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(loon calling)

(mellow music)

- I'm not a good person.

I'm a bad person that wants to be good real bad.

And I use music as a way to process my demons

and help me continue to be a good guy.

It's like this angry, destructive force...

That I'm always trying to keep in a cage.

And music helps me keep that thing in a cage.

(mellow music)

- As artists, we all have to wear this mask all the time

and it's through the art

where we can express our true feelings.

Because it would be very odd and extreme

to be constantly showing or expressing

that undercurrent of the darkness

that can come out in the music.

If you came over and I was just like,

"Hey.

Hey guys."

Or like, whatever,

"I'm too depressed to get out of bed or answer the phone."

Which is actually often the case.

(mellow music)

- Well, if I didn't have music as an outlet,

I'd probably be six feet down.

Maybe seven.

Maybe deeper.

Maybe a shallow grave, who knows?

- Hi Megan, we're taking moving pictures.

Megan from Couch Slut.

- Hello.

- They were awesome, I cried watching 'em.

- So many people said they cried.

- Yeah, it was good, it was intense.

- We're just having fun.

- Yeah, it is, it is just having fun (laughs).

- Just talking about PTSD and trauma.

- (laughs) Yeah.

- Sexual abuse.

- All the real positive topics and aspects of life.

- Really heartwarming, nice stuff.

- I am Adam Bartlett,

founder of Gilead Media Record Label,

releases all sorts of metal records, punk, hardcore,

doom, black metal, noise rock.

I also am one of the co-producers of Migration Fest,

the Biennial Music Festival,

along with Dave from 20 Bucks Spin.

A festival that features all of our bands,

and a select group of other bands that we both enjoy.

- Every band is killer, we don't put filler bands on.

- No.

♪ Can you take it slow ♪

♪ Get back on the ground ♪

(mellow music)

(hardcore music)

- I can't tell you any moments from any shows.

All I know is that we're done, and I'm sobbing,

and I'm covered in blood, but I feel really good.

(hardcore music)

I'm reliving all of these traumatic experiences but tenfold,

I don't want to be talking about this shit,

but I know you know that I have to.

I don't sleep at night 'cause if I'm asleep

then there's these horrific nightmares.

It feels so good to have a microphone and just get it out,

and admit these horrible things,

just get them off my chest.

I sleep so good after a show.

♪ Then he would kick me in head ♪

♪ If I turned to see what the fuck he was doing ♪

♪ I dunno why it was so interesting in specifics ♪

♪ He took me down with a knife to my throat ♪

♪ He said, don't you say a fucking word ♪

♪ So I just stared at the floor and tried to relax ♪

♪ Just stare at the floor and try to relax ♪

Two dozen people approached me during that weekend,

and they were just like, "I had to go outside and cry."

I don't do it for that reason,

but that's a really nice byproduct of our performances

that I'm really grateful to have,

for those people and for myself too.

Oh, you're not alone in this,

I'm not alone in this.

It's nice.

♪ God damn ♪

♪ Summer smiles ♪

♪ Oh, God damn ♪

- My favorite book series is "The Dark Tower",

the series that sparked my interest in storytelling

and in art.

I remember thinking, "I want to create something,

I wanna make music, or I wanna write poetry,

or lyrics, or whatever."

I considered it at the time.

Or just write something and be a part of creating art.

And I wasn't exceptionally good

at any sort of visual art at all.

I just gravitated towards writing lyrics for...

A non-existent band that someday may exist, or whatever.

But that's what sparked my initial interest

in creating something.

- I love Adam so much,

talk about a selfless human being,

not just say words like safe space or whatever.

But I know that Adam is just a kind good guy.

(loon callling)

(mellow music)

- Anything Adam asks me to do, I'll do.

Because he gave me this golden opportunity

to openly grieve,

and to talk about these really human things.

He gave me this platform to be able to

talk about something deeper than politics,

something as deep as the wilderness that we live in.

And that is the human experience of loss.

Migration One was the profound experience for me

to be able to process in real time

the loss of my dad, my old man.

And to remember him in that way.

- Talking about dudes that put everything into the art man,

you listen to any of his records

and they're just searing and intense.

And every album is a theme and a story,

and tells so much of his personal life,

or speaks so much of the world around him.

And having them around and be a part of the festival,

and playing his first show ever

at the first Migration Fest is super meaningful.

- There's not a day that goes by

that I don't miss my old man.

Every time I look down at my arm,

and his name right here and a rainbow trout.

Because he always took me fly fishing as a kid.

And Adam gave me an opportunity

to talk about those things in a really open forum.

He pushed me outside of my comfort zone,

that gift that he gave me,

it was more than I would've ever reached for on my own.

If he hadn't been there to fucking bully me into it,

and to push me, I never would've done it.

And for that, anything he ever asks me for,

I'm gonna do.

- David the Gnome, he loved that cartoon when he was little.

Yeah, so I had to learn the little intro song

on my guitar and sing it to him sometimes (chuckles).

I gotta tell you, Adam was an exceptional kid.

My family loved him, and he was gorgeous,

and he was the best looking of them all.

♪ Well, he came from far off ♪

♪ Over behind the hills ♪

♪ And these are raised on the silent stars ♪

♪ And the sounds of the whippoorwill ♪

- I was born and raised in Oshkosh.

♪ Traded in poverty and scenery for money and hell ♪

I started working at record store when I was 17.

- I knew Adam from Exclusive Company.

- He was a huge asset to that store.

- I was in college, that was my local record store,

he was the tattooed guy that had

grumpy opinions about music.

- He was kind of an asshole and he would judge you,

yeah, he was an intimidating prick.

- Well this is my record store, Eroding Winds.

(upbeat music)

- When he opened up the brick and mortar location,

he felt like, well, I'm paying rent on storage

for doing online sales anyway.

I might as well have a retail section to this,

and if customers come in, great,

it's just icing on the cake.

- I watched it progress from being up here,

and being pushed back another six feet and another six feet.

- It's totally flip flopped to

he can do a much more sales in person.

- You walk in and he goes, "I know what T-shirt that is,

you might like this band."

And then suddenly you get to have a 20 minute conversation.

- We still have a lot of cool experimental stuff,

metal, hip hop, hardcore and punk records,

stuff that used to be part of my label distro.

Tons of jazz stuff, funk and soul, regular classic rock.

Everything that's in print,

I keep copies on the shelf from the store,

because we will get people sometimes that travel

and make a stop here

while they're on the rest of their road trip.

- So I went to Migration Fest in Olympia two years ago

just as a consumer, but it was a little expensive.

This is nice to go and be on the clock,

but I won't hardly get to see any bands.

I wanna see Couch Slut,

that's the one band I'm trying to

get away from the merch table for.

- Now we're a week out for Migration Fest Two

for 2018 in Pittsburgh, and I think it's gonna work.

