Photo Credit: Thirdxposurephotography
(Looking forward to the impending August 30 release of a new album by Deceased, Comrade Aleks reached out to the band’s co-founder Kingsley “King” Fowley for an interview, and that resulted in a very engaging and wide-ranging discussion, which you can now read below.)
The legendary Deceased returns with a new full-length album, though “return” is a wrong word, because they’ve kept an active pace since 1985 and (almost) never stop. The band’s lineup is pretty steady and the new album Children of the Morgue was recorded by Deceased founder Kingsley “King” Fowley (vocals), Les Snyder (bass) who joined the crew in 1988, Mike Smith (guitars) who’s been in the lineup since 1990, Shane Fuegel (guitars) since 2006, and “youngest” member Amos Rifkin (drums) who had to replace untimely departed Dave “Scarface” Castillo in 2019.
The crew prepared an album full of driving death and thrash metal hits, proving to be damn heavy, alive, and creative despite the band’s respectable age. And we were honoured to interview Kingsley himself, a most friendly and communicative death metal undertaker.
Hi Kingsley! Thanks for your time and this opportunity to talk about Deceased! How busy are you now with all this promo stuff, etc? Has Children of the Morgue drawm deserved attention already?
Yes, lots of interviews and talking about the record. We are very proud of this one. Always great to communicate with others on music and this time it’s our own stuff. People are very excited about it and giving us nice praise. Glad it works for them and it’s enjoyable. We do music for ourselves but when others dig it too it’s a bonus.
Do you still have the feeling of belonging to the scene? Honestly, I didn’t think about it this way, but I mean things like “true heavy metal brotherhood” or “secret inner black metal circle of hell”. Do such things still work when people barely communicate in real life, preferring the internet?
Yes it’s older pals of decades along with some younger folks too, but it’s still a spirited thing if run more through the internet than pen pals. We still go and cheer on our friends and love to play for folks and love to create and still write metal. Just because it’s not pen and paper much anymore, metal music is for those with the passion in their hearts in any time on the earth.
Well, by the way, what’s the most annoying question you’ve been asked during the interviews? Are there any topics you prefer to avoid?
Nothing is annoying. Repeated questions I understand as each person might not know an answer to something. I avoid nothing. What you see is what you get. If someone takes the time to interview me, I can take the time to answer accordingly.
The next year Deceased will meet its 40th anniversary, and it’s… almost as old as Megadeth, though not so rich… okay, almost as old as myself but not so poor, haha! Do you already have some plans to mark this date? Do you feel it’s worth celebrating?
Yeah, we are cheering and saying how ‘damn it’s been a long time’. We are a family first and foremost. Every person ever in this band is part of the experience. We will celebrate with special gigs and good times. That’s how we do it. We plan to have a special show to make you some money so you can be at least ‘not so poor’. You can expect at least a check for $4.00 from us. J
Thank you, Kinglsey sir! That’s too generous an offering! But what about the band’s business today? Do you manage not to lose money on recordings and gigs? It’s a well-known thing that even big bands have to play live constantly to gain some funds.
We are not letting the band be our only income. We have jobs and we know what we can and can’t do. The label records the records and we go and play for fair payment for us and the promoters. It’s really just being wise/smart with your money. One thing might be short and another long for payment, and you even it out so it ends up where you want it to be.
You started in the ’80s, when extreme metal started to bloom, then you endured the ’90s with its stagnation and grunge wave, and the rules of the music “business” changed each ten years or sometimes even faster. What was the hardest period to keep the band alive?
None of them. We didn’t get into the music for that. It doesn’t matter to us what is hip or current in the music world. We write music as a special thing we all enjoy. The compositions are our reward. But if you want me to give you my least favorite time doing this, it was dealing with Relapse Records those last two years we were on that label. It became tons of lies and handfuls of bullshit from them. And we never got into music and recording for that.
I just read Amorphis’ biography some time ago, and they were quite disappointed with Relapse for well-known reasons too. However, it looks like you and Deceased entered the most prolific stage in about 2018 when you just released Ghostly White, and then there were two albums of covers – Rotten to the Core Part 2 (The Nightmare Continues) in 2020 and Thrash Times at Ridgemont High in 2021, and now Children of the Morgue. Okay, there was the EP The Triangle released a year ago – ten minutes but it counts! So what did actually happen? Did you find the right chapter in Necronomicon that helped you to start working as possessed?
