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BACK
 CATASTROPHIC
- Cleansing the dead
by: Aaron McKay
Once there were four. With some developments still pending, there
are only two remaining. Florida was the breeding ground for the
most brutal and harsh bands on the planet at the time: Obituary,
Morbid Angel, Deicide, and, of course, Death (remember that Cannibal
Corpse are transplants). Death is on permanent hiatus in favour
of Control Denied, and Obituary has seemingly followed suit. Both
Morbid Angel and Deicide are still issuing material, but wait…there
is a dark horse in the running. While currently removed from the
Morrisound scene, Catastrophic may be what you need to fill the
bill.
Composed of members from New York's viciously awesome Pyrexia and
Trevor Peres of Obituary and Meathook Seed, Catastrophic is every
bit as intense and fascinatingly brutal as any of the bands mentioned
above. Very blunt in their approach, this Metal Blade outfit is
set to cleanse the genre of its extensive riff-raff. Let The Cleansing
begin…
How did this dark horse in the running even come to enter the race?
"I just tried to write something that was real brutal and heavy,"
begins the band's co-founder and main songwriter Peres. "I
really didn't approach it any different than I would do for Obituary.
A real natural progression, I guess."
The combination of the hardcore New York influence from Pyrexia
and the deathy styles from, but not limited to, Obituary fit nicely.
"Oh, yeah. Definitely!" Trevor exclaims. "I don't
know whether you remember the song 'Threatening Skies' [from 1997's
Back from the Dead]… It was kinda like a progression [to do
this]."
What about those vocals? If it was anyone else besides Keith DeVito,
I doubt Catastrophic would have this unmatched of a sound.
Mr. Peres rings in, "He and I started the group [which is rounded
out by Brian Hobbie and Rob Maresca], so we knew the sound that
we were going for. He knew I was going to pull off some real heavy
stuff and I knew he could do something different, too. It was a
match made in heaven, I guess," Trevor laughs.
There are a total of 12 tracks on The Cleansing, but I asked the
band's guitarist about two in particular. How did "Terraform"
come to be?
"It just came outta me," Trevor answers. "It was
just a heavy song. I like it a lot."
He continues, "There is something like that on most of the
Obituary stuff. I always try to have something real 'doomy.' When
I write music, I don't plan it-it just kinda happens. Usually it
takes me days to write a song, but ['Terraform'] just came out and
it was done."
What about my personal favourite on the album, the incredibly done
"Jesters of the Millennium"?
"All the lyrics Keith does are off-the-wall," Trevor says.
"It kinda reminds me of an old thrash song."
Speaking of old thrash songs, who might Catastrophic choose to go
on tour with if it was solely up to them?
"Probably Slayer would be sick," announces the guitarist.
"Obviously me being a fan of them and I think our two bands,
musically, would be good to put together."
No doubt in my mind there will be more than a few Slayer shirts
at any given Catastrophic show. Anyone else, Mr. Peres?
"It'd be great to tour with all my heroes like Iron Maiden.
I am not saying that would ever happen, but someone like them, Motörhead,
or Exodus even," concludes Trevor.
The Cleansing was recorded in Boston at a place called Outpost Studios
with producer Jamie Locke. Why Boston and not, say…Morrisound?
Trevor says, "It has a lot to do with finances and convenience.
Most everyone in Catastrophic except for myself lives in Long Island,
and Boston is a three-hour drive from there and Jamie Locke lives
in Boston. It made sense just to do it up there."
Curiously, I followed up that line of questioning by asking Catastrophic's
founder where the band might have gone were money no object.
"Europe," came the resounding reply. "Just because
that is the next place I want to record," Trevor elaborates.
"I've done, obviously, Morrisound and Miami. It is fun to go
to different places now. It seems fresh."
Now why producer Jamie Locke?
Trevor explains, "He did the Obituary Back from the Dead album.
