Issue 5, Article 8
I had the opportunity to interview the talented, opinionated, and reclusive Nicholas Kyte and Chuck O'Neill via email about the recent disbandment of Tsaroth, the evolution and subgenres of metal, and how Wesleyan kind of falls into all of this. Maybe it was a good thing the interviews were conducted on computer because Chuck probably wanted to beat my ignorant head a couple times. Nick was probably swearing under his breath. They're your human remains if you want to read on...
WMJ: Full name, birthday, sign (astrological not gang), musical instrument(s) of choice.
Nicholas Kyte: an Aquarius and guitar player (who has expanded to drum, bass, and vocal capacities).
John Charles O'Neill: DOB-October 29, 1975 (I'm a Scorpio. Hello, ladies.); IOC-Guitar, Bass, Saxophone. I sold my saxophone and acoustic guitar to buy an amp which was later stolen. God doesn't like you when you sing about the devil. I pretend to play the drums and keyboard from time to time. I make scary noises with my lungs, larynx, and buccal cavity.
WMJ: What are your current musical projects? Next show? Next release?
N: I am involved with a distinct musical creation named Nemesis Enforcer that knows what to do with people like you. And In late November I joined a Boston area black/death metal band name The Year of Our Lord. We just finished recording a five song EP (which will be our third release) that is being released in Europe thorough Lifeforce Records. Hopefully we are also playing this huge Deathfest in New Jersey with Dimmu Borgir and In Flames. And if anyone reading this wants some real F@#$ing metal, set us up with a show.
C: Since Tsaroth disintegrated (broke up is a poor choice of words, really), not much. I'm still writing music, but without the outlet of a band, I'm a useless piece of musical refuse.
WMJ: The lyrics you printed in the Tsaroth demo tape are very dark, religious maybe medieval about disease, death... What is your connection to these images and ideas? Do you want to be connected to death metal bands with other dark lyrics including slaughter, torture and rape?
N: The words slaughter, torture, and rape are used as metaphors for human behaviour towards each other and towards animals. I enjoy the serious and somber atmosphere of many black/death metal bands and like to write in that style. The lyrics deal with veganism, atheism, and the sorry state of our Earth. Some of the lyrics are there to paint pictures in your head to go along with the music. Some of the lyrics are comments about the mistakes I think I see in people.
WMJ: Why did Tsaroth disband? What is Chuck doing next? Jeff [the drummer]? How will you mend the broken hearts?
N: The excitement in Tsaroth was a little low but things were still ok. Then we got an email from Jeff (drums) that said he was quitting the band because he didn't love metal or Tsaroth enough to keep up his end of the band. Jeff graduated from Eastern CT State College and is in some hardcore band in Holyoke MA with some members of the unforgettable old school hardcore band named Line Of Fire Chuck can tell you what he is doing next.
C: Who is suffering from a broken heart? As far as I'm concerned, I have fingers enough to count our fans, and more than half of them were band members and their immediate family members. Tsaroth got together two summers ago. Nick and I were living together and writing songs, not necessarily for each other, but with that in mind. He had been fucking around with Jeff, whom he knew from the WM/CT HC scene, and I had nothing to do, so we all started playing together. That summer ('97) we practiced all the time, and we felt like we were pretty good. Jeff was just really learning to play drums, and he'd never really been in a band before, but Nick's guitar pyrotechnics, my desire to have something to do with my hands that didn't involve touching myself, and Jeff's rapidly increasing skill made us pretty good. Even with Jeff at ECSU, we tried to practice in the fall, but it was hard. We degenerated into only practicing for shows, and occasionally working out new shit. We played a bunch of shows that school year, and it was a lot of fun. I thought we were dope, but none of really had the time to do what we wanted with the band. Over the past summer ('98) I was in Boston, and Nick and Jeff were in CT. We only practiced as a unit a few times during the summer, but we got some new songs polished up, and recorded the "demo" (for lack of a better word) at Planet Z studios in Mass. I'm not fronting when I tell you that the demo sounded dope. I liked it. But we just couldn't keep it together, and I feel like we recorded the demo for naught. Any interest that the three of us in staying together just sort of dissolved. Our last show was in October, with Shadows Fall, at a big Punk and drunk. I really didn't enjoy myself. I don't think that Nick or Jeff did either. We never played again after that. Nick had YOOL, and Jeff was in some band with the guys from Line of Fire, and the two of them liked those projects more, I guess. Oh, and another thing: none of us were ever very excited about the verbal aspect of songs. When I wrote music, I pretty much left it up to Nick to come up with words. Nick and I wrote songs for the band that both of us liked. I think we had song-writing styles that meshed nicely without being similar. It makes me sad that to think that's over.