Well, covid gave us time to do those two cover CDs and Mike Smith has now retired and lives in America again. He was working for the government and living in Jordan and only coming to the US like four times a year for the last few years. That makes it hard to jam J We are making up for lost time and just having more time now that some of our children are grown and living on their own. Time lining up that gives us the freedom to create music. We never rush anything. it’s our epitaph, and when records are done, they are done.
You recorded the two cover-albums almost at the same time. Was it a spontaneous decision or did you bear this idea for years?
Rotten to the Core Part 2 has been a thing in our minds for many years since the first. Thrash Times at Ridgemont High was an idea of mine since recording Fearless Undead Machines. As mentioned, covid came, which halted shows etc, so we just made the time useful and so we did those recordings.
Really, so do you see both of these releases not just like regular cover albums but as two separate works? Why?
Yes, both are two different entities. A punk hardcore and a thrash one. We didn’t record at the same time. They were months apart. They both have their own identity and personality.
Children of the Morgue’s artwork touches quite a delicate topic, but I doubt that it may hurt anybody’s feelings nowadays. Did you ever have problems with censorship?
Only with Relapse Records who censored some of our thanks and fuck-off list. We had a problem with Morbid Angel once and put a big fuck-off to them on the record, and then when the record came out it wasn’t on it. We asked Relapse where it was. They said they had to work with them and their people so it was a bad business move. We told them, fuck them as much as Morbid Angel. Fuck censorship of any kind!
Did you ever change an artwork or lyrics because of that? Or did you stop yourself thinking that it’s too much even for you?
Nothing is too far. It’s the real world. On the Thrash Times at Ridgemont High release we mentioned a few ‘thrash’ bands we didn’t like in a joking narrative at the end of the record. It was, ‘so you did a thrash record but where are Metallica, Megadeth, Testament?’ And the reply was a sample from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High where Spicoli says: ‘Those guys are fags’. It was how the record closed out. But three plants would not press it cuz of today’s touchy people. That was lame of them. People are so sissified in the world today. It’s a shame.
You recorded almost an hour of material for this new album. It sounds fresh and impressive, it damn rocks. Was it easy to keep the vibe? Did you feel a kind of responsibility doing it?
I know we approached the record like the others but I really paid even more deep attention to detail at every writing session/rehearsal. I wanted to write and ‘correct’ as we went. I produced the record so I just kept the guys headstrong and focused, which they were already. So it paid off. I am very much intense in the band and I will not settle for less than the very, very best we can do.
You recorded at Oblivion Studios again. Did you produce the album yourself? Or was it Mike Bossier who ran the process? It seems that he recorded the lion’s share of Deceased’s releases since 1997, so I wonder how fast do you record with him?
I produced this record. and me, Mike, and studio owner and engineer Mike Bossier mixed it. Mike Bossier is a dear friend and part of our family. He is laid back and very easy to work with. We have been friends for 40 years. We grew up together. He knows how we work and he is always professional, so we don’t get a slack off from him. A great team for sure!
How tight is your tour schedule for 2024? Do you still have some fun from performing Deceased stuff?
We have four shows in the next eight weeks and then we’ll do a little run in December. 2025 it’ll turn up harder and many more shows. I love playing live. It is very important to the band to get out and play the tunes in the faces of metal heads the world over. And we play it faster and sharp-tight to put smiles on all our faces. As well as visually not just standing there and playing.
When did you play your last big tour? How many cities did you cover? You know, I think that the last death metal bands I interviewed were from Chile, and it has its own specific features of organizing and playing gigs – somewhere it’s easier, somewhere it’s harder – and in Canada, for example, or Australia, you have quite big distances between cities. And the States grant more comfortable routes at least…
We have been out many times in the last few years. We just did a 10-day run with Violence and Exhorder. It was great and on the East Coast. And before that Deceased and Bulldozer were all over the west and east coast over a 15-month time, two tours and space in between. We go and go and go. We must have hit at least 40 cities and also Canada.
There are some great atmospheric pieces amongst your death and heavy metal worship in Children of the Morgue. For example, that nice chilling interlude “Turn to Wither”, as well as the creepy acoustic section in the following “Terrornaut”. There are fast killer tracks and slow-burning pieces as well, and the entire material is both solid yet diverse Is it a part of a plan? A kind of concept behind the album? And do you think that you’re able to record just straight and forthright stuff nowadays?
