Diabolic, but it was copyrighted by Brian [Malone – guitarist and founding member of Diabolic]. That’s how that happened. But back to the question... You were asking about Kelly’s influence on Unholy Ghost; his guitar style and his influences are really similar to ours. I was one of Kelly’s friends before jamming with him, and as soon as we started playing it became obvious that we worked exceptionally well together in mind and in our guitar playing. In my ears, his guitar soloing is much more chaotic than mine. We don’t want to sound exactly alike either; we do a lot of trade-offs and a lot of stuff like that. I think people can tell the difference between our guitar soloing. But it definitely shows that we work good together, in my opinion.”

# Right, let us plunge into one of the more album-specific questions: what is the overall concept behind the title Torrential Reign?

“Well, I came up with the album title. My idea behind Torrential Reign is rooted in the fact that we live in Tampa, Florida. It’s the lightning capital of the world and it rains really badly here. So during the writing process it was raining really badly, and I kept hearing this ‘Torrential rain, torrential rain!’ on the news. And every time we would be playing, it would feel like we were a storm conjuring up energy. I kind of just came up with it, and the album title really fits. We are going to flood the world with our devastation and our evil, dark music. So that’s how it became Torrential Reign. It was pretty much about the storm that was the band. That was the idea behind it.”

# The album artwork seems to relate pretty well with both the title and the band name. Could you give a few words on the main idea behind the album cover and how it came out?

“I think it came together exceptionally well. We worked with Mattias Norén from Sweden for the album cover. I gave the Mattias the idea of what we wanted after the band had discussed what the cover should look like. We all put in our ideas: ‘a graveyard that is flooding with lightning.’ The lightning, you know, because we wanted to reflect the weather situation in Tampa. We did a lot of things: for instance, there is a full moon on the cover. Our first show fell under a full moon. We did a video in the woods in my backyard on Friday the 13^th, which also ended up being a full moon. Obviously, the full moon had a lot to do with this band. It was really kind of a part of it. Not intentionally; it just happened to turn out that way. So we put the full moon in there, and we asked Mattias to do these different things. He sent it back to us and we did a few changes, not much, and it came out great. The overall idea of the album is just punishing, brutal death metal with the black metal twist – and really spiritual. I would say it is more about a spiritual realm of darkness, and that is what we’re trying to capture on this album.”

# What was it like recording with Juan ‘Punchy’ Gonzalez again? Did you have any specific preferences for the production on Torrential Reign after having worked with him before on the last two Diabolic records?

“I think recording with him is very great because not only is he a musician himself; he knows the death metal sound after, of course, having worked for Morbid Angel as a sound man for so long. He knows how to capture fast music onto a tape or onto a CD and record it well. He knows the band and it feels comfortable to work with someone that knows you. He is constantly open for ideas and he is a fun guy to work with. All the money that he makes on the recordings that we did he would put back into his studio to buy better equipment. So you will hear the difference between Vengeance Ascending [Diabolic] and the new Unholy Ghost record. Of course, to me it’s like night and day. The production on this album crushes the production on Vengeance Ascending by far in my eyes... Uh, in my ears, I should say [laughs]. But yeah, we were definitely pleased with the overall production on this album.”

# How representative is the name Unholy Ghost to the overall concept of the band, as well as the personal philosophies of the individual members of the band?

“Well, I’m sure everybody knows that we’re Satanists, and we get the question a lot; what kind of Satanists are you and all that. Unholy Ghost is a great name and it sounds like it should already have been taken before. There are so many bands out there, and I was surprised that it hadn’t been taken up already. When we found out that the name was not used by any band, we just went with it and it fits the band, all our concepts and ideas perfectly. Paul doesn’t write lyrics that are all about the same thing. You will find that every song has a different scripture or a different passage, and that all of them deal with different topics. We don’t sing about one topic and cover a wide range of ideas. But every song has a dark twist and an evil mind behind it. We keep our music evil and brutal.”

# Just to pick an example, the song “Under Existence” has to do with voodoo practice. Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on some of the lyrical themes?

“Okay, yeah. The song “Under Existence” is about voodoo, but on a larger scale it deals with religions that are suppressed by others; religions that are overlooked and not always brought to the surface. So we did a song about that and we actually made a video for the song. Basically, we try to cover spiritual topics in Unholy Ghost more than a reality thing. We do have a reality approach to some songs such as “Torn Apart”, which is ‘the serial-killer song’. Douglas Clark was a serial killer in California on the Sunset Strip. His nickname was ‘The Sunset Strip Slayer’. He would chop the heads of women, he and his wife or girlfriend. They would keep the head in a box, and every now and then they would pull the head out, clean it up and have sex with it. We figured we would write songs about that; we want to have songs about whatever we think about. “Entrenched Warfare” is a song about war, you know. When we were writing the album the war was going on, and we are always surrounded by warfare so we wrote a song about it.”

