"We love partying, we're very serious about that,” affirms Ryan Waste, guitarist/vocalist/hairy hottie with Richmond, Virginia thrash reanimators Municipal Waste. “We're serious about the music, man. And we're serious about the paycheque, hahaha! We're serious about fun. How about that?"
Municipal Waste are perhaps the third or fourth best thing to death in terms of escaping the sickening realities of life and embracing chaos. For all its communal nature, partying is a form of denial, inevitably so, because what is there to party about really when one takes in the constant bomb threat modern life has become? Partying is about denying reality you’ve been handed and creating your own, a responsibility-free zone. Selfish? You bet. It isn’t party for your right to fight, as Public Enemy once detourned their labelmates, The Beastie Boys. It’s party for your right to party. Harder than ever. Til it hurts.
So as the world gets shittier, the grimily hedonistic hi-energy buzz of thrash metal is understandably enjoying a criticial and commercial resurgence. The surprise about this revival is that it seems to be throwing up a few bands who sound vital and venomous enough to survive the fickle attentions of the music media (ourselves included). Nottingham’s Earache have smartly bagged three prime movers; Huddersfield’s Evile, Merseyside’s awesome SSS and the big bros of them all, Municipal Waste. The latter’s three full-length albums to date, Waste ‘Em All (2003), Hazardous Mutation (2005) and the new The Art Of Partying may bring to mind the spotty, split-ended Metallica that recorded Kill ‘Em All, the DRI that unleashed Dealing With It and Crossover and especially the Exodus of Bonded By Blood, Pleasures Of The Flesh and Fabulous Disaster, but they hardly sound like a tired, money-minded re-run of something that worked better twenty years ago. And in person, they seem 100 per cent sincere - these dudes shit metal, which is probably uncomfortable, but they seem happy enough, considering.
"I think metal got pushed over the edge,” says vocalist Tony ‘Guardrail’ Foresta, a likeable fellow whose face habitually forms what can only be described as ‘a shit-eating grin’. “Like in the past five to ten years, it got shitty, and then it got shittier, now you got dudes dressed as girls wearing fuckin' make-up playing fuckin' screamy breakdowns, and all these people who grew up listening to Priest and fuckin' Slayer look at it and it's like, 'What is this bullshit?' Y'know?"
"I think a lot of those bands, they write the music and it's just kind of accepted that you write lyrics about violence and dark imagery,” states bassist/vocalist Philip ‘LandPHIL’ Hall. “They're just like, 'Ok, whatever...' and just pump out a bunch of lyrics. It's just kind of accepted if you have a death metal band then you write about gore, y'know? So they're just like, 'Alright, we'll write about gore...'"
"The funny thing is,” continues Ryan, “when we write about gore, people just laugh at it. Our shit's gory as hell! If you really read the lyrics it's like, 'Damn, that's kind of negative!' But everyone's laughing about it, because we're just having fun with it."
At this point in the interview, I think about what I’ve heard from other music journalists about Municipal Waste. Apparently, some interviewers have found the band hard work, too boorish for their delicate sensibilities, too keen to proselytise on the joys of cheap terror, good beer and nice tits. I can see why some might find all this a little lowbrow for their tastes. But would it be too blunt to suggest they pull the baguette out of their arse and loosen up a little? Let’s look again at that list: cheap terror, good beer, nice tits. Fuckin’ hell. What’s the problem here? Now, beer is righteous (hmm... kinda) but why talk about it when you can drink it? I decide to skip over that and aim straight for the terror and tits. Priorities, right?
So what films inspire the lurid goo-spattered vistas of Municipal Waste tunes?
Tony: "Repo Man."
Ryan: "We sample that on one of our old records. It's a classic."
Have you seen Tarantino and Rodriguez’s ‘Grindhouse’ double feature yet?
Ryan: "I like ‘Planet Terror’, the first half of it. That one smokes the other one.”
Tony: "I like them both. I think the second one, the Tarantino one could have been edited by about 20 minutes."
