AN NCS INTERVIEW: KAM LEE (MASSACRE)

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 152024
 

(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. Continue reading »

DARK ACOUSTICS: OFFRET, TAMÁS KÁTAI, MIKKO JOENSUU, KAM LEE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Off Topic  16 Responses »
May 012016
 

Offret-ST

 

By way of explaining why my own output at the site has been sparse over the last week, I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I have a close friend in the ICU at a Seattle hospital whom I’ve been visiting for hours each day. One week ago she was driving to work in downtown Seattle and was hit in an intersection by a big city aid truck responding to an emergency call. She’s still in a coma, with a brain injury, though there are signs that she is approaching wakefulness.

Yesterday being a Saturday, I spent a few hours at home listening to music before returning to the hospital. I listened to some new metal that suited my mood, which I plan to compile in a Shades of Black post later this morning. But in a sequence of unpredictable but serendipitous events I also happened upon all the music collected in this post. There’s a bit of metal in the first and last items, but mostly this music is way off our usual beaten paths, yet these songs also suited my mood. I hope you’ll appreciate them, too.

OFFRET

A Russian friend in Novosibirsk (and a member of Station Dysthymia) recommended this first band, calling the music “hauntingly beautiful” — and so it is. The band’s name is Offret, from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I’m not sure if this is a one-man project or a group. What I heard was a self-titled EP released on April 25, 2016, via Bandcamp. Continue reading »