Thursday, May 7, 2015

Whatever happened to Robert Deathrage?



I gotta admit, there is little out that offends me. Save for people killing kids and shit like that I am pretty much a drunk cynical curmudgeon when it comes to general human misery.  Still, there is something about the Meat Shits that actually irritates (dare I say "bothers"?) me twenty-five years after excitedly discovering them on Ax/ction Records' epic Apocalyptic Convulsions 10" comp LP. At the time it was their image more than the "music". Sick-ass song titles plastered on DIY 7" paper sleeves slathered together with shitty xeroxes of all the 1-900 ads you'd find in the back pages of Hustler. In a pinch you could almost jerk off to a Meat Shits record (for some reason the C-grade blowjob queen on the back of Make Me Cum was weirdly attractive but I digress...) Regardless, the schtick got old real fast; enticing song titles like "Golden Shower Girls" and "Gallons Of Cum" were just simple blasts of nonsense after an overly long VHS-ripped porno sample. So when lead man Robert Deathrage got his act together, reinvented the band and destroyed the scene with 1993's watershed Ecstasy Of Death, I figured he was doing what Anal Cunt was then aspiring to - leaving the 2-second noise blasts to the Germans and creating a legitimate noise/grind hybrid while not totally dismissing the noisy past. Without a doubt it worked on Ecstasy. Still, that CD red-flagged Rob's strangely over-aggressive (obsessive?) campaign against AIDS and gays. What followed over the years were such gems as Homosexual Slaughter and Sniper At The Fag Parade - completely derivative of the trend-setting Ecstasy but sadly lacking the innocence of the debut full-length and sounding just... hateful. I dunno, while I'm to this day still a fan of some really ultra-mysoginistic, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic musicians like GG, AxCx, Cunt Sludge, and their ilk; none of these bands were so intensely committed to being anti-something as the Meat Shits were towards gays (and women as well which is a totally inconsistent diatribe but this ain't no PhD thesis debate...) and without a fucking lick of redeeming self-serving humor about it. So where am I going with this rambling post? To me it is amazing that the strange life of Robert Deathrage and the various internet theories about his floating through the California metal scenes with a wrath of fucking everyone over behind him aren't up for more discussion. Shit, the guy has photos of himself with his newborn godchild for Christ's sake on his oddly still-working myspace page. Yet evidently he disappeared from the scene because he had cancer? At the same time Seth Putnam went into a coma? Who knows if we will ever hear again from the little brown noise metal outfit straight outta Modesto, CA but it is interesting that these days I'd rather listen to the kinda annoying shit noise blasts I heard back in the day then the "real" hatecore/grindcore band they/he eventually became. I'll take the former... à la their 1990 quasi-epic Genital Infection...


7 comments:

winston95 said...

Touché good sir.

Anonymous said...

I saw the Meat Shits in Modesto, CA during the summer of 1992. I was passing through town and was there to see an opening band. I have to admit that the music is not my thing at all. The stuff the singer was saying was most over the top nonsensical crap I ever heard. The only thing I can remember today is something about 'hating bitches and having a collection of c@nt lips at home to prove it.' There were people there to see them and really seem to get into it. It made me laugh and think the guy a joke. I never heard of them or heard them after that, thank the lord.

mike said...

Terrible stuff,this particular record is possibly rare because a guy I knew put this out on his label Rancid Carnage Feast out of Oklahoma.He skipped town one day and left me his sizeable record distro and hundreds of copies of "Genital Infection"that I gave away to every punk,metalhead or random outcast in OKC.I still have the metal pressing plates(bent and scratched so no reissue kiddos)and some test pressings.At least I was inspired by this slab to put out my own slightly better crappy grind records because I had a leftover order sheet from the still in business United Record Pressing plant.

winston95 said...

Amen Mike. Well, you can probably keep those test pressings as your kids' college fund - I'm sure there is some sorry soul out there who will run up his parents credit card just to have 'em 15 years from now... just checked out your blog and instantly grabbed the Geto Boys instrumentals - that shit is the fucking bomb G!...

mike said...

Word G! Just saw The Geto Boys live in Dallas,TX about a week ago! They killed it live,I was expecting them to suck somewhat but that was not the case. I even hung out with Willie D for a moment!!! That 12 incher cost at least $15 but I had to grab it up for the rare as fuck dub versions,glad you dug em.

winston95 said...

That is awesome man. I woulda killed to see that show. Can't believe they're still at it. Time to move back down to Texas.

winston95 said...

Hey Rob thanks for the update brother - glad you didn't die from cancer. Make some more music man! The world needs it...