Ryan: "The dialogue was just annoying. It's a man writing women's dialogue and he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about."
LandPHIL: "Totally."
Ryan: "The first one was just so over the top. If we could make a Waste video that looked like 'Planet Terror'... I mean, the toxic element's there."
LandPHIL: "Lots of green, lots of gore, hot chicks!"
Ryan: "Choice use of cursing like in old '70s movies... 'Shee-it!' Hahaha!"
Dave Witte: “Those dudes are in love with the original ideas, the history. Which is kind of close to what we're doing. Everything has been manipulated and bastardised, but we go to the roots of it. A lot of people don't recognise the start - it gets lost. Then the bands get shitty, people get bombed out. It's all cycles."
Drummer Dave Witte (ex-Discordance Axis/Burnt By The Sun) is vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Bridges’ character The Dude from the Cohen Brothers’ ‘The Big Wachowski’. His manner is similarly laidback yet authoritative, and he clearly commands respect from the rest of the Waste. However his attempt at steering the interview at least part-way towards music is only partly successful.
Ryan: "We wrote a song about ‘The Thing’. 'Blood Hunger' on Waste 'Em All is about 'Blood Diner', a bad movie that I just can't stop watching."
LandPHIL: "'Leprechaun In The Hood'."
Um... what’s that about?
Ryan: "A leprechaun's in the hood and he's hanging out with rappers, he's doing bong hits and he kills someone with a bong, he gets locked in the fridge and he just smokes weed..."
Tony: "They did 'Leprechaun In The Hood' as part five of the ‘Leprechaun’ series and it was so popular that they did a sequel to it... so it's like a sequel of a sequel, hahaha!"
Ryan: "And you forget it's about a leprechaun, man, it's just like a hood movie or a gangster movie. But then it's like, 'Woah, a little leprechaun! And he killed somebody!' Hahahaha!"
Given your collective interest in cinema, what are the chances of a Municipal Waste feature film?
Tony: "I was talking to Ryan about that a little while ago, I said, 'I just think we should write a fuckin' script!' It would be awesome."
Ryan: "We might work with [infamous Troma founder and cheapo filmmaker extraordinaire] Lloyd Kaufman for a video. He's interested."
Tony: "There won't be any CGI in that shit! Hahahaha! 'We got ketchup...' Hahahahaha!"
LandPHIL: "Man, the cornier the better when it comes to special effects and shit. To see Tony, like, rip out his guts, even if it looked bad, it would still be so badass."
Tony: "I'll rip out your guts! Hahahahaha!"
Something at this point - can’t quite recall what - leads me to believe that it would be a good idea to admit that I have repeatedly masturbated to Stuart Gordon’s supremely trashy 1988 Lovecraft adaptation, ‘From Beyond’. Whatever the reason, it does seem to steer the conversation towards tits, as planned. Result!
Tony: “He jerks off to ‘From Beyond’! Hahahaha!”
LandPHIL: “Did you ever masturbate to ‘Basket Case’ too?”
To ‘Basket Case 2’? No. Never seen it.
LandPHIL: “Horror movies were where I saw my first titties as a kid.”
Ryan: “You know it’s good if there are tits in the first or second scene. That’s a horror rule.”
Tony: “Our next video’s gonna have tits. I insisted on it.”
Ryan: “Our last video, there were tits after the shoot.”
Tony: “Yeah, there were.”
LandPHIL: “There are titties on the new album.”
Tony: “They’re gross, hahahaha!”
Ryan: “We poured blood all over them.”
I think I’m growing my own right now. It’s a bit of a worry, really.
Tony: “Hey we’ve been in Europe, man. That beer’s thick, dude! It’s killer.”
LandPHIL: “We saw this band in Australia and all of us were like, ‘Woah!’ This one dude was playing bass and he had the biggest tits I’ve ever seen on a dude. Everybody in the audience was like, ‘Look at the tit meat!’”
