For all those who just couldn't wait for Wrathchild America's second album, relax. It's here. The shelves of your local record store should be abundantly adorned with the group's latest opus, 3-D, sometime this month. So dig up some cash for your first wise purchase of 1991, and feast your ears on some bone crushing, skull bashing, mind-rending mayhem from these local heroes.
Thrashmasters Brad Divens (bass, vox), Jay Abbene (guitar), Terry Carter (guitar) and Shannon Larkin (drums) make up the furious foursome known as Wrathchild America. Throughout their history, the band have enjoyed the emphatic support of area fans and have made a dramatic impact on the music scene in Charm City. They sport a record deal with Atlantic, which has produced the phenomenal debut, Climbin' The Walls, and threaten to shred our ears a second time with 3-D.
This latest effort was recorded at Pyramid Studios in New York with legendary thrash producer Alex Perialas at the helm. The culmination of these great talents has resulted in music that careens at the listener like a runaway freight train on a production bigger than a hundred thunderheads. Brad also credits the secluded surroundings of the Ithaca studio for its success, "When we were recording the record, we wanted to be somewhere where we could concentrate our thoughts in one direction, somewhere remote where we couldn't get into trouble."
"This town only had a lake," Shannon adds, "so we couldn't get into trouble every night like we did on our last album." The result, as Brad jokingly puts it, "It's a collection of great hits."
Wrathchild America have redrawn the boundaries of their songwriting finesse on 3-D by pulling closer together as a creative unit. Shannon explains, "We locked in with each other this time, and I think we've found our future. We'll always branch out and get more creative, of course, but I think we've found the vein we want to be in." This core strength has propelled the writing to new heights and new areas of reflection.
One sure sign that 3-D will be known as a truly great record for years to come is the diverse nature of the music. There are fresh twists in to rhythms and bits and pieces of widely varied influences, including a reggae segment in the song "Parallel" that could make Bob Marley rise from the grave and jam, that set 3-D apart from speed/thrash metal records that take the straight-forward approach. When it comes to thrash records, I'm usually pretty fickle, but I'll be listening to the amazing dimension of 3-D for quite some time.
If you were hoping for a continuation of Wrathchild America's first album, don't worry. You'll also find reassuring similarities in style and subject matter to Climbin' The Walls. Brad offers some rough sketches of the music on 3-D.
"'3-D' (the song) is about people that see things one way and that's it. They don't see anything else around."
"'Spy' is more or less a fiction kind of thing about detectives and people getting hunted down and making the headlines."
"'Gentlemen Death' is inspired by the Vampire LeStat."
Shannon picks up the ball for the next song title: "'Forever Alone' is about when people get involved in black magic or the occult and they get too far in to where they can't get out."
Nodding in agreement, Brad continues, "'Surrounded By Idiots' is just what it sounds like. I mean, when we say 'surrounded by idiots', it's not our fans, and they'll know that when they hear the song and read the lyrics. Actually, instead of six minutes long, it should have been an hour and six minutes long."
"'Desert Grins' is about a man being trapped in the environment and realizing that no matter how big man is, the environment is a lot more powerful. I mean you're never gonna overcome the environment. You could destroy it, but that would just end up destroying you."
"'What's Your Pleasure' was inspired by a movie."
"It was inspired by Hellraiser II, Shannon interjects with a sinister grin. "Clive Barker rules."
Brad goes on, "'Prego' is an instrumental. It's just what it says, 'Prego': It's in there."
"'Parallel' is our environmentally conscious song in a way. I'm not gonna say anything else. Just read the words." That goes for the other songs on 3-D not described here. The band leaves those interpretations up to you, the listener.
If you find any of Wrathchild America's music shocking, that is the band's every intention. In response to the popular reference to the early part of Wrathchild America's career as the "glam days" Shannon offers that when the band was formed, "We were all young guys and we wanted to shock people. There was never a drastic change in this band (from glam to thrash).
