HR022 - Viktimized Karcass — Atrocity Slaughter — C60 — 1985
Read a newly-published article
about Viktimized Karcass by Jerry Kranitz titled "Viktimized Karcass - This Ain’t Yer Grandmother’s Space Rock!" Side A
Dreamrider (Excerpt) Shelter Is A Home Dog's Life Roustabout Side B Moving To Georgia The Holy Eye Meathead Or Skinhead Blinded Vision Jack Knife |
VK's are
Roger Moneymaker — Guitar, Effects
Richard Martin — Vocals On "Shelter", Drums, Keys, Found Sounds
Chris Phinney — Vocals, Keys, Drums, Drum Programs
Pete McLean — Drums, Percussion, Vocals on "Jack Knife"
Mike Jackson — Bass on "Roustabout" and "Meathead Or Skinhead"
Roger Moneymaker — Guitar, Effects
Richard Martin — Vocals On "Shelter", Drums, Keys, Found Sounds
Chris Phinney — Vocals, Keys, Drums, Drum Programs
Pete McLean — Drums, Percussion, Vocals on "Jack Knife"
Mike Jackson — Bass on "Roustabout" and "Meathead Or Skinhead"
Review by Jerry Kranitz
The second Viktimized Karcass cassette album begins to solidify the band’s place as one of the premier 1980s American underground space rock bands. Side A opens with ‘Dreamrider (excerpt)’, a full on assault of zany, mind-fucked videogame effects and wigged out guitar against a steady rocking beat. This is some whacked out shit and is rockin’ in the most cosmically carnivalesque regions of SPACE!
We start getting into some hard edged and aggressive yet steadily grooving space rock with ‘Shelter Is A Home’. I love the jamming freakout guitars and wailing-droning effects, making for a doomily fist pumping and lethargically upbeat space rock jam. ‘Dog's Life’ is similar, being a gloriously chaotic, acid rocking, 78rpm instrumental space jam at the Star Wars cantina comedy club. As I settle into ‘Roustabout’ the music brings to mind an acidically rollicking, intensely good time take on Alien Planetscapes, who Karcass would later team up with.
Imagine a ZZ Top meets Chrome, acid drenched, space rocking jam and you might get something like the Side B opener, ‘Moving To Georgia’. The guitars are screech and scream banshee wailing and the vocals have a cool Damon Edge/Billy Gibbons quality and are very much on a surreal Alien Soundtracks/Rio Grande Mud point on the rock ‘n’ roll axis.
I like the tasty, melodically shredding guitar soloing on ‘The Holy Eye’. It’s got an overall whimsical atmosphere and fun glom of effects, but also a rockin’ drumming groove with punk poet vocals. Viktimized Karcass punk out in headbanging psychedelic space on ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’. The band transition from hardcore to majestic space-industrial, creating THE hit single of the set!! Rock ‘n’ ROOOOLLLLL!!!
‘Blinded Vision’ is the most sedate song of the set, with a laid back, acid-blues jam vibe, and that’s even considering the raving vocals and fuzzed out whacky atmosphere of the song. And with ‘Jack Knife’ I’m starting to envision a Captain Beefheart meets acid psychedelic meets doom metal thing going on. The guitars sound like Beefheart Metal refugees, and the brain cell destroying chaos is cathartic.
Interview with Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
JK: On the next tape, Atrocity Slaughter, I see in the credits that Pete McLean is on the album, but you are also credited with drums and drum programming. Is that because Pete didn’t drum on every track?
CP: He didn’t show up. And you noticed we had ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’ on there. That came from… we did a different version of it, but that’s from the Spit On It compilation (HR014).
JK: I was going to ask you about that. I didn’t listen to them side by side, but it’s a newer version that was recorded for Atrocity Slaughter?
CP: Right.
JK: Mike Jackson is credited with bass on two tracks on Atrocity Slaughter.
CP: He played on ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’. He came over and jammed on that and ‘Roustabout’.
JK: I want to make sure I’ve got my timelines correct. I know R.S.V.P. came before Cancerous Growth. Did Cancerous Growth come before Viktimized Karcass, or did it all occur around the same time?
CP: All around the same time. I really like the Atrocity Slaughter tape.
