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sinceileftyoublog · 2 years

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Hellrazor Interview: How Bizarre

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Mike Falcone likes artifacts. The former Speedy Ortiz and Ovlov drummer has been making music as Hellrazor for over a decade, first releasing cassettes and CDs and later sharing the band’s debut Satan Smile in 2016. Their follow-up, Heaven’s Gate, combines dystopian lyrics with Falcone’s passion for the old, strange, esoteric, yet tangible parts of sociocultural history. Aesthetically, Hellrazor’s sophomore effort is a logical follow-up to their first album, from the clanging 90′s-inspired fuzz rock of opener “Big Buzz” and the jagged, shouted punk of “Demon Hellride”, to the psych-rock dirges of “Landscaper” and “Phantasm”. And of course, in order to channel the angst of the contemporary hellscape of unfair labor conditions and the surveillance state, Falcone summons demons, ghosts, and devils. Even one of the album’s namesakes, the cult that originated in the 70′s, is a direct continuation of Satan Smile’s closing track “Hale Bopp”, named after the comet whose 1997 passing inspired the mass suicide of the cult’s members.

What makes Heaven’s Gate stand out in the Hellrazor catalog is Falcone’s digging into his archives, both in terms of the plethora of songs he’s written for Hellrazor and sampling of materials. Single “Jello Stars” was written in 2011 and first played during the band’s tour for Satan Smile; it was re-tracked and its lyrics rewritten to fit the themes of Heaven’s Gate. And though he took clips from old VHS tapes on the first record, Falcone really dives into AV archiving on Heaven’s Gate. “Big Buzz” and bonus track “Stain Master” feature voices taken from his own tape collection, sampling a Christian children’s show from the 90′s. The contrast in the religion portrayed in the samples and that in Falcone’s lyrics are exemplary of his interest in countercultural movements and society’s reaction to them. Plus, Falcone and current Hellrazor bassist Kate Meizner are both library school graduates. Currently employed at a library in Brooklyn, Falcone’s been able to use the knowledge gleaned from his day job to create some weirdness of his own with Heaven’s Gate.

I spoke with Falcone earlier this summer over the phone about Heaven’s Gate, VHS tapes, films, and Jobber, the band led by Meizner in which he drums. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: At the time you released “Landscaper” and “Globbed”, did you know they were going to be on this record?

Mike Falcone: Yeah, the three songs that have already been released [including “Jello Stars”] from our first session were planned to be included. It was supposed to be a 14-song record, but because of logistics and lockdown and other obstacles, instead of holding on to the whole thing and continuing to work at it, we felt it made more sense to release two shorter records. We’re still working on the other half of these sessions, so there are another probably 8-9 songs that will end up coming out next year. A lot of them are about halfway tracked.

SILY: Did you rerecord, re-track, and change the lyrics of “Landscaper” and “Globbed” like you did for “Jello Stars”?

MF: No. “Landscaper” and “Globbed” were both written pretty quickly, in 2017. “Jello Stars” is way before that, from 2011. The lyrics for that song have been rewritten 10 times probably.

SILY: Did you write about dystopian themes because that was more pronounced in the world these days?

MF: Maybe. It just ended up turning into that subject matter because it was on my mind.

SILY: The vocals on a lot of these songs are pretty obscured. Realistically, nobody’s going to sit down with a lyrics sheet. Do you think about the lyrics as an essential part of the songs, or can they be appreciated a different way with someone not necessarily knowing what you’re saying?

MF: Whatever somebody wants to get out of it. The lyrics sheet is out there if they want to check it out. But for me, I just wanted to make sure they didn’t feel like placeholder lyrics and that there was some meaning attached.

SILY: I’m always surprised how many music fans don’t pay any attention to lyrics. Even a lot of people who play music.

MF: It depends on the band. Sometimes, I pay more attention. I typically don’t right away. I usually listen to music for other things, like how it sounds. [laughs]

SILY: That’s what draws you in, and then you dive into the words.

MF: Right. Some people take it in one complete whole. Some listen to an entire album that way. There’s no wrong way to do it. Lyrics don’t usually hit me until I become comfortable with how something sounds.

SILY: What were some of the sampled voices on “Big Buzz” and “Stain Master”?

MF: I’m happy you brought that up. One of the things I’ve been trying to do with Hellrazor is sample from VHS [tapes] I’ve collected over the years. On the “Globbed” video and the “Ants vs. Dragons” video, there’s a bunch of VHS clips. My collection of tapes is pretty massive at this point. I’ve been trying to understand VHS digitizing. I didn’t realize it was so involved. But I felt like this was a good way to incorporate some of that stuff into the record. The two we added are from this Christian children’s show I was obsessed with in high school. I would expect that very few people are aware of it, because who was sitting around watching Christian children’s videos waiting for something bizarre to happen? It was kind of by chance I ended up catching a few really strange things. A lot of the dialogue on that show was improvised really badly.

SILY: Do you collect movies or just weird things you tape?