I don't know, it feels all right.

It's at a legit venue that has big shows regularly,

it's well outfitted with tons of sick fucking gear.

It's honestly gonna be the easiest fest we've ever done.

(upbeat music)

- Wanna bring these punk hardcore seven inches?

- Yep.

- If Jordan and Tanner text me about the merch table,

I'm going to freak the fuck out

'cause I got other shit to deal with,

and that's what they're getting paid for.

Yeah, I don't know where the fuck those banners are.

- Is the shit for the two-tier synth stand at the studio?

- I don't want to put the seats in the van.

I'm just sick of doing shit.

- You'd rather be playing video games?

- Fuck yeah, I'd rather be playing video games.

The way of the road.

(upbeat music)

We're in Toledo right now, where I lived for a couple years,

and it's where I started the label.

Behind me is the building

where Lumberjack Distribution used to be,

it taught me a shitload about the music industry.

I started to make a lot of contacts

and become acquaintances with the guys

that ran record labels that we were distributing,

Death Wish, and Hydra Head,

and the labels that I looked up to.

Some of the guys that work in-house

have their own record labels,

my buddy Andy ran hardcore label, Thorp Records.

I was just like, "I think I wanna put out a CD."

The first Gilead Media releases

were this atmospheric droney project.

My band split with our friends,

just doing like grindy, spazzy bullshit.

This sludgy, grindy project from my buddy Adam Tucker

that I still work with a lot on Gilead Media stuff now.

(upbeat music)

The CD had to go to press,

'cause, like our bands were doing a mini tour together

and it had to be done.

So the main character in "The Dark Tower"

is from the City of Gilead.

I needed to come up with something,

so I just pull it out of my ass,

it's kind of a weird label name.

No one knows how to say it.

- I think the first couple things

that he was doing with his label

were just kind of small little projects.

But the opportunity to be able to put out Appleseed Cast

fell into his lap and he needed a little bit of cash,

and I had come into a little bit of cash.

It just seemed totally crazy at the time,

but I just believed he'd be able to do it.

- Appleseed Cast records showed up while I was working here,

of Sinking Ships, Cancer Conspiracy.

(upbeat music)

Andy from Robotic Empire, he literally sent me an email,

"Hey, here's this band Thou, you might dig 'em."

- How did Andy know you?

- From Lumberjack, from Lumberjack Distribution.

(mellow music)

- Thou's a wonderful band,

they'd been around forever

and they were one of the first doom metal bands I got into.

And it was surreal to become friends with them

through playing with Hell.

- KC is the newest edition,

KC has a very unique voice, also a singing style.

They sing that song "The Hammer", which is on Inconsolable.

- KC channels that song in a way that is

so emotionally powerful,

I feel like I'm gonna cry right now.

The chest punch.

(indistinct lyrics)

- KC singing was great for adding another layer

and more depth to the sound.

The dynamics and the variation of vocal sounds and stuff

really adds a lot,

especially with super dense heavy music like that.

♪ Bring down the hammer ♪

♪ Bring down the hammer ♪

- Working with Bryan was hard to get used to at first,

just because our styles are so different.

I come from a math rock and folk background,

and had never really done truly heavy music before.

Bryan is brilliant,

and knows exactly what he wants out of a song,

but he has absolutely no sense of rhythm

and can't carry a tune.

Sings like a deaf elephant.

♪ Bring down the hammer ♪

- Thou was one of the first bands that I think

helped him form an identity as a label.

It shaped a little bit of the direction

of where the label was going,

and he became a little bit known

for putting out all these Thou releases.

- The Thou album was the 16th release I did,

and then their EP that went along with Tyrant,

the Retaliation of the Immutable Force of Nature.

It was the two songs on the tyrant CD

that didn't fit on the LP, so we did a 12 inch.

- Andy was the one that I had

the first couple of practices with.

- Andy is the engineer, Bryan is the mad conductor.

- Bryan's a contrarian, he loves pushing people's buttons.

- Matthew occasionally will just

shit out a couple of amazing songs,

and then just go back to his cave.

- Matthew's still one of my best friends,

we have a super cosmic connection.

- Of course there's Mitch, who's super outgoing.

- Mitch is a goober,

sometimes has input but mostly just goofs off.

- They're just really funny,

they're not typical metal dudes.

- They're just a wild collection

of totally unique individuals making very cool music.

- Yeah y'all, it's Brandon's birthday today.

So the first thing we gotta do,

birthday speech.

So once there was a band,

all right, now we got that out the way.

Birthday song, with a stage dive,

you guys carry him all around here,

put some money in his pockets,

in his hands, in his mouth, in his ears.

Are y'all ready?

The count of three, he's jumping out, get ready.

One, two, three,

go.

Happy birthday to you.

(upbeat music)

- They're the beacon of this weird sub genre,

niche scene that we have here,

'cause they've put out such

a vast catalog of different shit.

- They've had so many splits and collaborations,

where it's like, "Oh wow, who's that band?"

- The collaboration between Thou and I

started because they were the artist in residence

in Roadburn 2018.

And for one of those sets,

it's supposed to traditionally be a collaboration.

And so they reached out to me and I was like,

"Fuck yeah."

- It was a real honor to write with Emma,

to get to play with her,

and it was something so different

than I'd gotten to play drums with.

Her guitar playing,

and style of songwriting was really exciting.

- God, I love Tyler so much, I adore him,

I think he's an an incredibly special person,

and wildly talented.

He's such a good drummer.

It blew my mind playing with him.

- I think sometimes Emma was like,

"I don't know what to do with this."

She'd be singing the song

but not really know what to put on top of it,

'cause four guitars is bordering on too much.

It works on the record, I think.

I'm really thrilled with the way it came together,

even though it was very stressful.

- I was pretty intimidated.

My first impression of Brian, this guy hates me,

doesn't want to do this collab.

Thinks that it's a total waste of time

and that I'm a complete tool.

I would in some parts take some of his lyrics,

sing those, or some of that content

would inspire some of my lyrics and vice versa.

His lyrics in general are

a little bit more philosophical and poetic than mine are.

Mine are a little bit more basic,

which doesn't mean they aren't emotional,

they're just a little bit more plain.

It's cool that we get to combine the two things.

- But that was when the shift started,

and Krallice came along.

- For Gilead Media releases the first one was my

first Indricothere solo record,

my introduction to working with Adam.

- That was just totally fucking bonkers,

drum machine programmed, instrumental, tech, insanity.

- Sort of a way to write metal

that was sort of stream of consciousness.

Write a part, okay,

as quickly as you can write the next part,

record it, don't learn it, don't even think about it,

just record.

(upbeat music)

- So Colin hit me up, he's like, "Hey,

I'm in this black metal band, Krallice.

