HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR012- ED GEIN, "Judas Goats and Dieseleaters" 12"

Here’s a story of the record that took forever to come out.  This was supposed to be the 12^th release overall for Hex Records.  I believe it finally came out after our 14^th or 15^th release. It was held up for a ridiculously long time.  But we’ll get into that more in a little bit.

First off, let’s set the tone for what was going on with Ed Gein during this time period- basically they were never home.  They were doing one tour after another, constantly on the road, and scraping by.  The “It’s a Shame…” EP had been doing ridiculously well and I definitely could not keep up with how active the band was.  I knew they were destined for bigger things and when they began to get some offers I was fully ready for the guys to move ahead, as they clearly had outgrown this little cottage label I was running.

The band had made some friends with the fellas in The Red Chord and had played a bunch of shows together.  The Red Chord had recently inked a deal with Metal Blade Records and were making some big moves of their own.  Part of that deal with Metal Blade included vocalist Guy Kozowyk’s label Black Market Activities getting exclusive distribution through them, which is a pretty nice thing to have.  So when Black Market offered a deal to Ed Gein it seemed like the right move to do.  I was happy for them.

They had already made the decision to record with Chris Owens at Headbangingkillyourmama Music in Louisville, since that Syracuse-Rochester-Louisville connection had been forged from bands like Ed Gein, Achilles, and Engineer touring together frequently with Louisville groups like Lords, Breather Resist, and Coliseum.  The result is a filthy sounding, crazy heavy and fast record that pushed Ed Gein way out of the sound they were typically known for, but (in my humble opinion) exactly where it suited them best.  It’s easily my favorite sounding record of theirs, but I think the band doesn’t totally agree.  I just think it sounds so raw and nasty while still keeping that technical, blasting craziness to it.  But I digress.  Let’s get back to the story of how this came together.

I wanted to still be involved with the band in some way and I asked if I could release the vinyl version of the new record.  At the time vinyl was not a hot commodity so Black Market was completely agreeable to it since they would just be making buttloads of CDs.  This would also be the first actual LP that Hex Records released.  Pirates Press had recently been coming up as a manufacturer that was doing some interesting stuff with vinyl colors and patterns and I wanted to go all out with a cool-looking record because I knew spending a bit more on the packaging of this record would be worth it since I would be able to easily get rid of them all.  So I got in touch with them about pressing the record and set to work with getting all the other details into place.

Through Black Market the band arranged to have Paul Romano do the artwork.  This was a pretty big deal since that guy had quite a big rep at the time for doing all of Mastodon’s artwork, as well as a ton of different metal bands.  The Ed Gein guys had some interactions with him about how they wanted things to look and even met him in person down in Philly, where they discussed, among other things, ensuring that he would do the artwork for the CD as well as convert that art for the vinyl version.  He agreed to it.  So I was patient.  I knew this guy put a lot of time and effort into his art so I waited.  And waited. And then waited some more.  And finally months went by, all the while Ed Gein is out on the road, promoting this new CD that just came out and I’m still waiting on pressing the vinyl version because I don’t have any art.  I tried contacting Romano directly to see what was up, the Ed Gein guys tried getting in touch, just total radio silence.  Finally, I reached out to Guy from Black Market to see if he would try to get in touch with him because he had a better relationship with Paul than any of us did.  And you know what I finally heard back?  Romano had informed Guy that he didn’t like one of the interactions with either myself or the Ed Gein guys and just decided not to do the vinyl artwork.  It basically just involved moving art from one template to another and adjusting as necessary. None of us were ever pushy with him, or mean.  We just asked when it would be ready.  And instead of just being a grown-up and saying, “I don’t want to do this” the guy just left the project in a lurch for months before telling someone else he didn’t feel like it.  It was extremely unprofessional if you ask me.