But what, you may be thinking to yourself as you begin to grasp the gripping lyrics on 3-D, are these guys really thinking about? And as the interview turns from discussions of musical direction and production teams, we begin to get a brief and rather astonishing glimpse into the minds of these four mosh monsters.
Begins Brad, "I want to know, if someone had a big spike and they rammed the spike down through your head, would you hear it? Would you feel the pain before you died? I mean what level of pain would you feel? Or would you feel anything at all? Would you just blackout and die?"
Apparently being well-read in the subject, Shannon professes, "They say if you get your head chopped off, that your brain can survive for like 30 seconds from the oxygen and you can look at your dismembered body." Brad remains unconvinced, "But I wonder if you'd feel anything. Would you feel any pain? Because everything's separated. All the nerves are severed."
As looks of curiosity bounce off all our faces, the room begins to fill with laughter. The bizarre interlude turns our thoughts to humor's role in the band. Evidently, Wrathchild America consider a good sense of humor immensely important. "I remember our first road trip," Brad relates. "We were going to Texas. We rented a U-haul and we could not get out of the state of Virginia because we kept breaking fan belts. That's not too bad. Then you get to Texas and find out you're not playing Saturday night 'cos there's this other band coming in. So there goes a thousand dollars you're not getting that you had planned to use to get to Phoenix.
"And then you get to Phoenix and you get fired from that job, and you sit in that sate for two weeks without any money. And you keep thinking, 'What's gonna happen next?' And then the truck blows up or someone gets thrown in jail for drunk and disorderly in McDonald's. When you think that nothing else can happen, something always does. Eventually you just get to the point where you're so f*ckin' fed up that it's funny. You've gotta have a sense of humor."
At this, the previously quiet Terry offers his perspective, "People that don't have a sense of humor, but aren't in bands, go into McDonald's and open fire."
With nary a moment's pause, Brad continues, "Yeah, see those people don't have a sense of humor." And with a thoughtful expression coming over his face, he opens a up a new can of worms. "But I wonder what they listen to. That's another thing I think about. Like the guy who goes into the used car lot after they repossessed his car and blows away three or four salesmen and common spectators. What did he listen to? What provoked him to do that?"
"But if a 17-year-old kid that had a f*ckin' AC/DC shirt on went out and killed three or four people in the post office because they returned his Playboy subscription because he didn't have the right postage on it, they would go to his car and find out what was in his deck and blame it on that. You always hear about what kids listen to before they kill somebody or themselves. But anybody past the age of 25, you don't know what they listen to. Maybe they listen to Hank Williams, Jr. Maybe they listen to Frank Sinatra."
By this time, the open forum for debate has busted wide open, littering the taped record of the interview with far too many simultaneous comments to decipher. Eventually we shift our focus back to Brad.
"I wanna know," he asserts, "why somebody can get busted for carrying a joint on `em and go right to jail that same night, but the mayor of Washington, DC -- you can see his ass on film smokin' the f*ckin' crack pipe and they let him out. He's the ruler of the capitol of this country! He's supposed to be the example. But if we got pulled over in the van with an empty bottle on us, we'd get taken away. Why?"
We all exchange blank looks, unable to answer the burning question. And with the discussion winding down just as the tape nears its end, Jay offers a serious conclusion for us to consider, "The legislation is slowly taking away rights, so at first it doesn't affect you. But once they all accumulate, then it does, and then we'll end up having some really hideous laws."
And there you have it! An in-depth interview with Wrathchild America about whatever popped into their creative, imaginative and slightly scary minds. The only way to know more about these local rock legends and their latest work is to catch one of the shows on their upcoming tour or listen to the record. So what are your waiting for?
And by the way, while you're waiting for an official Wrathchild America tour to begin sometime this spring, you may want to check out Shannon and Jay's side project, Kiddie Porn, with Shannon climbing out from behind his drum kit to front the band. Their creative, frenzied, not too serious live show verges on the psychotic and is a must see whether you are a Wrathchild America fan or not. Kiddie Porn's first tape, Conflict of Mind, is also available.