Profound Lore is putting out our CD,

we are wondering if you would do the vinyl for it?"

- Krallice is a very interesting band,

part of the whole avant garde,

progressive black metal scene.

They are doing something with the black metal expression,

and the black metal sound and bringing it forward.

- My label has a reputation for

releasing atypical black metal,

Krallice was the whipping boy for a while.

- Krallice, Lev Weinstein.

- Mick had actually made

black metal solo records before that by himself

that were unreleased in the '90s.

One of those songs ended up as the first track

on "Go Be Forgotten",

"This Forest For Which We Have Killed."

- That band is one of the most

fucking DIY bands I work with,

always record all their own shit.

Mix, master all their own stuff,

do all the artwork themselves,

and just send me a finished album, finished artwork,

good to go.

Everyone in that band

is an absolute master of their instrument.

- It's an exercise in punishment,

I don't know how those guys play for an hour and 20 minutes.

- Lev is definitely a machine,

just about every time I've recorded,

especially with that Mutilation Rites record.

And I hit him up and was like,

"How do I make it through these songs?"

But Lev's answer was always just like,

"You just gotta play through the pain."

That's all, that's Lev's whole deal,

playing through the pain.

(intense music)

- Lev's endurance and stamina on the drums

is almost his style.

His whole approach to drumming

is about playing fast and constant as easy as possible.

He's spent all of his time

just trying to get more and more relaxed.

- I think technique at its simplest

and most effective level is this is really hard,

let me pay attention to what I'm doing,

and try to codify it a little bit.

And now I'm not dying, that's technique.

(intense music)

If you're trying to play fast for a long period of time,

and you're trying to play purely from the wrist.

That's serious repetitive motion.

So you're just going to start to lock up and and start to

die a lot quicker than if you break up that motion

with bigger muscle movement.

My wrist is still gonna be the same wrist motion,

but I'm gonna let this arm flap like a behind it,

because all of that flapping

takes out all the strain and makes it not repetitive,

and the big muscles can go and just be loose.

All I've ever been trying to do

is just figure out how to be as practical

and as universal as possible.

I wanna play everything the same way

and I want it to be as easy as I can be.

That's something that he's tried very hard to create

is this even flowing sense of dynamics,

and he's gotten so awesome at that

that it's a huge advantage.

One thing that's cool though is their album

they did with Dave Edwardson from Neurosis.

- The first person I met from Krallice was Colin,

Neurosis and Gorguts

were playing a metal festival together in 2015 in Montreal,

we just hit it off.

- He was just like, "I know who you are,

I'm a Krallice fan."

And so mind totally blown.

- He's a very frenetic, excitable, hyper-energy guy,

he's full of ideas.

He and I clicked just in a very natural way together.

- He was like, "Oh yeah, and by the way,

if you ever wanna do a collaboration,

guest vocals are super easy for me."

I was like, "All right, this was meant to be,

psychic moment."

- A couple months later, Colin out of the blue says, "Hey,

we were thinking about having you do

guest vocals on a song for Krallice.

But, we changed our mind and decided it'd be great

if we could do a whole album together,

would you be interested?"

And it sounded like a very interesting proposal to me,

so I said, "Hell yeah."

- I got to envision this darker, naughtier,

more dissonant record, and envision his voice on it

and write it with him in mind.

(man growling)

- A few months later Neurosis was on tour

and we ended up in Philly,

caught a bus the next day to Brooklyn.

Spent three days recording the vocals

with the guys at Menegroth.

- I didn't even know if he was into it or whatever,

and he was so friendly and so stoked,

it was such a pleasure.

- They're all really crazy, fun, smart, goofy guys.

Smoking amazing amounts of marijuana

for people that are such proficient musicians

playing the most complicated music in the world.

- So right now we're in the control room of the studio.

The sound comes in from one ISO booth, two ISO booth,

three ISO booth and the live room beyond that.

The audio comes in through the patch bay,

and then I can decide which preamps to route the signal to.

- What a great man Colin.

- Yeah, he's amazing to work with, he's a super pro,

he's incredibly meticulous about getting sounds.

- There's one interesting aspect to Imperial Triumphant,

pretty much all of the records have tons of guests.

I'd either record or get the basic tracks,

mix it and then a week later just all these other

instruments and tracks would show up.

(intense music)

Opera singers, crazy avant garde singers,

classical and lots of wind instruments,

trumpets, trombones, saxophones, stuff like that.

- So we just released at least the digital version

of the album for Imperial Triumphant.

Because of how avant garde their sound actually is,

people have been fucking digging it.

- The opening track for "Vial Luxury"

had a whole brass octet arrangement,

that was all fake instruments.

And we tried many different ways

to get that to work in the mix,

and eventually they just weren't satisfied.

I wasn't really satisfied either 'cause I was like,

"If you want this to sound fake, let's make it sound fake,

let's make it all mellotrons or something.

If you want it to be real let's bring in players,

I know some, you guys know some."

I actually got them to bring in

the whole live ensemble to the studio,

and re-track the intro with real instruments.

- If St. Vitus is like the New York City venue,

Colin is like the underground New York City producer.

- The image of the cover on the Dave record

is based on his lyrics for the song Loum or whatever,

which is this giant impossibly tall obelisk

that you have to climb over.

He was like, "I got some ideas for artists,

what about this guy, what about this guy?"

And one of the people he suggested for artists

was Carl from His Hero Is Gone.

- Wow, I get to put on another Krallice record, sweet.

With the fucking bass player from Neurosis doing the vocals,

and playing synth.

Plus, the dude from His Hero Is Gone did the artwork,

how many more fucking layers of awesome

could there be to this release?

- This is my studio.

This is where I created the work.

- I already had the idea for the design figured out,

described it to him and he rendered it in his way

and that's what became cover art for the album.

- This is the front cover,

the view of the obelisk from the viewpoint

of someone running with the intention of climbing up.

This is the base of the obelisk,

that one arrives at when they're about to scale the obelisk.

The inner gatefold painting,

these are the bloodied hands that come about

through the act of scaling the obelisk to escape.

- The song is about an unseen force that you know is there,

that's gonna kill you

and throw you into some permanent state of Hell.

- It's a theme that I've dealt with before in music and art,

my old bandmates and I made an album

called "Monuments to Thieves".

That was the theme,

monuments in the south that were very much rooted in

the interest of keeping people oppressed,

with the intention of

keeping them oppressed for a long time.

Yeah.

Political views are just built into the work,

it's a quality that's very subtle,

it might be hidden but it's there.

I don't like that term full circle,

'cause it's a never ending thing,

struggle is always there.

- That was when this stuff started blowing up in the US,

kids had a chance to digest what they heard growing up.

They were finally reinterpreting it for themselves.

- So this place was founded around, was it 1922?