So me and the Ed Gein guys had a discussion- what would we do next?  We decided to see about getting a different artist to interpret the art from “Judas Goats and Dieseleaters”.  From doing the label and my zine I was often getting submissions from different artists about doing stuff for me, as I really valued the artwork that went into my releases and zines.  I got some names together of people I thought would be good and the Gein guys came with a few names of their own.  Together, we had seen art from a guy named Jeremy Forson a few times on other records and designs and thought ‘this would be a cool guy to ask.’  Jeremy was easy to get in touch with, very enthusiastic about the project, and super easy to work with.  It was a breath of fresh air compared to the stonewalling we got from Paul Romano.  Aaron from Ed Gein gave him a few pointers and ideas about what themes to keep from the original art and Jeremy set out to work.  Within a few weeks he was all done and it looked awesome.

Then I had to wait on Pirates Press.  They pressed everything overseas, so it took awhile to get done and through customs and a lot of money, and more waiting.  By the time the vinyl version of “Judas Goats and Dieseleaters” was out Ed Gein was wrapping up the touring cycle for the record.  They had done an endless amount of touring with every crappy metalcore, deathcore, and whatever flavor-of-the-week-core band out there and did a run with Gaza and Genghis Tron to wrap things up, a tour which they were clearly much happier to do as it fit their aesthetic much more.

But it wasn’t just that they were done touring on that record.  They were kind of done with touring, like for a long time.  Burn out had set in and the guys just wanted to be off the road for awhile.  And here I was with 1000 LPs that I really wanted to get rid of.  The touring break for the band ended up being longer than ‘awhile’ and turned into ‘forever’ as they set to their other projects and put Ed Gein on the back-burner.  Long story short, I eventually got rid of all those records, it just took a lot longer than I had expected.

But that period of the band, while all this was happening, was probably the busiest they had ever been.  Since that time Aaron got even more into screenprinting, first managing a shop, and eventually opening his own screenprinting business (the Black Arts Studio).  Jesse and Graham moved into the house I was living in and stayed there for a couple years.  It was great living with those guys.  Right about that time Jesse and our old friend Adam partnered up to buy a small coffeehouse business and Recess was born.  Graham eventually went to work for them as well and now it’s this huge, thriving business that makes other coffee joints look like buns.  So the guys have kept busy and I found some time to speak with drummer Jesse Daino about that era of Ed Gein.  No coffee was involved while this happened.

What’s your story about what was happening with Ed Gein during the time before and immediately following the release of “Judas Goats…”?

So when we were writing it we were still practicing maybe five-to-seven days a week, we were still practicing a lot.  I know we wanted move away a little from the more technical music.  We wanted to go more intense, a little heavier.  For me, personally, I was going through a thing with drumming where I was more into thrash.  I was getting really into thrash, and not as much technical music.  So I was in that in-between spot.  And you can really see that on the Ed Gein record we did after that (“Bad Luck”), which was much more thrashy.

I didn’t enjoy counting stuff as much when we were writing that record.  When we were writing “It’s a Shame..” I would write a drum part that I physically couldn’t play yet.  But within a few weeks I’d be able to play it.  And that made me a better drummer.  But when we wrote “Judas Goats..” I kind of got over that and got more into just having fun when I was playing drums.  So that’s where I was at personally.  I don’t know about Graham or Aaron and where they were at.

I was in the mindset of wanting to still play really intense, but I was over counting weird parts and stuff like that.

                        A common occurrence on an Ed Gein tour

This was occurring around the same time all your gear got stolen as well, right?  Talk a bit about that.

Yeah.  That’s a weird time line thing that I can’t nail down.  We wrote that record (“Judas Goats…”) over a really long period of time.  It took us a long time to write it.  So I imagine we had a few songs written while we were on that tour where our gear got stolen, and the rest of it we wrote after.

So I remember when that happened.  I think it was about a week before a tour ended, right?  In Ohio?

Yeah.  It happened in Columbus, Ohio in a Wal-Mart parking lot.  We were just buying some bottled water.

Oh, so you were all gone for literally a few minutes and that’s when it happened?  You came back and everything was gone?

Yeah, it was pretty terrible.  We didn’t want to admit that it was stolen until we saw a puddle of radiator fluid in the spot that the van was parked and that was when we knew for sure.

So how did you end up finishing everything with all your gear gone?