JK: Question about the song ‘Dreamrider (Excerpt)’. What’s it an excerpt from? Is there a lengthier version somewhere?
CP: It was too long. We just cut it down.
JK: So there’s not a longer version that was released elsewhere?
CP: No. I probably have the master of the full version. But I wanted to cut it off because it wasn’t going to fit on the tape. And I decided we didn’t need the whole damn thing anyways. It started getting real spacey, but hell, we did spacey the whole time anyway (laughs).
JK: The song ‘Shelter Is A Home’. Roger is the only band member credited with guitar. Maybe it’s me but it sounds like dual guitars on this song.
CP: It’s just Roger. One guitar.
JK: I made some pretty wild analogies in my review of some of the songs on this tape. Like the song ‘Moving To Georgia’.
CP: That’s drum machine on that one.
JK: I described that as “Imagine a ZZ Top meets Chrome acid drenched, space rocking jam.”
CP: Yeah, pretty much.
JK: To my ears the vocals have a Damon Edge/Billy Gibbons quality, making it like Alien Soundtracks meets Rio Grande Mud. That dynamic and crazy style mixture is one of the things I love about that song.
CP: I think a lot of that came from being down South. We all listened to ZZ Top, especially the first three albums. After that I kind of lost it with the ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ bullshit.
JK: There’s bluesy stuff there too. Like ‘Blinded Vision’. It’s the most sedate song of the set, but it’s got a laid back, acid-blues jam vibe, which is pretty cool considering the raving vocals.
CP: Oh yeah. That was an improv piece.
JK: When Karcass was improvising, did you typically start with an idea or did you just launch right into it?
CP: We would just start. Roger would start, or somebody would start. It was usually either Roger or me would start it out. Until we got a bass player and then the bass player might start it out. Mike Jackson might start it out once he played bass for us. Or Robert Hinson later on. Robert was one of Roger’s good friends and like I mentioned he played with Corn For Texture as well. I sat in on a couple of Corn For Texture gigs. They were fun. They were more rock ‘n’ roll than Karcass though.
JK: Another analogy I made was on the song ‘Jack Knife’. I said, “I’m starting to envision a Captain Beefheart meets acid psychedelic meets doom metal thing going on”.
CP: That’s Pete singing on that song. I think that’s the only song he ever sang on.
JK: We’ll get to the live tape shortly but I’ll ask you anyway if you were doing any live shows at this time, or was the live tape the first shows you ever did?
CP: No, we weren’t doing any gigs yet at the time of Atrocity Slaughter. There weren’t any gigs until Humboldt, when we went on a little mini tour. We did that Humboldt Youth Center gig (HR026).
The second Viktimized Karcass cassette album begins to solidify the band’s place as one of the premier 1980s American underground space rock bands. Side A opens with ‘Dreamrider (excerpt)’, a full on assault of zany, mind-fucked videogame effects and wigged out guitar against a steady rocking beat. This is some whacked out shit and is rockin’ in the most cosmically carnivalesque regions of SPACE!
We start getting into some hard edged and aggressive yet steadily grooving space rock with ‘Shelter Is A Home’. I love the jamming freakout guitars and wailing-droning effects, making for a doomily fist pumping and lethargically upbeat space rock jam. ‘Dog's Life’ is similar, being a gloriously chaotic, acid rocking, 78rpm instrumental space jam at the Star Wars cantina comedy club. As I settle into ‘Roustabout’ the music brings to mind an acidically rollicking, intensely good time take on Alien Planetscapes, who Karcass would later team up with.
Imagine a ZZ Top meets Chrome, acid drenched, space rocking jam and you might get something like the Side B opener, ‘Moving To Georgia’. The guitars are screech and scream banshee wailing and the vocals have a cool Damon Edge/Billy Gibbons quality and are very much on a surreal Alien Soundtracks/Rio Grande Mud point on the rock ‘n’ roll axis.
I like the tasty, melodically shredding guitar soloing on ‘The Holy Eye’. It’s got an overall whimsical atmosphere and fun glom of effects, but also a rockin’ drumming groove with punk poet vocals. Viktimized Karcass punk out in headbanging psychedelic space on ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’. The band transition from hardcore to majestic space-industrial, creating THE hit single of the set!! Rock ‘n’ ROOOOLLLLL!!!