It was founded by a bunch of writers and professors,

it was actually right when the Model T Ford was invented

and they all suddenly realized

they could reach farther destinations.

And over the years it's just become

this enclave for artists.

- There's a lot of components to this place,

but we mainly record down the hill.

- That's where we've recorded four records.

- Very resonant, it's got a weird shape,

kinda low ceilings but completely made of wood,

no insulation so the whole thing vibrates like a drum.

- People can hear us

if it's summertime there are people up here,

but we tend to do it winter.

The first time we'd ever had this idea

when there was about two feet of snow on the ground,

and we realized that there was no way to get

our amps into this cabin.

- There was a lot of setup,

we don't really, we don't live up here most of the time,

so it's just sort of battling nature

every single step of the way.

- We pulled every single piece of gear

down to this cabin on the sled.

- We just strapped it down with bungee cords,

I remember just standing on the back

and actually riding it down this hill.

- Some nights would be snowing,

and then the next day you'd see

some buds coming out on the trees.

Yeah, we really feel the seasons change

while we work down here.

What makes recording at Yelping Hill special

is recording with those guys in a world

that they feel completely creative in.

Especially for me, when I get there,

it's mostly done and I feel like they're starting to obsess.

(mellow music)

- We were just working on some kind of bizarre overlay.

- Using this thing, bringing this thing in.

We like interludes,

sometimes it's more fun to think of than the song,

it just takes you away.

(mellow music)

- Before playing in black metal bands,

most of my musical output was noise.

- Yeah. - For years it was just noise.

(mellow music)

I think I built an oscillator into this.

I started making more and more elaborate instruments.

- I think he brought us about eight of them

and we had some people up here and we would all,

we just I think held a recorder in the middle.

We were just running around the woods blowing them.

- Yeah.

(mellow music)

- With the field recordings and the strange sounds

that they wanted to incorporate into their albums,

the idea of it is you made something

that doesn't sound like anything we've heard before,

that's awesome, we need to use it.

- This is the instrument

that Alex brought up here during the recording,

and we ended up using it for interludes.

You can move these bridges around, I never tuned it once.

At the end of the song "No Dust"

I just took the melody that we were playing on guitars

and just redid it note by note.

- It took a long time.

For me it was kind of fascinating

to just hand them something and be like, "I made this,

I made some recordings with it,

but what do you guys want to try and do with this?"

It makes a really good drone sound.

Yeah, you can build on something like that.

- It doesn't always sound good,

but that's the whole point I guess.

- I cite the "Thou/Leach Split" as setting the stage

for what Gilead Media would become.

(intense music)

Well, Bryan hit me up because the "Thou/Leach Split" tape

came out on Woodsmoke and wanted to do vinyl.

So we did that as that Gatefold LP,

that was the first thing I put out that was black metal-ish.

That was right before the Krallice record.

I emailed Paul and I'm like,

"Hey can you send me an audio master?"

He's like, "Well we just have a cassette tape."

- We just sent him a cassette tape with some pine cones

and some foresty items, maybe a bone.

- And then a photograph of a gray cloudy sky

with a typewriter typewritten on it, the greeting.

And being like, "Here's the tape, it's the only one."

Then that was it, and then it was just a cassette tape

with some little crappy labels on it,

and that was their part of the split.

- Just a little packet we sent him

all mysteriously from the forest.

- That was my first exposure to Paul.

- They're maniacs,

obsessed with being trve black metal.

- The whole lyrical concept of anarcho-primitivism,

the tribal mentality and the the indigenous lifestyle

and spiritualism is the real lifestyle.

And spiritualism, and then capitalism,

and industrialized agricultural civilization

is actually anathema to the human spirit.

And it's specifically in the Cascadian bio region

being like, "This is our chance to speak to

this pastoral heathen landscape

that resides just beyond the realm of linear perception."

And try to appeal to people's innate longing for

a better world or longing for a more holistic integration to

the eco group consciousness.

We started getting into chakras and meditating,

so we started tuning to C-sharp,

which is allegedly the solar plexus tuning.

And so we were trying to speak to the seat of

celestial longing for people in the forest,

and trying to be like, "Civilization sucks.

Listen to this emotional searing melody

from this very lo-fi tape."

And eventually we just got bogged down by

the weight of civilization and the inherent nihilism

of trying to be spiritual in a materialistic world.

We were young, we were emotional and dramatic,

and stupid and arrogant,

but also we were really ambitious.

We wanted to be a cultural artistic marker

for something that didn't exist,

but we tried hard.

(mellow music)

- People talk about this fucking

Cascadian black metal thing,

they deserve to be regarded in the same light as

Wolves In The Throne Room, Agalloch,

Fauna and Leech.

As far as I'm concerned, they're as important.

More cult, more unknown, just as significant.

(mellow music)

- I've heard it said frequently,

the Northwest or Oregon,

there must be something in the water up there.

Because there's all these great bands

that have this similar sound.

It's hard for me to say where my own natural mindset,

and emotions and moods stop, and where the landscape

and the mood that that imparts to my psyche begin,

because I was born here.

But I do think that a certain sense of gloom and melancholy,

pervade and inspire in intangible ways.

- There's something weird going on up there

that such amazing shit's coming out of that area.

These one-man-band album sort of stuff,

sort of off the beaten path metal projects.

- It's like, there's nothing else to do,

it's cold, and it's shitty, and depressing,

so we're just gonna make that kind of music, I guess.

Yeah, but it's nice though, you get used to it,

and you just embrace it and then get creative with it.

Instead of getting too depressed,

you use that energy to put into some sort of art form,

of which in our case was music.

Salem is a religious conservative town,

and there's not much for kids to do.

So the only thing to do is to get fucked up,

and that causes its own problems.

In the midst of all of that,

the only option for music is play

the most fucked up thing you can think of.

There also wasn't anything going on

for extreme doom or black metal,

and that's what the BG guys like Nate,

and Paul, and Kyle were doing.

- Used to be Burial Ground was the house they all lived in.

(mellow music)

- The backyard would be full of people,

they'll all be partying out here.

When the bands would start Nate would come out

and make everybody go downstairs and check out the show.

- Welcome to the BG.

(upbeat music)

- This place was totally out of control,

shows would go all fucking night.

Chickens running around, dogs running around,

blood smeared on the wall.

- People painted red, crowd surfing as much as they could,

dead animals in the basement.

There was a lot of mushrooms or LSD,

and just piles of beer cans and everybody raging.

- People getting in fights, people falling downstairs,

people falling out windows.

- Just 10 people right here all rocking out,

and there's some insane grindcore or something happening.

That's very 2008.

That's the pinnacle of that time.

- There'd be fucking hundreds of people in this tiny house,

and out back and out front.