I just made a call. The reason was to get fresh blood, I guess you
could say." Mr. Peres goes on, "I felt he'd be cool 'cause
obviously he did Cro-Mags and Madball, too. That was really the
one that stood out the most; I really like the Madball stuff he
did."
Here's a biggie for a band-what about touring? What happened with
the Nile tour?
"I don't know if you've heard, but their singer [and bassist,
Chief Spires] has left the band," says Trevor. "We could
have probably done the shows, but Nile was headlining. It was only
a two-band package, too, so it'd only have been us and we didn't
want to ruin the situation [by doing the show ourselves]; we didn't
want to hurt promoters.
"We probably going to be touring with Napalm Death. [It'll
be] in June or so. We are just waiting. We are pretty much 100 percent
confirmed, but not totally 100 percent yet."
Any others?
"We were actually supposed to be on [the Cryptopsy] tour, but
we played with them in New York," spouts Peres. "We actually
passed on that tour 'cause we were on the Nile tour, but that one
got cancelled, so it was pretty horrible. We'd rather been on one
of them, ya know? But we got to play that show in New York which
was cool. Monstrosity played right before Cryptopsy and we played
right before Monstrosity [out of 15 bands that played that day],"
finishes Trevor.
With a brand-new song already written that Catastrophic is currently
performing live, this workhorse of a band wastes no time. If I was
a betting man, I'd lay big money on this outfit to place first in
chasing the rabbit across the finish line. What a class act. If
'dark horse in the running' wasn't the best way to state Catastrophic's
opportunity to seize the triple crown, I'd say they'd already be
celebrating their victory. I might also prod you into checking out
the very fine and highly professional Web site for the band, www.catastrophic.org.
Worth a comparison to the esteemed Secretariat any day!
Reviews of OBITUARY's past (and present) work:
UNRESTRAINED! writer Aaron McKay, a fellow Floridian who now basks
in Iowa's sun, remembers the early days of the Florida death metal
circuit like it was yesterday. Like many of the other bands in the
scene, Obituary was a big deal for him growing up there listening
to death metal music.
So why not give him the opportunity to give his thoughts on Obituary's
work, as well as tackling the new Peres project, Catastrophic? Here
are his thoughts on Obituary's deadly career…
OBITUARY - Slowly We Rot (Roadrunner, 1989)
What are ya? Fuckin' nuts?! This entire release is craziness and
probably one of the fundamental reasons for my love of the genre.
John Tardy's vocals are now widely recognized more of as an instrument
than a singing style. This band blazed new trails in the fledgling
world of death metal. How can one go wrong with severe undertakings
like "Words of Evil" and "Suffocation"? After
the band's name change from Xecutioner to Obituary, my initial curiosity
blossomed as did the group's career. <Aaron McKay> -10-
OBITUARY - Cause of Death (Roadrunner, 1990)
Remaining principally untouched from Slowly We Rot but for the addition
of master guitarist James Murphy (replacing Allen West) Obituary
opened themselves up to more of a molten layered heaviness with
Cause of Death. John Tardy's vocals strippingly guttural as ever,
Obit's music evolved into an art form in and of itself entirely.
I offer into evidence one of my all-time favourite cuts, "Chopped
in Half." Mighty and lordly indeed. <A. McKay> -9.5-
OBITUARY - The End Complete (Roadrunner, 1992)
Admittedly, the guys lost me a bit with this effort. I found it
somewhat too consistent with the material being released at the
time. Disappointment is a strong word. If I was forced to use to
it describe The End Complete, then the disappointment would stem
only from the fact that I had come to expect these pioneers to blaze
more of a trail than what was evident to me here. This, Obituary's
third release, saw the return of Allen West on lead guitar and more
vocally discernible material from John. The forward- thinking catchiness
of "Dead Silence" makes that rust-removing abrasive my
favourite track on the album by far. <A. McKay> -6-
OBITUARY - World Demise (Roadrunner, 1994)
A fantastic rejuvenation took place just two years later with release
of World Demise. No one could ever doubt that this is a stark maturation
of the Obit sound. "Final Thoughts" and "Solid State"
forced the band's sound down your throat like a flaming porcupine.
