We are fortunate here at Houston Metal Examiner HQ to get a chance to talk to Alan Moses and Brian Pattison, the death metal 'zine editors who have compiled Glorious Times: A Pictorial of the Death Metal Scene (1984-1991) as well as promoting the A Day of Death concert from 1991, from which you can now download audio of five classic death metal bands playing live.
What kind of audience does old school death metal and Glorious Times have, and how many of them are carryovers from the original days?
Brian: Old school death metal seems to be regaining favor, thankfully. As a guesstimate i would say roughly 1/3 of the people who bought our first printing were people from the old days. Our sales pretty much ran the full spectrum of fans, we sold to a few in their early teens and a few that were over 50 yrs old.
Alan: We have people from our era and younger, although the younger are far less represented. Mainly, we gather, because we haven't had any corporate mechanism behind us to promote things - only the really attentive youngsters caught on so far, because we are out of their more cashcow oriented world at this time. Unless you really use myspace ALOT or saw a quick blurb at Blabbermouth one time, we would have missed GT pretty much, that's because we had no money to promote and people are guarded about what they throw their money at.
If we had Shane Embury 'endorse' the book, haha, we would have been picked up by most of the publishers of metal oriented books probably before the thing was even out of the draft stage haha.
Musically speaking, there's so much more folks drifting back to the old bands and the old feel of things, since they've got a bit wise to the genericisms of the music today. Don't get me wrong, some of the bands coming out with stuff these days are phenomenal (cough Malignant Tumour cough Master cough) - but we see letters every single day from a vast array of age ranges wanting a return to the Glorious Times, and there is an undercurrent of feeling disatisfied with what the state of affairs has become.
No matter what, death metal fans have always been really die hard. I think most people realize that there's more dedication in general, compared to other music styles. Hardcore and the derivatives is the same ofcourse. They might have dropped out of sight due to life's circumstances, or come back and become more active, and the old classics are still classics to them. Some may continue to venture forth to try to find good bands from the newer generation, which is what Brian and I do (although we are both as into hardcore as well as other extreme music, not just death). But we are not so sure the new young bloods adopt a similar philosophy because the whole shebang is different for them. They have ease of access but the exclusiveness is tainted by their having been spoiled by the technology.
We rest well, in the knowledge that so many old hands at this have stated publicly that GT is something no true death metal fan should be without, and so far only the hardest core have it. We have yet to be able to change that, and give other people, with as keen an interest, a chance to check it out. Most of GT's appreciation base understands the importance of hearing the individual memories from the very people who lived them rather from a stale 3rd party who either wasn't really active back then, or was simply too young or not even born. I am the sort of person that would rather read an autobiography than a biography, and GT fans respond to the concept really well, they are whom we made this book more available for anyways. Nobody else.
What's the difference between then and now in terms of what fans expect, how bands act, and what people expect from the music?
Brian: Most fans today expect everything for free. They won't spend $3 to buy a bands demo because someone else will and that person will upload it to a blog. Bands act differently, some just stay backstage and don't mingle with the fans forgetting that they are nothing without the fans and that they too were once just fans. Some bands don't though, Alex Webster (cannibal corpse) still goes out and mingles with the crowd and will talk to anyone. Nowadays with the rise of digital recording people expect every recording to be of great quality, which is a shame. There's some special about getting a rehearsal tape or poorly recorded demo, you know the band is in it for the music/for the fans, not to try to get signed and make money.
Alan: I can think of a few major household names today, from the old days, whom have made a 360 degree turn around from their former mindsets, and have totally turned their backs on their old fan bases, in favour of the adorations of a generation raised on rock star worship again - like the thing got killed by the underground and has been brought back in some sort of grandiose version of itself. Similarly, others from the same fold are still as grass roots as ever in their mindset and haven't been poisioned. Then there's some that are just as indifferent to their fans as they were then, and have atleast remained consistent on that level.
The fans I think, have made a major political shift - because the bands are more accessible to them, yet the rock star worship has been elevated - you'd think that would be the other way around? It wasn't like that before, there was more of an even playing ground between a band and the fans usually.
I guess that is a symptomology of having years and years of success that eventually there is another generation born that sees things with a different set of eyes, with different value systems. Entertainment-wise anyways.
Do you have any insight as to the relative importance of fanzines in different parts of the world, if any? Who were/are your favorite foreign correspondences?
Brian: Fanzines back in the day were hugely important. those were the early years of death metal so it didn't get coverage in the glossy music mags. If you wanted to read an interview with Immolation, Prime Evil, Insanity, Nokturnel, etc you had to find it in a 'zine. You didn't just want 'zines from your area or your country either, you wanted them from all over so you can discover new bands, remember it was before the internet and myspace so to discover a band like Death Courier from Greece you had to either read about them in a 'zine or happen to get a flyer of them from a tape trader. now of course my favorite correspondence is Alan, back then it was probably Walter Garau (Ass Ache) from Italy.
Alan: Certain zines were vitally important. Blackthorn from Denmark, Uniforce, Total Thrash etc from the USA, Decibels Of Death and Ultimate Speedcore Dislocation from France, and the legions of zines from South America were vital in exposing bands from everywhere yet still had enough from their own countries to be interesting - well there were an abundance of interesting bands though back then too. I had penpals in so many countries and it was always magnificent to hear from them all, I used to hear from most of the editors from the zines above, and traded with a number of them directly - and they are just the tip of the iceberg. My favourite correspondences would have been Lars Sorbekk (Vomit (Norway)) and Trey back then, but that's a bit unfair because I truly reveled in hearing from EVERYONE. It's the same today really, but Brian is the doss because we are doing so much together there's usually something exciting or frustrating or whatever every single day.
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