Neighbors would be screaming at us,

and calling us dirty hippies and all this shit.

- We'd play Salem every time we go to

the West Coast no matter what.

- When they're hungry for it

it makes it really, really exciting,

some of the best shows I've ever seen were in that basement.

- Cops would come, the cops would leave,

and then things would just start back up again.

Total fucking bedlam,

it was brilliant (laughs).

My first experience with the Burial Grounds was early 2008,

and it was the first Fell Voices tour.

(upbeat music)

- There's no black metal band like them in the world.

The three personalities that are in that band

and the way they write music together,

the way that they view creating art is very unique.

- Paul made this killer flyer almost all black

with some cryptic hooded figure.

"Fell Voices" was billed as grim drone.

- And the flyer said, "Wear all black and say not a word."

- We were on this tour

and I showed up wearing like a tattered yellow button up.

Paul was really angry at me for wearing yellow (laughs).

It was an issue that I violated the

all black silence rule.

And there was all these satellite figures,

just younger wastoid kids.

- I just started hanging out over there

when I was like 16 or something,

it just became like a family thing.

- I moved to Salem when I was about 13,

and that was the year I met Brandon.

The basis of Idle Hands, Kyle from Merkstave,

and Leech, the first people to live at Burial Grounds.

That's when Matt from Hell showed up,

he was 16 at the time.

And Matt was full on 60s, driving VWs.

If you look at a picture of Matt from 2005 or six,

it looks like it was taken in the 60s

no matter where he is standing.

And we had already had house shows,

and been playing Doom Metal and Matt comes in and he's 16,

he's a fan of Pink Floyd.

And he's just kind of like, "What the fuck?"

- Before I was writing songs that were just soft,

just kind of ambient, like Pink Floyd-y sounding songs.

After I met these guys, I wrote Hell I in a month.

(intense music)

Paul wanted to show everyone this music that he was into,

so he goes, "Here Matt, here's a burned CD."

And it had things like Burning Witch and Sunn O.

Just real heavy doom shit, the early 2000 stuff.

If you listen to a lo-fi doom metal record,

there's the fuzz of the distortion,

and then there's this deep throbbing tone underneath it.

And you have to train yourself to appreciate

that lower tone, 'cause most people are like,

"Man this sounds like shit."

'Cause they associate the guitar tone

with this thin fuzz of the clipping of the distortion.

But we were there when Matt first was like,

"Oh that's the riff, the heavy part underneath is the tone."

We're like, "Yeah dude, fucking doom metal, let's do this."

So we gave him a bunch of acid,

showed him all of the cultist tapes

straight to the pure funeral doom.

Drone doom shit.

And so Matt goes home and listens to that stuff,

and he comes back a few months later and he is like,

"Hey guys, I want you to check out

this stuff I've been writing, it's called Hell.

Just Hell, it's really basic."

And he puts it on and it's...

You know what Hell I sounds like,

heavy as fuck.

And we're like, "Dude, what the fuck?

You're 17, this is crazy."

Of course, Paul he's always

masterminding, scheming,

and he's like, "Okay Matt, you need to focus this,

you need to make this your thing."

And Matt went with it and now we have the band Hell.

- I had a good sound on my recorder I kind of liked,

and I just did that album, showed it to the guys.

They were like, "Do another one."

So I did another one and I guess the rest is history.

(upbeat music)

There was a show happening here,

and I think Thou was playing that night.

And Nate said, "Hey man, do you want Hell to play?

'Cause we have an opening spot.

I was like, "Yeah sure, but we need a backdrop,

and we don't have one, and all bands have one.

Let's just make our own."

And there wasn't even a talk about finding any paint,

I was already, yeah, I was already mutilating at the time

so I was like well let's just,

I gotta go find a sharp knife and we can cut up

and draw it on the wall.

I had a buddy of mine that we just sit,

we did that together as like a fun time.

He came over here and I borrowed Matthew Thudium's knife,

and then we cut up over here and just drew it on the wall.

Then he cut too deep, he had to go to the hospital.

But then I rinsed off my arm a little bit,

and then we tuned up, we started playing.

The crowd was feeling it,

the energy was dark and it was up.

It was just intense.

I was bleeding, there's all these cuts

and then everybody in the front row was like grossed out.

They were like "fuck that!"

and there were these girls, they all left.

And then even the guys were like, "What the fuck?"

And I was like, "Man,

I thought this was a brutal place."

I was just trying to make a fucking backdrop man.

But yeah, people were grossed out about that,

and then, yeah, so because of that,

because I cut pretty deep too,

I just got the sleeve to cover up all those scars

so I got the tattoo to cover all that up

'cause I don't do that shit no more.

But yeah, there's a time and a place for pain I guess.

(upbeat music)

That's all there is to that (laughs).

(upbeat music)

- It's gonna be interesting to see

Matthew sitting up there on a stool, playing Hell songs.

- It was very appropriate to see

Matt playing sitting down.

It was particularly forlorn in that massive room,

it was crushing.

(upbeat music)

- Hell III was so low and so dark,

that was such a personal album.

And I had all these songs I'm like, "Well,

let's just put out a more of a rocker album.

It's still just, it's a straightforward doom album."

The newest album is mostly about war,

it's not anti-war necessarily.

But it's like, it's just like the process of war,

it's just supposed to sound brutal like war,

but a doom version of that.

There's a sample from the Vietnam War

that the Americans used as a psychological weapon

against the Viet Cong.

And it's this weird sample of this guy

speaking Vietnamese like he's dead,

and the Americans played over a loudspeaker

to try to scare the soldiers out of the jungle

so they can move through.

And it's all in Vietnamese,

and it's a guy saying that he is already dead,

and he misses his family.

And he's in Hell, and he is burning,

and he hates it and it's so awful.

And he is like,

"If you want to come here with me then stay,

but if you want to live then run away."

And "A Wandering Soul" is just one of those songs

where I knew that I didn't wanna put any lyrics to it.

It's really eerie sounding.

- It was right before the first Gilead Fest,

and Ash Borer and Fell Voices

were rehearsing at my band's practice space.

And they're like, "Oh yeah,

Nate pulled a knife on me at a party at his house."

He drove to Oshkosh from Salem for the first Gilead Fest,

'cause he wanted to bring all of his Mania stuff,

his computers and all this stuff.

And so this van pulls up

and people are just tumbling out of this van

that they've been in for two days straight.

And I was like, "What is this guy gonna do?"

- In Salem you got maybe 10 people

that play the style of music you like.

So you either start five bands,

sharing all of the members,

or you go and just record your own thing.

And that's what most people choose to do,

some weird side project.

I think Nate Myers has an IQ higher than we can understand,

and he has played off this role of being a party metal guy,

'cause he likes the simplicity of it

and also the chaos of it.

But really his brain is moving

40 times faster than ours are.