Tony: “But he didn’t give a fuck, man, he took off his shirt and he had man tits. Wear the man tits proud. Juggle ‘em out, man! Show ‘em what you can do with those things.”
Thanks, Tony. I will.
Municipal Waste are perhaps the third or fourth best thing to death in terms of escaping the sickening realities of life and embracing chaos. For all its communal nature, partying is a form of denial, inevitably so, because what is there to party about really when one takes in the constant bomb threat modern life has become? Partying is about denying reality you’ve been handed and creating your own, a responsibility-free zone. Selfish? You bet. It isn’t party for your right to fight, as Public Enemy once detourned their labelmates, The Beastie Boys. It’s party for your right to party. Harder than ever. Til it hurts.
So as the world gets shittier, the grimily hedonistic hi-energy buzz of thrash metal is understandably enjoying a criticial and commercial resurgence. The surprise about this revival is that it seems to be throwing up a few bands who sound vital and venomous enough to survive the fickle attentions of the music media (ourselves included). Nottingham’s Earache have smartly bagged three prime movers; Huddersfield’s Evile, Merseyside’s awesome SSS and the big bros of them all, Municipal Waste. The latter’s three full-length albums to date, Waste ‘Em All (2003), Hazardous Mutation (2005) and the new The Art Of Partying may bring to mind the spotty, split-ended Metallica that recorded Kill ‘Em All, the DRI that unleashed Dealing With It and Crossover and especially the Exodus of Bonded By Blood, Pleasures Of The Flesh and Fabulous Disaster, but they hardly sound like a tired, money-minded re-run of something that worked better twenty years ago. And in person, they seem 100 per cent sincere - these dudes shit metal, which is probably uncomfortable, but they seem happy enough, considering.
"I think metal got pushed over the edge,” says vocalist Tony ‘Guardrail’ Foresta, a likeable fellow whose face habitually forms what can only be described as ‘a shit-eating grin’. “Like in the past five to ten years, it got shitty, and then it got shittier, now you got dudes dressed as girls wearing fuckin' make-up playing fuckin' screamy breakdowns, and all these people who grew up listening to Priest and fuckin' Slayer look at it and it's like, 'What is this bullshit?' Y'know?"
"I think a lot of those bands, they write the music and it's just kind of accepted that you write lyrics about violence and dark imagery,” states bassist/vocalist Philip ‘LandPHIL’ Hall. “They're just like, 'Ok, whatever...' and just pump out a bunch of lyrics. It's just kind of accepted if you have a death metal band then you write about gore, y'know? So they're just like, 'Alright, we'll write about gore...'"
"The funny thing is,” continues Ryan, “when we write about gore, people just laugh at it. Our shit's gory as hell! If you really read the lyrics it's like, 'Damn, that's kind of negative!' But everyone's laughing about it, because we're just having fun with it."
At this point in the interview, I think about what I’ve heard from other music journalists about Municipal Waste. Apparently, some interviewers have found the band hard work, too boorish for their delicate sensibilities, too keen to proselytise on the joys of cheap terror, good beer and nice tits. I can see why some might find all this a little lowbrow for their tastes. But would it be too blunt to suggest they pull the baguette out of their arse and loosen up a little? Let’s look again at that list: cheap terror, good beer, nice tits. Fuckin’ hell. What’s the problem here? Now, beer is righteous (hmm... kinda) but why talk about it when you can drink it? I decide to skip over that and aim straight for the terror and tits. Priorities, right?
So what films inspire the lurid goo-spattered vistas of Municipal Waste tunes?
Tony: "Repo Man."
Ryan: "We sample that on one of our old records. It's a classic."
Have you seen Tarantino and Rodriguez’s ‘Grindhouse’ double feature yet?
Ryan: "I like ‘Planet Terror’, the first half of it. That one smokes the other one.”
Tony: "I like them both. I think the second one, the Tarantino one could have been edited by about 20 minutes."
Ryan: "The dialogue was just annoying. It's a man writing women's dialogue and he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about."
LandPHIL: "Totally."