# You mentioned the video you did for “Under Existence”. How did the entire process turn out?

“One of my friends works for Tom Savini [Creepshow, Return of the Living Dead a.o] and his name is Chris Polidoro. They have worked together on a movie called Web of Darkness. He is a special effects guy, and I asked him if he could help us out on a video. Chris knew this guy called Scott Semple who has a film crew called Savage Armadillo. He said: ‘Yeah, that guy owes me some favours because I’ve helped him out and worked for free for him. I’m sure if I talk to him he would have no problem with helping me out for a video for you guys.’ So the band got together and talked with him over a lunch meeting. We said: ‘How about two weeks from now, Friday and Saturday? We’ll come up with a location and we’ll start shooting.’ The obvious choice would of course be my backyard because I pretty much live in the woods. First we picked the song and then we came up with a concept and a storyboard. We set the whole stuff up and Scott came out and shot the video; he took it with him and edited it. We put the video out on our website and sold it to a lot of people – and we ran out of copies. I made some copies at my house and I just stopped making them. We re-edited the video to the actual album that was recorded with ‘Punchy’, because the first format was to the three-song demo that we had. We re-edited the video for the Torrential Reign album, and it’s going to be released as a bonus on the European CD that will be out on Century Media Records. Also, we went and did a documentary: a 20-minute long interview documentary on the formation of Unholy Ghost as another bonus for the European release only.”

# Nice... for the Europeans, at least! For this next question I would like to quote a statement from an interview you recently did with an online webzine called Tartarean Desire. It says: ‘Brian Malone may have taken the name of Diabolic with him but Unholy Ghost has kept the music’. To what extent is it possible for the band members to completely sever the ties to the past?

“It’s kind of hard to say because I tried to speak with Brian. I don’t think he’s happy with me. I tried to shake his hand and he gives me the cold shoulder. I’m not going to beg anyone to be my friend; I don’t think I betrayed him in any way. We will just continue doing what we do, and he can continue doing what he does. He’s the only original member of Diabolic left in the band, you know. We have three-fourths of Diabolic in Unholy Ghost, and of course we’re going to sound like Diabolic because three members of this band come from there. Especially in the vocals; the vocalist puts a big part in the sound of a band to distinguish the characteristics of what band it is. Vocals play a big part – and as do the drumming and the guitar playing, of course – but mainly the vocals, in my opinion. We’re going to get a lot of people saying that we sound like Diabolic, but it’s obvious why we’re going to sound like that band. But we’re going to try and give Unholy Ghost its own identity because we are progressing as musicians and as people, and we’re putting aside what has been before. Our past is pretty much considered a stepping stone to get to where we’re at and into the future.”

# Have you ever performed any Diabolic songs as Unholy Ghost – and do you intend to?

“Yeah, we’ve had thoughts of playing some Diabolic songs; we’re entitled to as we wrote the songs. We figured that the fans would get a kick out of it. Of course, we’ve played Diabolic songs live but not in Unholy Ghost. There could be a possibility that we might come out and play a Diabolic song or two in the future for fun. Yeah, we had fun in Diabolic and we can’t deny it. I’m sure the fans would like to see this line-up play the songs. I’m sure it would be fascinating for some people. I know that Diabolic’s drummer [Gaël Barthélémy] got deported; he overstayed his visa here when he was practising. I talked to their singer [Ed Webb] and it doesn’t look to good for the band. They have played one show that I know of with the line-up that was on the album. It was with Hate Eternal and it was here. Then they played one other show that I know of at New Jersey Metal Meltdown, and they had Tim ‘Missile’ Yeung, the guy that played with Hate Eternal on the first album. They had him playing drums, and they had another singer/bass player [Erik Pertl] from Lord Blasphemer, Eric Heisemann’s [former] band. So they have only played one show with the line-up that they call the ‘almighty line-up’. I don’t know. I don’t even think they have a band. I think it’s just Eric and Brian, and as for Eric I don’t think it’s even his place to say some of the things that he said in interviews about Diabolic, as he was never a part of the band in the first place. I think Diabolic is just a cover band now.”

# Eventually, it could have turned out entirely positive in the sense that we now have two bands instead of one.

“Yeah, that’s the way I look at it, man. It’s always good to have another band that is a great band, you know. That’s the way I want to look at it, but people just don’t let things happen the way they happen. I think this band just came together; a force brought us together. It was meant to be. I never thought that I would be playing with Paul and Aantar again. I thought that maybe I would be in a band with Paul because we were working on some stuff, but it ended up us joining forces again to make another album. And I think it came out great.”