He does do the chaos for the lifestyle.

When you understand the secrets of the universe innately

everything is a joke,

so you know why take yourself too seriously?

- I don't even know how his brain works that way

to put that stuff together and then perform it live,

but it does and it's awesome.

- Nate is a nihilist through and through,

and I feel like you might even be able to tell

when you first meet him.

Because he is this certain kind of deadpan,

he's just so straightforward he's almost robotic.

He's taught me a lot of things,

he talks to me about the universe

and what he thinks about the world a lot over the years

as we're making this kind of music.

And I feel like his music Mania

embodies chaos...

So perfectly,

and that is a very important concept and principle

to Nate as a person

and how he understands the universe as well.

- Nate's kind of a conundrum,

in terms of his own personal philosophy.

I met him in the context of Leech,

and it was anarcho-primitivism,

abandon the chains of civilization,

find the spirituality of the forest,

but he's also tech obsessed.

The mechanics of this whole mechanized world

that is in the context of Leech destroying everything.

In Mania maybe this mechanized world

that he's perversely embracing.

It's hard to say what he believes in in that regard,

but I fucking love the confusion that it creates.

- I've always had this idea that Burzum should play live,

but not have a band and not play guitar.

He would just be the drummer with a headset mic singing,

just doing those screaming vocals.

It'd just be him alone on a huge stage.

Finally we get the thing I've been wanting to see.

(intense music)

- My musical journey started pretty early in life.

My dad bought a drum kit for the house

and taught me the basics of drumming.

I met my close friend Andy Black around that time,

and we even started a band as early as fourth grade.

- We met through church and we just started jamming,

and wrote original songs.

We were serious about it but we were 10.

- Played a couple rock 'n' roll birthday parties.

- They started a side band called Love Machine

when we were like 16. - Yeah,

- Alex left and I picked up drums

and then switched the name to Sorceress.

- I was really inspired by Witch,

and Donova, and Witchcraft.

And we made one album called "Beneath the Mountain".

Near the end of that band Matt started doing Hell,

and I went to Germany and studied the Bible for six months.

I was rebelling and not thinking about Christianity at all,

during Love Machine, Sorceress days.

And then had an experience

where I became really serious about it,

and fully believed and embraced the religion for myself

as an adult. It was no longer my parents' thing.

I moved to go study the Bible and leave my life behind,

because I was so newly passionate

about this entirely different world and lifestyle.

And I was so depressed

but so obsessed

with solving this issue with my depression

and my doubts of the faith.

And I got really like dogmatic, and legalistic,

and religious about it all.

And I have this memory of being in the prayer room,

seeking answers and feeling terrible.

And all I could do was lay face down on the ground

in my mind before the Lord.

Sort of like being on your knees or bowing,

but just I felt so heavy, and gray, and lifeless,

and I just laid on the floor for, I don't know,

30, 60 minutes.

And that was my best effort to pray,

or worship, or make any headway in this issue.

All I could do was fucking lay on my face.

So it got really dark while I was over there.

When I got back I felt the band was not a direction

I wanted my life to be going in at the moment.

I felt really convicted by my new Christian life,

and felt like my dream of being a rock star

was a prideful, selfish thing

that wasn't necessarily God's will for my life.

And I was being discipled by someone in the church,

and I was talking to him in our meetings

about how difficult it was getting for me to

do my daily devotionals every day.

And wake up in the morning, and read the word

and pray to God, and take an hour or so

to just align my heart with with God and the word.

And how that was just turning into

going through the motions.

And I would sit there at my desk and stare at the Bible,

and just feel so depressed, and empty, and frustrated.

And it was clearly no longer a constructive activity for me.

I guess depending on the integrity

of your interpretation of the Bible,

I would say that most Christians would agree

that spiritual matters and and Christianity in general

are supposed to be of the heart and genuine.

And that's the most important thing in the whole matter.

And my heart was not there anymore,

and it just seemed like a hollow ritual.

And I told my mentor this,

and told him that I had started

to record these extreme metal songs

as a form of prayer to God.

They were all written in the second person addressed to God,

all those songs on that first Mizmor album.

So I still really did feel like I was

doing my best to just honestly put my heart before God.

He actually told me that it sounded like

that music was the most worshipful thing

that I had in my life at the moment.

And that I should focus on pressing into that,

and break out of the mold of going through the ritual

of the daily devotional and just be honest,

and press into this music I was making

that was still upward directed and intended for God's ear.

And that's what I did.

(intense music)

- I love doom metal, funeral doom metal,

and I love black metal.

And this is just the best blend of

my favorite two kinds of music.

(intense music)

The name Mizmor means Psalm and it's written in Hebrew,

and so there's a lot of Christian Jewish themes

tied up in there.

The black metal sound is really perfect

for expressing that kind of emotion.

(intense music)

(intense music)

- Everybody was skating and barbecuing,

I was just trying to get a couple of stalls down

and actually follow through with them,

'cause it's been a long time.

I followed through and owned it,

but then slipped out, twisted my knee

and then snapped my leg right there.

- Unfortunately that was three weeks before this fest.

- Liam gave me a call and and it was like, "Hey man,

so I've got some bad news."

- He got a full plaster cast,

and it was looking kind of dismal.

We knew we could do the Hell set

with him playing in a chair,

'cause he plays guitar in Hell.

But to do drums we were feeling pretty discouraged.

- Yeah, and then I just started practicing with my left foot

and Nate learned a couple of songs, and we made it work.

- He had a double kick pedal set up,

so that he could use his left foot to do the kick.

- In the span of a few weeks we ironed the set back out,

and had to reteach songs

that we've already been working on for almost a year.

Nate did such a good job, Matt did such a good job.

(upbeat music)

(singer screaming)

- The vocal you're referring to as the Pterodactyl scream

in my mind is a Nazgul or Ring Wraith screech

from Lord of the Rings.

And it is a high pitched inward sound.

It's actually a few different frequencies

happening at the same time.

But it's just this shriek that happens from sucking in air,

it goes something like this (screeches).

- The inward scream (screeches) (laughs).

(singer screaming)

(intense music)

- Thursday, July 26th, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Migration Fest 2018, tonight's the pre-show.

I had to go get a two-tier synth stand from Zombie,

while I picked up Tanner.

And while I was driving back from the airport,

I booked two hotel rooms for Pelican.

Found a Saturday night room for The Cancer Conspiracy,

and then I started booking shuttles for bands.

That's all the shit I did this morning,

and now it's 1:33 and we're gonna go swimming.

(mellow music)

- We are here at the venue

waiting for the doors to open so we can set up.

Apparently there's 600 some people coming in.

(upbeat music)

- It truly is like black metal summer camp.

- There were tons of people here that were

at the last Migration Fest

across the other side of the country.

