(Our Comrade Aleks is best-known at our site for interviewing musicians in the genres of doom and black metal, but he dived deep into the molten core of death metal with this interview of the legendary Kam Lee. Maybe it was the shared love of Lovecraft that created the connection?)
Kam Lee doesn’t need a special introduction. Being one of the most prolific American death metal vocalists, he started with Mantas and Death in 1983, and performed with a lot of bands including Bone Gnawer, Massacre, The Grotesquery, and many more. Lovecraftian horrors, horror movies and related cultural influences were the fundament of his lyrics for almost 40 years and became a trademark of the bands in which he was involved, as well as his primordial growl.
His return to Massacre in 2019 opened a new chapter in the band’s career, as Kam, with the help of Mike Borders (bass) and ultra-prolific Rogga Johansson (guitars), breathed new life into the old entity. The most recent demonstration of their fruitful collaboration is the Necrolution album, which will be released by Agonia Records on November 8th. I’m grateful to Kam for his patience and this great interview we managed to do.
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Hi Kam! How are you? What’s going on in Massacre’s lair now when your new album Necrolution is almost out?
Gearing up for our West Coast tour and preparing the line-up to start thinking about the new set to start playing next year. The live line-up members have transferred over to being full-time members now, so it’s important to get them writing material and contributing to the band’s music.
As well, we have already started writing new songs and getting ready to do new releases and material throughout next year. I like to keep the band busy working on new music and songs always. I find it keeps everyone focused and eager for new music, and quickly determines who is going to remain a member and who is going to be removed. I would like to do some splits with some bands as I think that’s would be cool.
Damn, I just wanted to visit Massacre’s official site, and I found the link in metal-archives. It leads to some “massacremetal”community’s page with all AI bullshit. Do you know what this is?
I don’t know anything about that. Besides, that particular site has always had misinformation and completely wrong information. It’s worse than Wikipedia, which is so full of shit and misleading information. The internet is full of misinformation and lies about this band and my past. Plus, doesn’t that site list like 29 different bands under the moniker of Massacre?
Even sites like Spotify get the facts incorrect about this band and link other bands called Massacre music to our page – so it’s not just a single internet site that has incorrect information.
Technically, the band was founded 40 years ago! It’s just impossible… What are your plans to celebrate such a jubilee? How many shows do you plan to do?
Well we’ve already been doing the 33-year anniversary celebration of From Beyond – that’s what we’ve already been doing this year. We would have done the 30th year anniversary but Covid put a stop to that.
I prefer to keep moving forwards instead of relying on the past. I want to keep making new music and new albums and keep performing those songs plus the classic fan favs live.
Four years ago, Massacre was enhanced with the ultra-productive Rogga Johansson, the man with whom you’ve worked for years. How did his appearance change the balance in the band? Did you work with him remotely all the time?
Rogga and Jonny (Pettersson) have been intricate members to the resurgence of Massacre. Without them both helping out – the band would have had a hard time finding its voice again.
I needed the proper musicians behind me to bring the band back from the dead. This band has had a shit history with shitty management and shitty trend-chasing clueless idiots running it. It’s died more deaths than bad zombie ♂️ movies – and had some the worst trend-chasing records made in the years when others were controlling it.
Finally when I was able to get full control of the band and do it the way it was always meant to be done, Rogga and Jonny both were there to give their talents and make the proper type of death metal this band needed to come back to.
How was the recording of Necrolution organized? I see that you recorded it in three studios – DOA studios, Full S Studios & Gojiden Studio. What was the reason to break these sessions into parts?
Simply because of the locations of everyone around the world. With the “recording line-up” we have members in Sweden, the UK, the US ( and not just in the same areas either ), and guest musicians in Italy and other parts of the US – it was more economical to have members record sessions separately and in different locations than to have them fly in and be in the same studio.
Besides, that’s an outdated concept of having a band together in the same place. I like to keep to a retrospective outlook in my music, but it doesn’t mean I must be limited to that way of thinking when it comes to recording the music. We can utilize technology of today’s digital age by file sharing and sending files back and forth to one another and finally to Jonny in Sweden to finalize the mixing and mastering.
The official press release states that your idea “was to evolve the band’s sound by devolving it”. Do you feel that you got it in the end? How did you manage to do it technically?
Style-wise I feel we really encompass the decade between 1984 thru 1994. The idea was to go back to the dawn of death metal and try to recapture that feeling and style. It was not meant to redo our own style or repeat what was already done in the past, but rather to create something new that was more natural and reminiscent of what was predominantly the original death metal tradition and trademark style.
Technically I personally wanted to record the album on a boombox in a garage like the way those old Mantas and early Death demos were made back in 1984 and 1985, but that just wasn’t possible.
But as far as the overall style and aesthetic of the music, I feel we did a good job of combining the sound of early styles to make it our own.
