Those of us who came of age in the 1980s and were young adults in the 1990s usually rest assured that the antics of our younger selves were largely undocumented. But every once in a while someone cleans out a closet, or a finds an old shoe box, or retrieves data from an old laptop and -voila!- there in the randomest place you could never imagine is a load of incriminating stuff from the 1990s. That has recently happened to me and I have come into possession of two demos and a video tape of my old death metal band Mortalis. I had previously lost all of these recordings and so had not heard any of this stuff in over 30 years. I have also been on “non-weight bearing” status for the last 4 weeks letting my broken ankle mend and so have had lots of time for frivolous reflection on these discoveries and for making the video below. Now that I have started PT and am on “partial weight bearing” status I can start to slowly get back to normal (hopefully!).

It is interesting as an elderly philosophy professor to see this old video because it was was not long after this, way back in 1996, that I made the very conscious, very explicit, decision to quit pursuing my “career” in death metal drumming and devote myself to the study of philosophy.

By late 1995 I had been playing the drums for about five years and was completely self taught. Even so I had a semi-successful band in a very active scene with a whole host of amazing musicians and awesome local groups and which produced underground deathgrind gods like Emetic (formerly Intrepidus) as well as Brutal Death/Tech legends like Deeds of Flesh…believe it or not the last thing I did in the death metal scene was audition for Deeds of Flesh at some point in 1996 or late 1995 after Mortalis broke up and their original drummer left…I have never let awareness of my own limitations stop me from trying, haha…On the other hand, I was in my third semester at community college and had taken all of two philosophy courses. So quitting my band, ditching all my old friends, and focusing on school to study philosophy was taking a big chance! I knew I was not the greatest drummer in the world and being self-taught I also knew I did not know very much about drumming. Seeing a lot of live music and watching the extremely talented drummers in rehearsal spaces I hung out at was the closest thing I had to a lesson before I stopped playing death metal. Listening back to this I note the total lack of bounce in the drum sticks and nothing but single roles. If I were writing drum parts for these songs now I would add some gravity blasts, and some variety in fills 😉 At any rate my point was that I saw a “path of progression” on the drums and thought of myself as primarily a death metal drummer who was doing what it took to make playing in the band possible. So this was a major life decision for me at that point and arrived at in relatively short time. But I had seen a path to a different kind of life and I was determined to take it.

To make things even stranger, I was also just about to move into a Mortuary (in January 1996). Don’t worry, the irony of quitting the death metal scene and moving into a mortuary is not lost on me. It is funny, because even though I did get a new drum set once I moved up to SF a few years later, I did not try to return to playing death metal of any kind. After being at the mortuary for that year I just wasn’t interested in that kind of stuff any more any more. I had always seen death metal as a kind of horror-movie-set-to-music and I had completely lost my taste for horror. I suppose taking acid and mushrooms while living in a Mortuary/Chapel will do that to one. Plus any kind of gore reminded me of various things I had seen and which I did not want to be reminded of or think about too much. I have since the pandemic re-kindled my interest in death metal and started checking out old bands I used to like again, which I still enjoy but that is 25 years of not even listening to that kind of music! It was easy to do since I had lost all of my music collection and recordings of bands, etc. when I moved to SF in 1997 and truth be told it is harder to read lyrics by bands like Devourment than it used to be for me (though I do really like their music, haha).

In fact, I am pretty sure that I was homeless and crashing at the house of the vocalist for my friend’s band Desinence when I explicitly decided to quit death metal drumming. I had been evicted (for the third time at this point) from the house I was living in (the house in the video above actually) after getting fired from my day job at a department store. You might have thought it was because of parties like the one in the video but it was actually because I could not pay my rent after losing my job before my financial aid came in. When I found out about the Mortuary, where I could work and also live, I moved in and left my drums at the vocalists place and then eventually sold them, or something but I did not take them with me to the mortuary. I figured that if I didn’t own a drum set then it would be easier to focus on school. During that time I did play drums here and there, and even got to sit in and jam with the Shival Experience at a couple of gigs. This was actually when I also had my first drum lesson from Maurice the drummer for the Shival Experience and I would shortly buy a practice pad and metronome to practice rudiments and sticking patterns off of the drum kit, but something compelled me to devote myself full time to school. Before that I had pretty much devoted myself entirely to being in a band and had done everything else as a way to make that happen. But now I was intent on studying philosophy and music was becoming a hobby but not something I was thinking of as being serious about.

You can see in the video that I have a hemp necklace on, and of course the infamous “cat turd” dreadlocks. These were the result of my meeting my deadhead roommates at community college and going to some dead shows (and Phish too sadly). As a result the house I lived in was commonly referred to as “The Hippie House” by my metalhead friends. This was because I lived with Balaram, the bassist for the Shival Experience, and the afore mentioned people who were deadheads. People sold weed out of the house and the ‘Hippie House’ moniker was apt. I shaved the dreads off when I got my job at the department store but that would not have been until the summer of 1995 because at that time I was using my financial aid money to not work during the semesters as much as possible and trying to work only over summer and winter break. I really only remember working at the gas station and at Ross during the Meineke period. So that means that whenever this house party was, it must have been before the summer of 1995, or maybe right at the start?