The big reason for that I think

is because of the social aspect of it.

- Skorpiain is really good at fucking neck rubs.

- There's a small bug here.

- What am I supposed to say here?

- Migration Fest, it's fucking killer.

- It seems like a welcoming, supportive place.

There's a lot of women here, which I think is cool.

- I've been drunk forever.

Do people want to know that about Migration Fest?

- It's the perfect size.

- All these bands know each other.

- The Gilead bands are all mostly bands weird,

good, personal friends with people

we've known for a really long time.

So it's getting a chance to just come

and hang out with a bunch of people we really like.

- It's like a summer camp for metalheads.

- I'm looking forward to playing,

we going on at like 2:30.

(upbeat music)

- Lev closed out Saturday

and he's opening up Sunday with Pyrolatrous.

So I'm really fucking pumped to see them play

a quick blazing set.

(upbeat music)

- It is so funny because Lev is always Lev,

he's never gonna do anything different

'cause it's a different band.

It's like watching him at Krallice practice,

but with three other dudes standing around

and playing different songs.

(upbeat music)

- He had this Total Death Symbolic era,

Chuck Schuldiner on vocals and I'm like, holy crap,

Pyrolatrous rips.

(upbeat music)

- Forn are one of my favorite doom bands in the US.

- They're a funeral doom band,

but they're punks.

They have this weird punky energy,

they're unique in that aspect, they're heavy as shit.

They're gonna crush you, they're suffocating.

Take the air out of the room,

but they're also super engaging.

I love that band.

I love them as people.

- A lot of people have come up to me and said

they cry to our music,

it's pretty powerful to hear that.

They might not know the lyrics but they're like,

"I don't even need to know them, feeling is there."

- Mutilation Rites is playing,

super pumped to see them play all the new songs,

now that I'm familiar with them.

- Sometimes I feel like I'm just witness

to a three-way roast.

They're the most dysfunctional band

that I've ever toured with.

Yeah,

Europe hates Mutilation Rites.

- Yeah. - For sure.

- It's true. - Yeah.

- Michael and Ryan are just always

just tearing each other apart.

And I just sit there and watch,

and just think it's all really funny, and I just laugh.

And everybody's just calling each other silly names.

We call Ryan the Water Buffalo,

we call Tyler Little Chippy.

Michael, oh man, we have a lot of nicknames for Michael,

Old Man Dipshit, Grandpa Tea Bags, 'cause he's old.

George just wants to read his huge,

massive intellectual novels and plays his computer games.

Mutilation Rites, old friends of mine,

what I used to call 'em, filthy New York Black Metal.

Which I think still applies,

despite the amount of death metal influence in their stuff.

Just awesome fucking brutal songs.

And George just sounds like he's gonna throw up

the entire time he's doing vocals.

Super crushing and engrossing,

I was completely blown away, it's just so high energy.

Everything sounded great.

Fucking Ryan's vocals were sick.

Every year he gets lower and lower to the ground,

the mic stand looked like

it was three and a half feet off the ground.

It was loud as fuck,

which they always have been every time I've seen them.

(upbeat music)

Ryan who plays bass is known as the Buffalo

because of his immense chest and arms.

And when he gets drunk he charges.

He's probably the only guy in Mutilation Rites that...

Has a conscience.

- Has a conscience. - Yeah.

- And at one point was a decent human being.

The Mutilation Rites performance at Migration

I was super into,

I kinda love the way you guys have have transformed,

There's a hell of a lot more viciousness,

like a pummeling death metal sort of thing going on.

It's slowly seeping in.

- Most of the lyrics on the other records

have been very self-deprecating, depressing.

- On the prior records,

George mainly focused on his own personal despair,

his depression and sadness.

It's a change of pace now that

we're stepping away from his personal feelings

and going towards more of a creative fictional approach.

- George Paul is the mastermind behind

all the most creative and intelligent riffs,

I'm the one that writes the more fun rocking shit.

At the beginning it was just like

we just wrote a couple songs and hit the fucking road.

- We would write two songs and be like, "Perfect,

we've got 20 minutes of music, let's go."

'Cause it was just an excuse to travel and party.

- We toured enough times that when we were in Wisconsin,

people were asking us, "Did you live here now?

Because you've played in our state

16 times in the last year."

(crowd cheering)

- Mutilation Rites is a great band

and we had a great time in Europe, it was the best.

- That's probably the most fun tour I've ever been on,

to be honest.

George, you're dead to me forever.

We are no longer war medal brothers.

The battle was over when you hung up your battle jacket.

I know your battle jacket was falling apart,

it was disgusting and smelled like a wet dog,

but you're still dead to me.

- Good show today George,

even though you fucked up that one song.

- I fucked it up, no.

- Yellow Eyes is the tightest,

melodic-ish black metal band that I've ever seen live.

Those guys are just so locked in.

- I think there's something actually special

about Yellow Eyes.

The interplay of guitar work,

and the strangeness of the melodic sensibility,

and then the smashing rhythm section.

- I was watching Mike drumming and I was like,

"That can't be real,

is that guy really playing drums like this?"

He's not right this guy.

He's like, "Oh, I play in seven bands."

I was like, "What?

What are you on?

You need to be put away somewhere, that's not healthy."

- Mike is a caveman and and loves being a caveman,

all he wants to do is assault the drums,

and that's very near and dear to me.

(upbeat music)

- He's the most intense drummer ever.

He's fucking pounding everything.

- He's a bestial, Latvian, god of handsomeness.

- He's kind of like doing this,

and you could see his fucking veins bulging on his forehead.

He spits out into the audience, he's like (spits).

You can see the spit land on someone's fucking neck.

(upbeat music)

- Focus is the word. - Yeah.

- His personality, he is focus, in every way.

When we're in the van, Mike is focus.

Mike wants to go swimming in the lake

and we go swimming in the lake.

That attitude filtered its way into the spine of the band.

- Now looking back on it,

I can't quite imagine anything being done without Mike.

- When they first met up with me asking me

to play in this band I gave them the full caveat.

In spirit, I'm happy to do it, but my sense of time is bad,

I'm sloppy.

I place totally differently than your old drummer,

I approach everything different than you've been doing it.

If you think you can work with that, understanding that,

then yeah, I'm game.

So we agreed and that was that.

(upbeat music)

- That's probably made an appearance on most of our albums.

- Austin and Panopticon got in town when they practiced

at a buddy's place, at John Kerr's place.

I have no idea what they're gonna do.

(mellow music)

- The second Gilead Media Fest,

Adam came to me and was like,

"Hey dude, I want you to perform live."

For me the record is like therapy,

whether it be political, or emotional, or philosophical.

I've already covered it,

did the record and I got it all out,

and I talked about the issues that I have,

and I moved on.