Ryan: "The first one was just so over the top. If we could make a Waste video that looked like 'Planet Terror'... I mean, the toxic element's there."
LandPHIL: "Lots of green, lots of gore, hot chicks!"
Ryan: "Choice use of cursing like in old '70s movies... 'Shee-it!' Hahaha!"
Dave Witte: “Those dudes are in love with the original ideas, the history. Which is kind of close to what we're doing. Everything has been manipulated and bastardised, but we go to the roots of it. A lot of people don't recognise the start - it gets lost. Then the bands get shitty, people get bombed out. It's all cycles."
Drummer Dave Witte (ex-Discordance Axis/Burnt By The Sun) is vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Bridges’ character The Dude from the Cohen Brothers’ ‘The Big Wachowski’. His manner is similarly laidback yet authoritative, and he clearly commands respect from the rest of the Waste. However his attempt at steering the interview at least part-way towards music is only partly successful.
Ryan: "We wrote a song about ‘The Thing’. 'Blood Hunger' on Waste 'Em All is about 'Blood Diner', a bad movie that I just can't stop watching."
LandPHIL: "'Leprechaun In The Hood'."
Um... what’s that about?
Ryan: "A leprechaun's in the hood and he's hanging out with rappers, he's doing bong hits and he kills someone with a bong, he gets locked in the fridge and he just smokes weed..."
Tony: "They did 'Leprechaun In The Hood' as part five of the ‘Leprechaun’ series and it was so popular that they did a sequel to it... so it's like a sequel of a sequel, hahaha!"
Ryan: "And you forget it's about a leprechaun, man, it's just like a hood movie or a gangster movie. But then it's like, 'Woah, a little leprechaun! And he killed somebody!' Hahahaha!"
Given your collective interest in cinema, what are the chances of a Municipal Waste feature film?
Tony: "I was talking to Ryan about that a little while ago, I said, 'I just think we should write a fuckin' script!' It would be awesome."
Ryan: "We might work with [infamous Troma founder and cheapo filmmaker extraordinaire] Lloyd Kaufman for a video. He's interested."
Tony: "There won't be any CGI in that shit! Hahahaha! 'We got ketchup...' Hahahahaha!"
LandPHIL: "Man, the cornier the better when it comes to special effects and shit. To see Tony, like, rip out his guts, even if it looked bad, it would still be so badass."
Tony: "I'll rip out your guts! Hahahahaha!"
Something at this point - can’t quite recall what - leads me to believe that it would be a good idea to admit that I have repeatedly masturbated to Stuart Gordon’s supremely trashy 1988 Lovecraft adaptation, ‘From Beyond’. Whatever the reason, it does seem to steer the conversation towards tits, as planned. Result!
Tony: “He jerks off to ‘From Beyond’! Hahahaha!”
LandPHIL: “Did you ever masturbate to ‘Basket Case’ too?”
To ‘Basket Case 2’? No. Never seen it.
LandPHIL: “Horror movies were where I saw my first titties as a kid.”
Ryan: “You know it’s good if there are tits in the first or second scene. That’s a horror rule.”
Tony: “Our next video’s gonna have tits. I insisted on it.”
Ryan: “Our last video, there were tits after the shoot.”
Tony: “Yeah, there were.”
LandPHIL: “There are titties on the new album.”
Tony: “They’re gross, hahahaha!”
Ryan: “We poured blood all over them.”
I think I’m growing my own right now. It’s a bit of a worry, really.
Tony: “Hey we’ve been in Europe, man. That beer’s thick, dude! It’s killer.”
LandPHIL: “We saw this band in Australia and all of us were like, ‘Woah!’ This one dude was playing bass and he had the biggest tits I’ve ever seen on a dude. Everybody in the audience was like, ‘Look at the tit meat!’”
Tony: “But he didn’t give a fuck, man, he took off his shirt and he had man tits. Wear the man tits proud. Juggle ‘em out, man! Show ‘em what you can do with those things.”
Thanks, Tony. I will.