Necrolution has its old-school vibe – it’s in the music, and in your lyrics based on old movies. Did you create the album for the sake of nostalgia? How much of… I don’t know… a modern approach is in it?
Well it’s modern in the technology that goes into making the recording because it’s just not economical to record analog recordings anymore. Many studios are all digital these days. And it’s much more effective to record digital recordings than it is to do it in old-fashioned formats.
As far as the direction – yes it was purposefully designed to be nostalgic and retrospective. That was the idea from day one. Originally the members Jonny and Rogga wrote a full new album shortly after the Resurgence album came out. I went through the songs and realized a lot of the material was not as interesting as the songs were on Resurgence. I decided to keep the best material and we reworked a lot of that material into many of the singles we released.
We have many songs from that time period that were released as singles or on many of the EPs we’ve been doing. Songs like “Nailed into the Casket”, “Halloween Song”, “They Never Die”, “Beyond the Dunwich Hill,” and “Evil Dead Rise”. I try to keep the band busy with constantly releasing new songs and material.
Massacre’s sound changed through the years. How do you see its necessary elements today?
After the Inhuman Condition EP was released in 1992, I really didn’t have control of the band’s style and direction. That was implemented by others who took the band in trend-chasing, ridiculous directions. The pathetic way that member chased modernized trends and attempted to constantly change the band to appease modern cliches was why I originally left in 1994.
The recording after that, the abominable Back From Beyond album, I was not involved with at all. To me that was the band again trying to make another trend-chasing album.
Remember I didn’t come back until 2019… when I’ve been now in full control of the band’s direction.
I feel it’s been relatively consistent since my return to the band.
I’m reading Scott Burns’ biography by David Gehlke, and I just passed the chapter about Massacre’s recording of From Beyond. I know that you have a bad memory of this period, even though the album itself remains one of the death metal classics. However, didn’t you ever think to return with the band to Morrisound?
No. To me it’s unnecessary where you make music 8us to be a good thing just to cover all of these questions as well…
I did a podcast – “BEYOND THE MASSACRE PODCAST” – that answers all those questions. If people want to know more they should go and listen to those episodes of the podcast. They can find it by just Google searching: Beyond the Massacre Podcast, and it comes up on different platforms. I really can’t explain or express anymore than I do in those back episodes. It’s all there in my own words. So I encourage fans to go and check it out.
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5mku9vnvkMvYSsOGZmiusg
This year, Massacre released two EPs – Tri-pocalypse and Evil Dead Rise, a kind of tributes to VHS classic movies. Why didn’t you release them just as a full-length album?
If you’ve been following Massacre since I came back in 2019, you’d see we release singles all the time. It’s not just recently. Starting in 2020, we did Dead Beyond Death, Ancient Evil, Headless Halloween, Casket Mutilations as single EPs, and as well they were combined into a compilation album called Corpus Umbra. Along with the album Resurgence and the Mythos EP – and a digital live album Submergence.
The band has not stopped making new music and releases since I came back. No reason to hold it off until a full album, not with so much creativity coming out of the band now. My purpose was to make sure that the band would not be like it was before under different leadership.
When others controlled the band they did things very lazy and lackluster with just making boring redundant music. It was just a cash cow for them, to just make quick money living off past glories and it was never a truly successful group. It’s never been anything but a fallback for those individuals and it showed in how poorly the band was handled under their control.
I wanted to make up for years of bad band management under those individuals’ influence, and I wanted to bring new music out from the band as much as possible. Plus it’s also fun for the hardcore fans to get their hands on collectible stuff such as the singles in 7” vinyls or single EPs.
Once again there are Lovecraftian songs in the track list, and it’s cool that you keep on holding to this theme. What drove you to choose these stories for your songs’ lyrics this time?
I relate with Lovecraft on several levels. Isolation, loneliness, misanthropy, nihilism, atheism, absolute disdain for the human condition, fear of the unknown, and utter disgust for particular circumstances that arise from betrayal. These subject matters plus the overall insignificance of humanity in a completely absurd universe with no meaning are what I gravitate towards. I loathe humanity and view humans as a blight upon the world. I see no reason to express social conscience lyrics or attempt to write anything about humanity other than the complete utter annihilating of the species. Every metaphor in my lyrics that relates to serpents, spiders, parasites, are just metaphorical representations of disgusting human filth.
Photo Credit Alayna B. Lee (L-R: Tim Wilson (bass), Elden Santos (drums), Kam Lee (vocals), Carlos Gonzalez (guitar)
So there are three tracks inspired by Stewart Gordon’s movies besides “The Color Out of Space”. How do you like its cinematic adaptation starring Nicolas Cage (2019)? Do you dig the “modern” view on H. P.’s legacy? Like Colour out of Space or Alan Moore’s comics Providence, etc.?