# Let me apologise in advance for the somewhat half-baked nature of the next question. It was implied in an online Diabolic interview that Paul Ouellette had a brief venture in the porn industry. What is that all about?!

“Yeah, he did actually [laughs]. If you listen to Vengeance Ascending there is a song about the porn industry. Aantar is definitely a real big porn freak; he’s into the Buttman magazines and all that for his collection, man. You go to the studio and the whole wall behind his drums is nothing but porno – and I’m sure that inspires our writing as well. It definitely inspired us for that “Celestial Pleasures” song on the Vengeance Ascending album. But yeah, Paul actually was in a porno movie. It was called Peaches and Cream [laughs]. You should go out and buy it. We’ll take it with us on tour and sell it to all the porno freaks out there [laughs]. That was what our label told us one time as a joke.”

# Well, that could be one way to boost merchandise sales... ]:) Right, here is yet another quote from an online interview, and this time it is taken from one that was done with Aantar: ‘My goal in Unholy Ghost is to get the music onto video game movies.’ Is that a sort of collective ambition in the band?

“No, I think Aantar goes a little crazy sometimes, and he wants to drive a Lamborghini. I mean, come on... But you know, we play death metal and there are a lot of brutal games. I’ve been getting into a lot of games such as Splinter Cell and Halo. I’ve got an Xbox and when you’re on the road it’s a good thing to have to kill time. It would be great to be in video games. I would like to see an Unholy Ghost video game. I don’t want to see us as members of the band running around and shooting people, but maybe having our songs in a video game would be really good. With the Xbox you can throw in your CD and put it on the hard drive that’s inside the Xbox, and when you play certain games you can listen to the album. It’s pretty cool to do that anyway [laughs]. It’s fun.”

# In that same interview Aantar also mentioned the possibility of Unholy Ghost releasing a DVD in the future. Is that a project in the making?

“Yeah, we are currently working on a full DVD. We have been documenting everything since the beginning of the band. We’re working with this guy E.J., and he pretty much follows us around with a video camera and tapes everything that we do. We’re going to put out a DVD in the future along with a video for the song “Eyes of Lost” that we are currently working on – and maybe we’ll even do one for “Entrenched Warfare” on top of that.”

# Earlier on in the interview you mentioned Eulogy in connection with how the band came together. Clayton Gore, the long-time drummer of the band in their active days, runs a website where it is possible to download the much-coveted The Essence EP along with a selection of obscure demo and live recordings. Have you ever considered bringing that band back to life?

“Well, as you said: Clayton, the drummer who replaced Aantar in the band, has a website at http://almightyeulogy.com, and he was talking to Jarrett [Pritchard – guitarist] about doing some stuff with Eulogy. I never got contacted about it. I still talk to Jason Avery who sings for Monstrosity. But I don’t see any plans that should make that happen.”

# It was an excellent band.

“Yeah, it was good. I was in the band in the very beginning. I think I was 16, maybe [laughs].”

# Right, I’ll let you off the hook after this last mandatory question: What will the nearest future bring for Unholy Ghost?

“A lot of touring; and we never stop writing, man. We’re constantly coming up with new ideas. With this album we stayed pretty close to the roots of death metal. I think we needed to do that for the debut album. You know, we didn’t try anything crazy, but I’m sure we will explore different grounds with the next album. We just had to place a foundation and enter our roots. We’re a brand new band so we have to develop the roots of the band before we can go off and explore. But yeah, extensive touring and a lot of interviews. We’ll just keep writing and keep putting out great albums, building the underground stronger. I’ll never stop playing death metal and I’ll never stop listening to death metal. We have an army, man, and it’s getting bigger and stronger. It’s coming back. Anyone that wants to stay updated on the band should check out our website. All the interviews that we do will be up; all the reviews that we receive will be online as well as all the tours. We are working on US and European tours. So the best way to find out what’s going on with the band is to just pop in on the website. Now that we have released the album we just hope that people will catch on to the band and buy the album.”

# Now the rest is up to the indolent metal fans out there...

“That’s true. That’s how it is. We’re spreading the word. We had to start out from scratch. We started the band and we put a three-song demo together, we recorded it right in our studio with Steve Taylor. He helped us out with his recording computer, and we just went on with it. We sent the demo everywhere; just kept sending it and sending it to all the people that we could possibly sent it to, in order to make some noise around the band and stir up the chaos. We got some good festivals out of it, and Century Media bought Olympic. They caught up with what we we’re doing, and they didn’t hesitate for a minute to give us a record deal. We were a really hard-working band and we’re going to continue to work hard to get our music out there to the fans.”

# There is no stopping the Unholy Ghost.

“That’s true, man. Well said.”

Conducted and written by Misereion.