The straight and forthright stuff is still with us too. There is talk after this record to do one like that. I think Y&T‘s ‘Mean Streak’ song gave me an inspiration for that angle of writing but in the deceased morbid sense of being. As for Children of the Morgue it is a concept. It’s on dying. The person dying, the loved ones around them, where we go when we die, and just the whole emotional journey of it. Those interludes are turning pages between songs and setting tone and mood for what is coming next in the tale. I thank you for the kind words on arrangements. I do my best to fit those slows with the fast and make dynamics work to get the most out of the tunes and for the listener.
By the way, how much of Luck of the Corpse is left in the current Deceased?
Tons. Raw simple is still there too. Live we play tons of it and it’s that teenage ugly learning era that still is the starting gun for our heartbeat.
Some of your songs are influenced by horror movies directly or indirectly. Which modern movies did you like? And what are your all-time classics?
For newer movies, we will say past 2000, I love Hereditary, Lake Mungo, Poughkeepsie Tapes, Caveat are a few. As for current out now I really like Oddity from the same director as Caveat and a film called Tin and Tina. For all timers it’s Phantasm, The Exorcist, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Burnt Offerings, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Night of the Living Dead, The Changeling, and many, many more. I watch horror films endlessly.
A lot of familiar names! Great choices! Well, I watched Longlegs at the cinema a week ago, and it’s a killer thing. Actually it’s stylized as it was filmed in the ’90s, and the previous movie with Nicolas Cage I watched – Mandy – was focused on the ’80s VHS aesthetics. What do you search for in horror movies? The atmosphere? The action? The aesthetics?
Just a proper personality no matter the style. I can do zombies as well as mental illness or slasher or giant bug movies etc. etc… Fast horror, slow-burn horror, as long as it’s got my interest. My faves are the eerie creepy get under your skin types.
You ran four labels, and as I see, only Old Metal Records is functional nowadays. You released a reissue of Samain and Wizz from the ’80s. How do you see your mission in this field? Do you do these things only for your own satisfaction?
I love old heavy metal and want folks to discover these bands that many rode under the radar. It’s a ‘for the love of it’ thing. I started old metal at a time when metal was a bad word to many. So while folks were up Pearl Jam’s and Nirvana’s ass I was pushing Blessed Death and Iron Angel.
It’s a common story when guys who perform extreme metal are ordinary men with daily jobs, family issues, and so on. Yes, sometimes things happened when some of them assault neighbors and then police find rifles and a flamethrower in his cellar, but most of the time everything is plain. You have been in extreme metal for four decades; how much does it influence you? Do you feel a kind of professional deformation?
Metal carries me. I don’t need to go outlandish and blow up the world. I kiss my wife before work, we go to drive-in movies and eat at restaurants and I take my grandson to the funpark. I know people of all walks of life; they let me be me and I let them be them. Some aren’t going to enjoy Deceased music and that’s fine. It’s not about that. It’s the respect and friendships I have made locally as well as the world over, from the band and not from the band, at the end of the day.
There was no news from the heavy metal band October 31 for some time. Do you have any announcement regarding it?
Sadly it is no more. Brian, the band co-founder and guitarist, has severe Parkinson’s disease and cannot do it anymore. With respect to him we have closed it up. Hell of a fun band and thanks to all who banged with us at any time of our musical journey.
Do you have the time and energy to take part in another old school heavy metal band? Have you thought about it yet?
I would love to, but right now all my heart is in Deceased. After October 31 stopped, I wanted to do this even more with Deceased. but music is my life and you never know where my next idea and band might emerge.
Kingsley, seven years ago Burning Horse Media released your book Stay Ugly. How satisfied were you with this experience? Was it worth all of the effort in the end?
It was. What an emotional ride writing that. It still is all of me in those pages. I gave it my all. Many ask for it still and I may re-press it. Life is life and mine is there in black and white for anyone who wants to read about it. I may do another book as the story continues.
What about March of the Cadavers? Is it a kind of compilation?
It will be a two-CD history of the band with new exclusive songs as well as exclusive cover tunes, along with all the years and albums we’ve done tracks from everything. Like a sampler and 40-year anniversary package.
Thanks for the interview, sir! It was a pleasure. So did we skip something? And what are your plans for the rest of 2024?
You got it all! Thank you for the support. 2024 is some shows and 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the band. Look for a March of the Cadavers two CDs with history of our music and new tunes exclusive to it, as well as more covers and a nice history booklet. And live shows in as many places as we can hit. Lots of love to the genuine heavy metal world! Many thanks! Up the tombstones!
– King Fowley
https://www.facebook.com/deceasedofficial/
https://shop-hellsheadbangers.com/
https://the-true-deceased.bandcamp.com/album/children-of-the-morgue