I like the films. Every adaptation has its own unique style and way to represent the Lovecraftian aesthetic. Modernization in film is always taking liberties to make it appeal to a wider audience, and appeal to a much larger range of viewers. There’s many different types of content that takes Lovecraft into consideration as influences and some I like and some I don’t. It depends on the overall aesthetic and the use of the source material.
There’s even some great films, not directly inspired by Lovecraft, but loosely inspired by his writings and his cosmic horror that I feel are even better than some of the films that are straight adaptions. For example, the films Annihilation, Underwater, The Superdeep, Cold Skin… just to name a few.
Did you ever think to make a special, totally Lovecraft-inspired project? Like a concept album or a compilation of all related songs you wrote?
I’ve done that with my band The Grotesquery – that also has Rogga in it. That band was completely unique and inspired by both Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Especially the first three albums.
Lovecraft has a kind of circle of other authors with whom he corresponded or collaborated in different ways. Clark Ashton Smith is one of them, and this year The Vision Bleak released an album dedicated to some of his stories. Do you have songs based on his books?
Yes, I’ve used several different other writers and creators who have been influenced by Lovecraft as influence of my own own stuff, not only Clark Ashton Smith, but August Deralith, and even Brian Lumbley and Stephen King.
It seems that I need to revise your discography more carefully! What was your first encounter with Lovecrfatian myths? And what drew your attention to it?
Probably the 1970s film The Dunwich Horror with Dean Stockwell. I think I discovered that film in the late ’70s, maybe early ’80s, and around the same time I started reading Lovecraft novels in paperback. Also I think that I had a couple of back issues of Weird Tales and possibly some other influences like Creepy and Erie magazine from the 1970s.
I’m really not sure if there was just something aesthetically that really got my attention and something that I gravitated toward just because it was so unique and unlike anything else during the time.
See, these weren’t typical monster and horror stories. This wasn’t a vampire coming out of a graveyard or a ghost haunting a house. This was something much more unique and different. His way of writing left the reader to come with their own conclusions of what the horrors in the dark were. His ambiguous way of explaining things made it more horrific because it left it up to the reader to come up with their own versions of the horrors that were being described. Some good examples of this are n his short stories like Dagon.
Yet he also had a way of expressing revulsion and disgust in a way that you could relate to, although a lot of it was probably his own xenophobia and racial discomfort; when he describes something as bizarre and strange as the people of Innsmouth you can almost visualize the grotesque fishlike features. Or even more grotesque is the way that he explains what Wilbur Wheatley looks like. The goat-like features and lumbering walk. The bad smell and odor he emits. This is something that has some unique way of building revolting grossness in the way you read it.
Kam, it seems that you usually eagerly take part in other bands’ recordings, but I see only one release with your vocals (besides Massacre) this year – it’s Coffin’s Sinister Oath. How did you get in touch with them?
Social media. Pretty sure it was Facebook. In today’s modern world you can basically reach anybody. Just take a chance and drop them a message. If they’re interested they’ll get back in touch with you. If not, they’ll block and delete you. It’s pretty much as simple as that. You’ll never know, unless you knock on the door, if there was an opportunity or not. I try to not miss any more opportunities in my life and I’ll just reach out if I feel like it’s something I want to be a part of.
Why did you disband Akatharta? The band had a pretty unique concept behind it, and finally that was something slow with you on vocals! Also what about all the other projects you had together with Rogga Johansson? Did you finish them because of your involvement in Massacre?
I didn’t want to disband Akatharta but it sort of just fizzled out. The members have their own bands to do, so they just sort of went back to work on those bands.
Rogga and I still have Bone Gnawer – we have enough material now for a new album. Just need to find a label interested in releasing it.
Your horror punk / death metal project released two singles in 2024. What is the prospect of a full-length album?
Well I did a full-length recording of material. But again, not had any luck finding a label to release it.
Some labels aren’t as open or keen to sign another style of music from a member of a band that’s known for some other style such as death metal; it’s hard to get a label interested in a musician that wants to work outside of what they’re known for. Labels are all about making money and they don’t want to take a risk on something like that which could potentially not make money or potentially be small on sales – truth is they want to be able to push musicians in the genre that they’re used to being formatted to do so they can sell product.
It’s all shit really – because it forces musicians to become a product rather then an artist.
Thanks for the interview, Kam! Let’s summarize, what shall we expect from Massacre in 2024? And did we skip something important?
I think that about covers it all for now. What people can expect is that the band will keep working and pushing forwards with new music and touring. So much is planned for 2025, and I think fans will be pleased with how the band is progressing.
Thanks for the support everyone
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550812858461
https://massacre3.bandcamp.com/music
https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/necrolution
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
11/26 – Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
11/27 – Portland, OR @ Bossanova Ballroom
11/29 San Francisco, CA @ DNA Lounge
11/30 – Los Angeles, CA @ 1720*
12/01 – Tijuana, MEX @ Foro Nebraska
*with Sadistic Intent