We ended up riding with Breather Resist and Lords, who we were on tour with, and using their gear for the last few days.

When you began writing for “Judas Goats…” then did you have to borrow gear, or did everything get returned by the time you got started with writing and recording for that record?

Man, that’s a really good question because I really can’t remember.  We did end up getting all our gear back.  It was a few weeks and we probably didn’t practice while our stuff was gone.  Or we must have borrowed some stuff to practice.

It’s surprising that you got almost everything back.  That rarely happens to bands who get their stuff stolen.

For such an unfortunate event we were really fortunate for that.  We lost all our merch and our merch money, which was our fault for keeping it in the van.  That was very foolish.  But I got all my gear back.  I think Graham and Aaron got all theirs back, they might have lost a guitar.  But they got pretty everything back.  But I don’t remember how long it was all gone for.  It was awhile.  I remember buying some new equipment to supplement, but I couldn’t afford to buy a new drum set.  So it was gone long enough to get a few things, but not long enough to go all out with getting a completely new set and replace everything.

     Ed Gein vs. Engineer house show.  Loudest damn house show ever.

How did you decide to record with Chris Owens and what’s your impression in hindsight of how that record sounds to you because it sounds vastly different than anything else you did.

Yeah, it does.  It may have been Aaron’s idea to record with Chris.  I think he brought it up because we always wanted to capture a live sound more on our recordings.  And since we were always playing live we thought it would be a good representation of us.  And we never wanted to be mic’ed when we played.

We had recorded with Jocko (Jason Randall, owner of Moresound Studios in Syracuse) and he’s a fantastic engineer.  He’s unreal.  He’s really good at capturing a more professional sound.  But some reason, at that time in our musical career, we wanted not so much of a professionally recorded sound, and more of a live sound and we felt like Chris would be able to capture that. And it would be something different.  We would get to go to a different studio in a different state for a few weeks and record somewhere else.

It seems like when I would talk to you guys afterwards you weren’t super excited about how that record came out.  Personally, for me, that’s my favorite one because of how dirty and gnarly it sounds.  I think it sounds awesome and chaotic.

I definitely agree.  I do this weird thing where we practice these songs so much, and take a long time to record them, that I usually don’t listen to them after they come out, or not often, or at all.  I probably listened to that record, after it came out, maybe twice.  I was just out playing those songs constantly, so I didn’t really need to listen to the recorded versions I guess.  And I like to look forward.  Once we have something done and recorded I just like to move on to the next thing.

You were on the road constantly during this time.  Did you feel like you were playing to ‘your audience’ or were you getting paired up with bands you didn’t feel a kinship with?

That was the time when things were changing after that record.  We were definitely getting paired up with bands that weren’t super compatible with musically, but for me it was still a blast.  We toured with this band called Liegia a lot and those guys were kind of like tough New England hardcore.  So musically it was whatever.  But they were a blast to hang out with on tour every single time we went out with them. 

I know in Aaron’s interview he mentioned that tour we did when we went around the country twice with Breather Resist and All Else Failed.  I believe he quoted the city that we met up with All Else Failed as being wrong, because it was outside of Cleveland, Ohio.  But that was the tour for me.  That was the best.  Those bands were phenomenal.  All Else Failed has been one of my favorite bands ever since I got into heavy music.

So doing tours like that were fairly rare.  I know we did a lot of tours where we might make a little more money, and at least get to eat dinner.  But it was still kind of awkward.

 Best press photo ever.

I feel like Ed Gein was often mixed in with a lot of metalcore and deathcore type stuff, but you all didn’t identify with that scene.  There was always more humor and, for lack of a better word, ‘punk’ to your style, even down to the funny press photos.

Definitely.  A lot of those tours we did though were still a lot of fun.  We did a really big tour with The Number 12 Looks Like You and Through the Eyes Of the Dead and those shows were massive, and we could still relate to a lot of the crowd.  But there were also a lot of tours we did where we could not relate to the audience and I don’t think they could relate to us.  Some times I’d get back from these tours and think, ‘man, what am I doing? Why are we doing this?’  It was kind of bizarre.