‘Blinded Vision’ is the most sedate song of the set, with a laid back, acid-blues jam vibe, and that’s even considering the raving vocals and fuzzed out whacky atmosphere of the song. And with ‘Jack Knife’ I’m starting to envision a Captain Beefheart meets acid psychedelic meets doom metal thing going on. The guitars sound like Beefheart Metal refugees, and the brain cell destroying chaos is cathartic.
Interview with Chris Phinney by Jerry Kranitz
JK: On the next tape, Atrocity Slaughter, I see in the credits that Pete McLean is on the album, but you are also credited with drums and drum programming. Is that because Pete didn’t drum on every track?
CP: He didn’t show up. And you noticed we had ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’ on there. That came from… we did a different version of it, but that’s from the Spit On It compilation (HR014).
JK: I was going to ask you about that. I didn’t listen to them side by side, but it’s a newer version that was recorded for Atrocity Slaughter?
CP: Right.
JK: Mike Jackson is credited with bass on two tracks on Atrocity Slaughter.
CP: He played on ‘Meathead Or Skinhead’. He came over and jammed on that and ‘Roustabout’.
JK: I want to make sure I’ve got my timelines correct. I know R.S.V.P. came before Cancerous Growth. Did Cancerous Growth come before Viktimized Karcass, or did it all occur around the same time?
CP: All around the same time. I really like the Atrocity Slaughter tape.
JK: Question about the song ‘Dreamrider (Excerpt)’. What’s it an excerpt from? Is there a lengthier version somewhere?
CP: It was too long. We just cut it down.
JK: So there’s not a longer version that was released elsewhere?
CP: No. I probably have the master of the full version. But I wanted to cut it off because it wasn’t going to fit on the tape. And I decided we didn’t need the whole damn thing anyways. It started getting real spacey, but hell, we did spacey the whole time anyway (laughs).
JK: The song ‘Shelter Is A Home’. Roger is the only band member credited with guitar. Maybe it’s me but it sounds like dual guitars on this song.
CP: It’s just Roger. One guitar.
JK: I made some pretty wild analogies in my review of some of the songs on this tape. Like the song ‘Moving To Georgia’.
CP: That’s drum machine on that one.
JK: I described that as “Imagine a ZZ Top meets Chrome acid drenched, space rocking jam.”
CP: Yeah, pretty much.
JK: To my ears the vocals have a Damon Edge/Billy Gibbons quality, making it like Alien Soundtracks meets Rio Grande Mud. That dynamic and crazy style mixture is one of the things I love about that song.
CP: I think a lot of that came from being down South. We all listened to ZZ Top, especially the first three albums. After that I kind of lost it with the ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ bullshit.
JK: There’s bluesy stuff there too. Like ‘Blinded Vision’. It’s the most sedate song of the set, but it’s got a laid back, acid-blues jam vibe, which is pretty cool considering the raving vocals.
CP: Oh yeah. That was an improv piece.
JK: When Karcass was improvising, did you typically start with an idea or did you just launch right into it?
CP: We would just start. Roger would start, or somebody would start. It was usually either Roger or me would start it out. Until we got a bass player and then the bass player might start it out. Mike Jackson might start it out once he played bass for us. Or Robert Hinson later on. Robert was one of Roger’s good friends and like I mentioned he played with Corn For Texture as well. I sat in on a couple of Corn For Texture gigs. They were fun. They were more rock ‘n’ roll than Karcass though.
JK: Another analogy I made was on the song ‘Jack Knife’. I said, “I’m starting to envision a Captain Beefheart meets acid psychedelic meets doom metal thing going on”.
CP: That’s Pete singing on that song. I think that’s the only song he ever sang on.
JK: We’ll get to the live tape shortly but I’ll ask you anyway if you were doing any live shows at this time, or was the live tape the first shows you ever did?
CP: No, we weren’t doing any gigs yet at the time of Atrocity Slaughter. There weren’t any gigs until Humboldt, when we went on a little mini tour. We did that Humboldt Youth Center gig (HR026).