In the fullness of time I can say that I think these songs mostly hold up and that Mortalis was an interesting and important part of the ultra-underground Central Coast death metal scene that I am proud to have played a part in. I have always been very lucky in being able to play with musicians that are way above my skill level and I think the guitar on these recordings is great. In addition I was lucky to be interacting with what basically amounts to future icons of the underground which is very cool. Still, I can’t help but see my part in it as an expression of an angry and confused person lashing out at any and all around them in a desperate attempt to make sense of what turn out to be philosophical questions. The person in the video might view someone like me now as a sell out, but I am proud of him for having the dimmest glimmer of a vision of the kind of life that I am enjoying now and orienting towards it.

Mortalis -history

In late-ish 1993 I was looking for a band to play with after Cannibalistic Mutilation split up when one day I received a random phone call from some guy named Rich. He said that he was a guitarist and that this guy at the liquor store had given him my number and said we should jam. We met up and instantly felt like it was a good fit. I remember us meeting at the storage place for our first jam but Rich says he doesn’t remember that. I spent a lot of time at that storage place hanging out, and I am sure Desinence had their spot even after Cannibalistic Mutilation broke so it would have been available for me to meet someone there, but then again who knows. I swear I have a memory of Rich and the bassist from Mutilation and me in that space playing one of the riffs we would use in a song later. But I may be wrong.

Either way, Rich knew a vocalist, John Jones. John was an aspiring artist and was a bit older than the rest of us (by about 10 years I think). I had written the lyrics for Cannibalistic Mutilation but John took over that role and I thought his lyrics were very cool. We then somehow recruited Jason Workman on the bass. Jason was younger than the rest of us, he may have still been in high school at that point! I think he was in a band called Stomach Pump before that. So that early line-up had quite the range! By that time we had left the storage place rehearsal spot and had a place in San Luis Obispo where we would practice. We recorded the first 4 track demo a few months after that and then went on the KCPR radio show where we say we have been playing together for five months, so it must have been in mid 1994, before I had started at Cuesta and was still living above the pre-school in Los Ossos. We recorded the first demo probably in late 1993 or early 1994 and it has a nice raw-chaotic and aggressive quality that I like. It seems like we didn’t do much with it though which is a shame. I had had a bad experience with Wild Rag records from Mutilation but we should have at least sent it down to them, ah well.

Jason eventually quit the band because he was driving from Atascadero to San Luis to practice and he did not at the time think it was worth it. He predicted the death of death metal and went on to start Neighborhood Creep, a funk band. We needed a bassist so we had Jonathon Boyle step in. Jonathan was a guitarist who played with the group Desinence (who I would say sounded like a mix of Death with Gorguts and were all great musicians, and had been the guitarist for Charlie Christ with Erik Lindmark before Erik started Deeds of Flesh. I had played with Jonathan in Cannibalistic Mutilation and he was a quick learner who could play anything so we made him play bass. We then recruited Trapper Shannon on guitar. I don’t know how or when that happened but it must have been in mid-94 because the demo we found was labeled as recorded October 28 1994 and it would take a few months to get the stuff that tight. Trapper had previously been in a band with Joey Heaslet, the original drummer for Deeds of Flesh, and had some live experience playing with Betrayer (who had opened at the Grange Hall for someone) and a band in Texas, I think Kingdom of the Dead was their name. Trapper brought a nice counter-point to Rich’s riff writing with the result (in my humble opinion 😉 being old school death metal that sounded a little like a mix between Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angle and put on a decent live show.

Mortalis only had the two four track recordings and even though I remember us as playing a lot of shows, they were all parties. One was a house party in Malibu that we drove down to (there was a nudist there who as walking around naked in some very ultra fancy house on the hill…not sure if they were expecting death metal but we played it, haha), another was on the Tiger’s Folly, which was a historic boat that would cruise around Morro Bay for private parties (I heard there were pictures from that night but I don’t know if that is the case), another was at this place we called the King Cobra Command Post where all the meth heads (including this very buff guy we called the Methelete) would hang out (as a side note I distinctly remember them putting meth into coffee, which might be what Emetic’s song junk-a-latte is about). The super abundance of meth was definitely a factor in my wanting to get out of that scene!

If anyone ever stumbles on this website and has some info on any of this please let me know!

I don’t remember the exact reason Mortalis broke up but it must have been sometime in late 1995. I remember there was a big fight between me and the vocalist. As I remember it, it started with Rich and I wanting to write shorter songs that had less repetition of parts and had less serious names and subject matter, which led to a big confrontation/altercation. Listening back to these songs now I can see that they do have a very straightforward structure with a lot of repeating parts. I have always wondered why include all those other parts? Why not just have them be a separate song? But I also think that these songs hold up. My drumming makes me cringe but I enjoy listening to them so that’s a win I’d say. I have to say that one of my main regrets was that Mortalis seemed lost to history so it is cool to see some evidence of its existence come to light.

Rich, Jonathan, and I formed B.O. with BaBwak from Emetic for a short lived project in late 1995 that may have only played one show, though I do remember a recording of it existing at some point and that back then I thought of that recording as capturing my best drumming I had ever done up until that point. That recording is lost to time, but so far these lost recordings have been re-surfacing every here and there so maybe those ones will someday as well. I don’t remember how I finally quit B.O. but I have a feeling that after I was evicted I just lost touch with everyone. Though in an interesting plot twist, the drummer for Desinence did move into the Mortuary with me at some point and was there when I left in January of 1997. I don’t actually remember if he was still playing in Desinence at that point.

For historical completeness here is the full recording of that night featuring Mortalis and Emetic. The audio is terrible but it was an epic party and aficionados of the underground may enjoy seeing it.