This is also where you stopped doing vocals and drumming?  Or were you still doing vocals at this time?

I still did them for that record, and I still did them for the tours for that record.  When we wrote the record that came out after that I just decided to stop.  I don’t remember why really, I just thought it would be more fun to just play drums and not try to sing at the same time.  It was like one day it just popped in my head and I decided to stop.

 the revised artwork and layout courtesy of Jeremy Forson

How did you arrange for Paul Romano to do the artwork?  Jeremy Forson eventually did it but I can’t recall exactly how he came into the picture.

That’s an Aaron Jenkins question!  I did not arrange that stuff.  I remember though we played a show in Philadelphia, which is where he (Paul Romano) is from and he met us.  And it seemed like a normal meeting, at least to us it did, and later on we found out that he felt like we snubbed him.  It was something like that.  So when we found out about that it seemed really weird.  You know us.  We’re kind people, I guess.  So we weren’t purposefully snubbing anybody.  But I think something weird like that happened.

Why did the band stop touring after this record came out?

For me personally, I had started a business.  My friend Adam and I had taken over a coffee business called Recess.  They had been around for about seven months or so when the original owner decided to sell it and we bought it.  When I first took it over it was more of a hobby because I was really planning on being a professional drummer.  That was my life goal.  So when we first took over the business I thought it would be a great thing to do between tours and make a little money, because we still weren’t really making money with the band.  And I was still concentrating on being a drummer.  I was practicing for a couple hours a day.  That was my main focus.

And then we did a tour in Europe while I was growing the business.  It was terrible.  All I could think about was the business.  And we didn’t have any employees so Adam was working alone and he had one helper who would come in some times to help while I was away in Europe for a few weeks.  It was really rough.

And then I got back, focused on the business some more, and then we did another tour with Genghis Tron and Gaza.  And that was the last tour we ever did.  Our van broke down on like the first day or something, so we had to ride with other bands.  It was a good tour, but again, for me, all I could think about was the business.  It was really taxing. It was tough to leave Adam, my business partner, home running the whole thing on his own.

So after that tour I thought that I enjoyed running the business more than I enjoyed being a musician right now in my life, so I should focus on that.  That was the big thing for me on why I wanted to stop touring.

At the end of our touring career we were also doing some weird tours and I couldn’t understand why we were doing them.  We had done it so much.  We had played giant shows, we played small shows, we played in basements, we played in huge venues.  It lost something, I guess.

Out of all the time you spent doing the band what was your favorite part about it and what was your least favorite part?

That’s a great question.  My favorite part, and not just particular to that record, was being close with Graham and Aaron.  That was awesome.  Seeing the country, and getting to see Europe, was awesome.  We did, I think, ten full U.S. tours, which is unbelievable for us.  We got to see Mexico.  Touring with All Else Failed was a dream.  Those guys were a little older than us, at the time they were in their late 20’s I think.  And they didn’t tour often so they wanted to do fun stuff on tour, like go to the Grand Canyon.  And we never really got to do stuff like that usually, so we had a lot of fun with them. 

Honestly, recording “Judas Goats…” was a blast.  We got to stay in Louisville and hang out with Chris Owens.  We would go to this bar every night called Cahoots and eat fish sandwiches.  That was wicked fun actually.  That was definitely the best part for me.

The worst part was getting burned out in general, even on music.  That’s something that I’ve loved my whole life, and spent so much time trying to get good at, and I really cared about it.  I thought it was something that I might so the rest of my life.  But I hit at wall with it.  I was not physically getting better at it, and was not as inspired to keep playing.  That wasn’t terrible, but it was the downside of it.
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 OK y'all, we have a very special thing going on for this release.  So since "Judas Goats..." was officially released by Black Market Activities (Hex Records only did the vinyl version), and there's no bandcamp for the entire release we worked out something between the band, and Guy from Black Market- the whole "Judas Goats..." record will be available for download for one week only as a benefit for the Syracuse Rescue Mission, specifically their homeless shelter services.  So get it now: LISTEN AND DONATE!