And he said, "I think that you don't want to play live

'cause you're afraid."

And he was right.

I didn't wanna play live

because I didn't wanna be in front of people.

Not feeling like I deserved that space.

I felt like the best place for me

was behind this curtain of recording equipment

and the microphone.

He's like, "Man, the music that you're making

resonates with other people.

It's not just about your perspective

and your emotional release.

It's about how other people take it in

and perceive that music."

My band photos were always just of my back

with something beautiful in front of me to obscure me.

It didn't make any sense for me to be up in front

of a bunch of people and be like, "Hey look at me."

That's not the message of Panopticon.

The band has always been about this broader concept,

and I'm just trying to direct you to that.

And he was like, "Nah man,

I think you're afraid."

And then he brings it home with,

"When you get old and you look back on your life,

you're always gonna wonder what would've happened

if I had done that."

And fuck,

that really hit me hard,

what if?

What could I have done

if I had just mustered up the courage to do it?

(upbeat music)

The second Migration Fest for us

is one of the best shows we played.

Feeling that sense of community, being there with everybody,

it has the same feeling as a basement show,

just a family reunion and a whole bunch of friends.

I always thought that live Panopticon would be this stoic,

emotionally charged, pensive kind of thing.

And instead it's a lot of friends being together,

playing songs that are very serious.

But being able to have a sense of levity,

make light of something that's so heavy.

Being in an environment where you can be really honest

about your feelings but not be weighed down by them.

(upbeat music)

- I love having someone like Austin and his music,

and Panopticon,

and all the guys that in Panopticon live too,

fucking great people.

- Mr. Smalls was a killer venue.

The sound was just incredible,

and that high ceiling was perfect,

the acoustics were great.

- It was so beautiful,

a really truly incredible venue.

(upbeat music)

- Panopticon is a great American band

that are building an American mythology that can be used

in their version of spiritual mythological music.

Which I think is very exciting,

and I hope it will catch on.

Austin is the spearhead of a bigger movement,

because I'd really like to see where that can head.

It would be great if all those resources

that are in the US now being

spent on Scandinavian heritage...

Could be focused on American heritage,

I think that would be beautiful.

(mellow music)

What Austin is doing with the American mythology

that it's possible to have that thought in your head

and at the same time have a critical look

at the birth of America.

And I think that could be a positive contribution

to what's coming in America.

It seems so divided,

and a lot of that has to do with the history.

Not having sort of a mythology,

and not having a cultural common past

is part of the lack of glue.

♪ Well he came from far off ♪ over behind the hills ♪

♪ And he's raise by the silent stars ♪

♪ And the sounds of the whippoorwill ♪

♪ He's drifting slowly ♪

♪ In search of hope and wealth ♪

♪ Trading in poverty and ♪ scenery for money and Hell ♪

♪ He's just the young ♪ man, still in his prime ♪

♪ Now faceless cog in ♪ some old factory line ♪

♪ He's got a fuller wallet ♪

♪ He's far from home ♪

♪ Evening whiskey ♪

♪ That he'll drink alone ♪

♪ The years passed by, as they often do ♪

♪ Autumn's grays and winter's blues ♪

♪ His memories fade in the pastel hues ♪

♪ The mountains and hollers his childhood knew ♪

♪ He died cold one night in the cinder block room ♪

♪ Some say his heart just quit ♪

♪ Beneath the concrete and steel city lights ♪

♪ Before the first frost ♪

♪ But I knew that wasn't it ♪

- The reason that I convinced Liam or Austin to play live,

their art is too important.

It needs to be shared,

it needs to be appreciated in a crowd.

And like Couch Slut, that art is so intensely personal,

so meaningful on this fundamental level.

If you know about Liam, or Austin, or Megan's content,

you know that that's very powerful stuff for them,

and things that they have to do to cope with existing.

♪ Upon his last breath ♪

♪ In those twilight moments of existence ♪

♪ He died from a broken heart ♪

♪ From no mountains in the distance ♪

♪ It's true, it's the vile hum and the grinding gears ♪

♪ And the oppressive weight of concrete and steel ♪

♪ It wore down his soul until it was flat ♪

♪ It crushed his heart through a broken back ♪

♪ And they buried him there in a stranger's grave ♪

♪ His proud mountains so far away ♪

♪ The factories closed, the building burned ♪

♪ And they left all its things out on the curb ♪

♪ Sometimes you'll see him on a darkened road ♪

♪ His lonely ghost wandering home ♪

I've wanted to stop the label for years,

but there's something about it that I can't stop,

I'm addicted to it.

That's why I put out 15 records last year,

and now I'm watching some of these bands right now,

and having uncontrollable emotional responses to it.

Those moments like that at the festival

are why I just can't stop...

Yet.

- Emma Ruth Rundle's gonna play first,

then after her Thou's gonna play their set.

So whatever you want to donate

to the former earplug container thing here

will be much appreciated for the bands.

♪ Run little sister, run so fast ♪

♪ I see he's gaining on you ♪

♪ Take a breath and make it last ♪

♪ The dark water horizon ♪

♪ Smile like you mean it and just ♪

♪ Cast the light of hell right out of here ♪

♪ No one else can see it's ♪

♪ the shape that makes you fall on fallow ground ♪

- So today we've been open four days

at the new-ish location.

We started moving on Monday the 18th,

and then reopened on the 22nd.

Four days to pack up, move, unload, reorganize,

and open the store.

- The new space is great, it's obviously a lot larger

and it's more like a real record store now.

♪ It's the darkhorse you give legs to ♪

♪ no one else can ride ♪

♪ In the wake of strange beginnings ♪

♪ we can still stand high ♪

- Wow, this is amazing.

Look what my son did (laughs).

- Give me a tissue, I'm so proud mama.

♪ Sing a song, a verse unhinged ♪

♪ passed down from our mother ♪

♪ Take a breath and make it count ♪

♪ And learn to sing another ♪

♪ Try 'cause we need to ♪

♪ And just laugh the life of hell right out of here ♪

♪ No one else can see him ♪

♪ The shape that makes you fall on fallow ground ♪

My son is awesome, he's cool,

he's doing what he loves.

If he makes a bunch of money at it and can live off it,

at least he's happy with what he's doing.

Sometimes I wonder if he is really happy with it all,

because it is a lot of stress.

He's not working in a factory grinding metal

or cutting wood.

'Cause that's what people do in Oshkosh,

it's a lumber's town.

I'm glad he stayed in Oshkosh 'cause I know he,

at one point he had mentioned the possibility

of going up to Minneapolis area.

So I'm glad he didn't do that because I would've missed him.

This is his hometown and he belongs here and it needed this,

it needed this store.

♪ It's you and I ♪

♪ It's you and I ♪

♪ It's you and I ♪

♪ You and I ♪

(audience applauding)