WMJ: I consider you one of Wesleyan's only metal-heads (hopefully you find that to be a compliment). Why does this "diverse" university lack metal lovers?
N: That is a great question, which I have thought about quite a bit. To keep it short I will bring up that both hardcore and metal exist strongest in working class environments. Both forms of music are very unapologetic (sometimes super PC, sometimes super un-PC), and both usually lack the kind of quirky depth and metaphor of indie or college rock that seems to exist more heartily in the rock that Wesleyan kids listen to. Wesleyan is not a working class environment. Metal is one of the most aggressive musics I know, and I love it. Wesleyan likes to groove, hippidy hop, swing, and indie-bop. Plus a lot of Wesleyan kids do not love music purely as art they love to use music to soothe them after studying too hard. Nobody wants to bang their head to anthems about smoking in the boyıs room or to graphic epic tirades on 16th century Elizabeth Bathory's daily bath of immortality (which was a mixture or water and virgin's blood).
C: I think people at Wesleyan don't like metal because they consider themselves above it. Aggressive music (with the obvious exception of Industrial, which is basically metal for trench-coat kids) doesn't jibe with the typical Wesleyan students' conception of good music. Metal will always be underground because it's so hard to listen to. Most people can't just put on a Deicide record, put their feet up and listen. They're caught up in melody at the expense of captivating rhythm, or some bullshit obsession with liking what's cool or the "right" kind of "smart" music, like all those jazz fuckers that walk around with gig bags strapped to their back, or experimental music people. To each his or her own, and maybe those people are into that music because they like it, but I really get the feeling that they think it makes them smarter to like it and talk about it with their music major cronies. That sounds a lot more bitter than I really feel. Lots and lots and lots of people genuinely like jazz. Jazz is the root of all American music, and is WAY too diverse to make a generalization about. I would never disrespect. And experimental music is interesting, but that's really it. For me. It's experimental. Can you really feel it in your music self? But one cannot deny that Wesleyan students, and people in general, have ignorant and condescending attitudes toward metal. They don't think it's smart. They think the people that play it and listen to it are by nature a horde of mongoloidish freaks. To paraphrase Bloom County's Steve Dallas, "I always thought that Heavy Metal was for entertaining farm animals and the mentally retarded." Or, even worse, they associate metal as a whole with bands like Poison and Crüe, whose days have come and gone, and are the only metal bands (I don't count post-"And Justice for All" Metallica as a metal band. Fuck you, you sell out shits.) to gain a popular foothold in the States. So to them, metal is dead, when in fact, it's bigger and better than ever.
But I think that metalheads tend to have a much more open mind musically than most people. Metal musicians almost always cite punk bands and hardcore bands and hip-hop bands and classical composers as some of their favorite musicians. I think that most other "pop" or "rock" musicians have a much more limited spectra of shit that they're really into. Or that's the way I see it. But I'm so embedded in my subjectivity as a metalhead/musician that it's hard for me to see it otherwise.
WMJ: Not knowing your opinions on the classification of musical genres (which you can tell me if you want), how would you classify the music of your bands (maybe you'd never even use the term "death metal")? I hear hints of hardcore, emo(tional) melodic parts... Break it down for the Music Journal.