MF: There wasn’t really a plan for it. Once it got to be the post-VHS era, I realized I had so much accumulated and didn’t want to throw any of it away. I figured at some point I’d use it. It’s annoying dragging it around from place to place every time I have to move. That’s one reason to try and hang on to everything digitally. I also discovered there are communities of collectors who are actually interested in seeing this stuff, because a lot of those video captures are considered rare.

SILY: Do you know Jake Popyura from Supermilk?

MF: Yes.

SILY: Have you talked to him about this? He’s really into it.

MF: Yeah! He put out his record [Four By Three] on VHS, which I thought was amazing. I caught that movie Censor last summer. I actually had never heard of the [“video nasties,”] the group of tapes that were banned in the UK for a few years. I had never heard of that before. It’s sort of like an overseas version of the Satanic panic.

SILY: There are some aesthetic outliers on here, like “Demon Hellride” and “All The Candy In The World”, these punky, darker, more industrial songs. Or the loops on “Party Slasher”.

MF: I just get bored with only putting out guitar and drum rock songs. “All The Candy In The World” was [drummer Mike Henss’] song, [and] I was like, “This totally fits, we should include it.” But as far as those other two, they ended up coming out as outliers. Hearing records of bands like Ween, or I wish I could think of a better reference than The Beatles, but albums like the White Album or Abbey Road have these pretty strange songs. A good contemporary reference is Alex G. He’ll have records that have 8 really solid verse-chorus songs and 3-4 really bizarre songs that sound like nothing else he’s done before. I figured, “Okay, cool, somebody else is sort of doing the same thing with sneaking in some surprises.”

SILY: To an extent, one of your early influences, Guided By Voices, do it, too.

MF: And Sebadoh. [Sebadoh’s fourth album] Bubble & Scrape ended up sounding so varied and strange because they had three songwriters, but it's still a cohesive record. Guided By Voices has those, too, if you dig far enough.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the record title? Is it explicitly referring to the cult?

MF: I guess it’s a combination of everything I could think that the phrase relates to. I caught the movie Heaven’s Gate for the first time very recently, partially because I knew I was talking to you soon and I felt like I should catch it. I didn’t want to see the entire thing, because it’s almost 4 hours long, but I saw an edit Steven Soderbergh did where he trimmed it down to about an hour and 40 minutes. I can sort of see why people think it’s one of the worst movies of all time. But I also got what the director was going for.

SILY: Wasn’t it not just that the movie was panned but Michael Cimino was abusive on set, and animals were abused?

MF: Yeah, I read into that. He was a nightmare to everyone involved. And the animals, when you realize what's happening in the movie, it’s like, “Oh, god, that’s not cool.”

SILY: I love Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, though. It takes a toll on you.

MF: The Deer Hunter is wild. I was incorrect about Heaven’s Gate being a movie in development hell for a while, but [when I thought that was the case,] it felt appropriate to [give the name] to a record that had been in development hell. But I think it only took them a year and a half to finish the film. The cult also had something to do with [the record title], but I was trying to think of phrases that had some religious overtone to it.

SILY: Did you grow up with religion?

MF: I grew up in a religious family for sure.

SILY: Do you practice now?

MF: Not really. [laughs]

SILY: Do you think your experience with religion has an influence on you as a person and on your music?

MF: It must, because it shows up in the aesthetic and the song titles. I think I just got really interested in knowing what the Satanic panic was all about in the 70′s and 80′s and finding the archival clips of videos and radio shows where people were discussing it. I think that was a big part of the reason for the band name and the album titles so far. The next one is probably going to end up following the same theme.

SILY: Have you played any Hellrazor shows recently?

MF: No. There are no plans for us to play any time soon. But I hope so!

SILY: Are you playing in anything?

MF: Jobber’s been playing. We started playing shows in the spring. We finished an EP that’s going to be out on Exploding In Sound in the fall. The majority of my energy as far as preparing for live shows is for Jobber. We might have some Hellrazor tapes to throw onto the merch table at Jobber shows. In case anybody’s interested, if they want to check it out, it’s there. Eventually, we’ll do some shows again. It’s just too hard to organize at the moment. It already took this long just to get this album finished, and it’s technically only half of the album.

SILY: What else is next for you in the short or long term?

MF: I’m really excited about Jobber. We finished some videos. We started recording the second album already.

SILY: Anything you’ve been watching, listening to, or reading lately you’ve dug?

MF: About a month into the lockdown, I watched Freaked, which has Keanu Reaves and Alex Winter, also known as Bill and Ted. It’s probably the best movie I’ve seen since lockdown and [since] I started watching a lot more movies. It’s pretty insane and way funnier than I thought it was gonna be. It’s a shame: Right around the time they were about to do post-production, 20th Century Fox overhauled their finances, and they released it without any promotion, so I had never heard of it. The sound design and costumes and effects are super pro. The important thing is that it’s very, very funny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. It’s wild. Keanu Reeves plays a "Dog Boy.” He was not credited for whatever reason. He was close friends with Alex Winter, so he was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll be in the movie, it sounds really funny.” But for some contractual reason, they couldn’t include his name.

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