Donald Tardy's drums and Frank Watkins's bass playing coalesced
magnificently throughout the whole album, providing an anchor to
weigh the rest of the band into depths forbidden to most. The release
of "Don't Care" as a single was powerful enough to coagulate
Obituary's bloody reign for the next three years until a new effort
could be issued. <A. McKay> -8.5-
OBITUARY - Back from the Dead (Roadrunner, 1997)
A small step backward took place after not having released anything
since 1994, breaking a two-year pattern ever since Cause of Death.
Taking a foray into the age of computers, Back from the Dead includes
a multimedia facet on the CD. Struggling for the majority of the
album after opening with the wonderfully killer "Threatening
Skies," Back from the Dead epitomizes the finest title track
ever put out by a band in the genre. The song lays laboriously heavy
as it calculatingly cuts into surfing riff after surfing riff. Having
more songs like "Back from the Dead" and omitting the
remix "Bullituary," this disc certainly had the potential
to be one of band's sterling efforts. <A. McKay> -7-
OBITUARY - Dead [live] (Roadrunner, 1998)
As stopgap measure, the band released this extra long live album.
Clocking in at about 65 minutes, the CD charts the career of the
band extremely well with little attention paid to The End Complete,
possibly for reasons I noted before. Recorded all at a show in Boston,
this effort stood, until recently, as a "best of" for
the band. <A. McKay> -8-
OBITUARY - Anthology (Roadrunner, 2001)
This couldn't have been a whole bunch better if the band had asked
me personally for my choices to appear on Anthology. A great cross-section
of Obituary's work branching out from a "Find the Arise"
demo track, hitting all the highlights until the addition of a new
and previously unreleased piece of material called "Buried
Alive." Everything came together in a nice, tight and concise
package on Anthology, but "Buried Alive" drives pangs
of wanting more through me like freezer burn through cheese cloth.
There is a song here and there I may have wanted to add, but the
band filled the 77 minutes of this disc up beautifully. I can't
help but think, with the dynamic nature of "Buried Alive,"
what else this band could have been capable of… My gut tells
me we may never know. Soak up Anthology-I'd wager it is "The
End Complete." <A. McKay> -8.5-
CATASTROPHIC - The Cleansing (Metal Blade, 2001)
I think there will a contingent out there who will view Catastrophic
with the same uninterested spectacles as the Six Feet Under antagonists
wear. I happen not to be among that crowd. Like the original SFU,
Catastrophic has an Obituary member in its ranks and there is plenty
of overly heavy riffage all throughout The Cleansing. About the
two- minute mark on track eight, "Jesters of the Millennium,"
Trevor Peres and the boys take body-surfing riffs to an all-new
height. Even the very next track, "The Veil," begins with
some killer guitar work that will get your head bobbin' like a jackhammer.
Other than Trevor from Obituary and Meathook Seed on guitar, the
rest of this outfit is comprised of the members of the New York-style
hardcore/death band, Pyrexia. The tongue-'n-groove method Catastrophic
drapes across each tune, from "Hate Trade" to my favourite
on the album, "Terraform," is nothing short of intriguing.
I can think of no better cut off The Cleansing to represent what
this band is capable of than "Terraform." The song is
faster in speed, but vastly more heavy and powerful than a Boeing
767 attempting to land atop an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.
Keith DeVito's dry, harsh and raspy vocals are an outright, total
enrichment to Catastrophic's rugged and devastating approach. I
like the way this band is filling a void that I believe that has
been absent from the scene for a very long time. It is a violent
musical excursion to purge your spirit. Usher in a new force in
metal by christening your CD player with The Cleansing. As the saying
goes, 'cleanliness is close to Godliness.' Be sure to check out
www.catastrophic.org <A. McKay> -8.5-
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