N: Tsaroth is metal with many hardcore, rock, and emo, tools applied. It is the sound of the loud rock Chuck and I like all mixed together. If I were to start over again I would probably form a more specific concept for the band that used less elements, but used those elements more effectively. Probably more like The Year of Our Lord but with more thrash thrown in.
C: These are just my ideas... There is no "Metal Dictionary." I hope. Death Metal should really be pretty obvious. It's hard, chunky, about death and zombies and scary fucking shit. The vocals are low and guttural. Death Metal is typified by perplexing, often stupefying rhythm. Used in a sentence "Deicide and Cannibal Corpse are Death Metal bands." Black Metal is an almost entirely Northern European phenomenon. It grew out of Death Metal, but it draws heavily from NWOBHM shit and goth/atmospheric music as well. Black Metal is concerned almost entirely with the overlapping themes of ice/snow, the devil, and old Norse gods tearing your shit up. Although it was originally endemic to Norway and then Sweden and Finland as well, Black Metal bands are popping up all over. The music is very melodic, dynamic, complex. Keyboards! Slow, fast, soft, loud, acoustic, electric, singing, screaming. Keep the devil in mind, and you've pretty much got it. Black Metal bands burn down churches and kill people. That validates them in a way that most rappers can only dream of. Used in a sentence: "Bathory, Covenant, Dissection, and Emperor are all Black Metal bands." NWOBHM is the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, i.e. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, et al.
While Sabbath created metal with some help from Budgie and Zeppelin and Hendrix and others, NWOBHM typified the sound by speeding it up, hyper-masculating it, writing complex songs with evil/war themes. Used in a sentence: "Judas Priest and Iron Maiden are NWOBHM bands." Speed Metal basically is NWOBHM and Sabbath-type metal hearing punk for the first time and saying "I like it." Speed Metal has a punk-friendly cousin named Thrash, typified by DRI, who are fucking awesome. Metallica really made speed metal. If you listen to Kill 'Em All, you will know what speed or thrash is. Used in a sentence: "Metallica were a Speed Metal band. Now they suck and I hate them."
Doom Metal is slow, plodding, orchestral. Often you will hear a violin and say "Holy shit! A violin! In a metal band." Doom Metal is metal made by goths. It is depressing. I like it a lot. Used in a sentence: "My Dying Bride is a Doom Metal band." You know what the fuck Hair/Glam metal is. Grindcore is really, really fast. Like 1/1. These guys play fast. A lot of Napalm Death. Grindcore and power violence are friends. Grindcore is interesting to me, because it is popular among both Death Metal people and crusty punks. A lot of grindcore and powerviolence bands are punk bands, really. Napalm Death is/was a grindcore band. Spazz is a powerviolence band. Powerviolence songs are short and brutal. Grindcore is fast. And brutal. Guttural vocals. Did I mention that? Don't forget the world of the hip-hop/metal crossover, a la Run-DMC/Aerosmith and Anthrax/Public Enemy, which manifested so interestingly on the Judgement Night soundtrack. This theme has reached its acme in the genre of Nü Metal, which blends hip hop and metal/HC into one thing. Bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, the new Vanilla Ice. Maybe even Rage Against the Machine. I don't like Nü Metal, even though Doug Russell accuses me of being in Korn. Maybe too much Adidas. Maybe the fact that it's slick and boring. I love "Walk This Way" and "Bring the Noize," though, and I thought some of the songs on that Judgement Night soundtrack were dope, too. Something we should all be aware of is the Metalcore, like Earth Crisis and their ilk. While interesting, it ceases to amuse me after a while, with the exception of EC and a few others. This is the new HC, which is basically slow Death Metal.
Since the interview was conducted, Tsaroth has reunited! Drummer Jason Arnold, Middletown resident and local celebrity, has been recruited. (You may recognize him from the Middletown Creative Orchestra, as drummer for a Tibetian Folk Singer, or as an early-morning WESU DJ.) Tsaroth reappeared at Punks vs. Geeks, at Eclectic House Saturday March 27. The demonic trio pleased old fans with painted faces and the ignition of Jason's drums.