Mutant Supremacy Win-Tour photo dump + Tour Diary

I have been pretty busy and haven't had a chance to update the ol' metal photo bloggins for awhile but I'm back and present to you the long over-due photo dump and unedited tour diary of Mutant Supremacy's Nuclear Win-Tour from January 2011. Enjoy and let me go back to listening to Incantation.

The tour started under circumstances that could be charitably called “sub-optimal”. Due to several cancelations in the first week, Wednesday Dec 12th found the six of us driving 800 miles to Tennessee in a blizzard...

Upon arriving in Nashville Thursday afternoon, we killed a few hours by visiting Jay Krupka, the proprietor of Cyclonic Guitars, who did custom work on four of my guitars and of whom I am a partial endorsee. His work shop is a modded BC Rich wet dream, overflowing with guitars that he has hot-rodded and repainted, and anyone interested in one of a kind guitars at a third the cost of a custom shop order would be well served to look him up.

The Nashville show was again, charitably put, a train wreck. We were playing in a claustrophobic and dubiously heated basement that only seemed to have one working outlet. Our gear and bodies took up approximately two thirds of the room. To save space, Winslow, ever the team player, opted to play shirtless. The other bands had played through combo amps and the sound, while not being good, was manageable. Against our half stacks, however, the sound devolved into a chaotic whirlpool of distortion, and not in a good way. While playing there were moments where I couldn’t tell if my guitar was actually making noise as I couldn’t pick it out of the noise. Three songs in Curt’s amp stopped working. After about twenty minutes of awkward diagnosis we found one of the fuses had not only blown, but exploded, leaving only broken glass shards in its housing. At that point, one of the house’s inhabitants came down stairs to inform us that it was getting late and if we managed to coax more life out of it that we really should only play one more song as the neighbors might complain. We told him that the amp wasn’t going to be back and that was all we could do. The last band played in the living room as we packed our gear and reloaded the van.

The next show was in Asheville NC. Special thanks are due to our hosts Chad and Hannah for exemplary hospitality, Hannah even baked us a cake. We had a drinks and snacks with Chad and Ben, both members of Shadow of the Destroyer, who unfortunately weren’t playing with us that night as their drummer’s other band was opening for Neurosis the next day in San Francisco. Ben made the best of the situation by drinking an entire 4 Loko during the five minute drive to the venue. He seemed lucid but there are a couple hours during the show where he was completely unaccounted for. I think the 4 Loko made him physically disassociate, losing his physical form like Sauron. Whatever they put in that shit is no joke. The owner of the Get Down’s band Blowtorch Circumcision played first, and covered Motorhead and Metallica. The second band was a pop punk band called Biggy Stardust and the Wretched Hives, and they reminded me of the Sloppy Seconds. We played to an attentive and energetic crowd, but got almost no recognition from the Death cover. Back to school, people. The last band, Megahurtz, played a thoroughly enjoyable mix of thrash and NWOBHM and also covered Metallica. Before leaving we rearranged the bar’s marquee to more properly represent what had been unleashed upon it.

Atlanta. We’d been looking forward to this show for months. We were playing at a club called the Drunken Unicorn, where our sound man Lewis used to work. He had actually called ahead to the manager Armando and arranged to mix the entire show that night, thus earning the only money he was going to make on the road with our broke asses, so props to him. The world helps those who help themselves. We had learned via the internet that Lectures on the Apocalypse also covers Zombie Ritual. A few drinks in, I cornered their singer Dan and asked if it was still part of their set. I broke it down like this: “If you want, why don’t you let us do it, and you can come sing it with us? If you don’t want to, we have backup covers but it would be cool.” “Oh really?” he answered, his interest piqued, “what are they?”. Here I made a critical error. “Slayer”. “What song?” “Altar of Sacrifice and Jesus Saves.” Dan said he’d consult the rest of his band. They, predictably, voted that they wanted to do their Death cover, and they wanted to hear us cover Slayer.

Thus it was decided. In a way it was for the best, because Georgia still exists in the dark ages and allows smoking indoors. This wreaks havoc on my throat, so having Winslow sing a couple songs in the third half of the set is a welcome break. I could write more about who played what and analyze the show in detail, but I’ll skip it because the rest of the night was much more interesting. The Unicorn is down a the block from an infamous strip club called the Claremont Lounge. Infamous as in known for it’s um, lack of age or weight restrictions on the dancers. While commendably egalitarian, it leads to an experience that lans more toward “funny” than “sexy”. Really, you just need to go there to see what I mean. The Claremont was packed but we found a corner of the bar, ordered beers and singles. After the Claremont closed we returned to the Unicorn, as we were staying with Armando and had after hours privileges. Winslow had been verging on “uh-oh” drunk since we loaded out and by three he was completely out of control. As usual, this manifested itself in the form of inarticulate screaming and physical assaults on his bandmates. At one point it took all three of us to hold him down as the other after hours patrons looked on in a mixture of confusion and horror.

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Finally it was deemed that enough was enough, and we were corralled out of the bar. I emerged last, having tried in vain to get one last drink. I collided with Robert who was on his way back inside. “Um, Winsow’s head is bleeding”. Sure enough, Winslow had launched a surprise attack on Robert in the parking lot that had backfired, landing him cranium first on the pavement. The back of his head looked like a bloody sweaty rats nest. Miraculously, this did not deter him from trying to fight us, and had to be restrained from stabbing Curt with one of Armando’s kitchen knives while Lewis was holding a towel and ice over his still bleeding wound. -Sam Awry

The next morning was, as you could imagine, a son of a bitch. Broken bullet belt, missing beer coozie and a head that felt like an overripe kiwi. Had to consult some video evidence and the recollections of others (also hazy) to discover the origin of the bloody towels on the floor. Alabama and some recording was the next chunk of our southern booze and metal bender. Robert had been in touch with his pal Jamie at Sarcophagus Studios about recording a couple of tracks when and if a southern tour was to happen, and getting a chance to record with friends isn’t to be passed up. -Winslow

We journeyed through the hills of Atlanta to Auburn, Alabama arriving at Sarcophagus Studios. Home studios are quite a common thing these days. However, this one is truly unique. The architecture and design of the house is a creation of Bazaad, a professor of architecture at Auburn University. It was like a cute single peaked church exaggerated, and stretched vertically to strip it of all holiness thus making it a perfect home and studio for evil dudes and evil music. This is the home of my good friend and tour buddy Jamie Uertz, who also plays guitar in the band Hematovore. Jamie and his band mate, Rob Stewart, greeted and welcomed Los Mutantes into the studio. We got right to work, unpacking drums and guitars prepping to record some new jams that have been in the works, some for more than a year. As per our normal recording process goes, drums first, guitars, bass then vocals. It took me (Robert) a good few runs to acclimate to the environment of the room and headphones. However with the help and encouragement of Suren and the timeless inspiration from a Hustler Magazine, day 1 at Sarcophagus Studios ended 6 hours later with 4 solid drum tracks.

With all the drum tracks finished. Sam and Curt got right to work on guitars. We had a few gear hang ups but they sorted themselves out quickly and the result was killer. While Curt was tracking guitars, Sam got busy and made a generous pot of chili that everyone shared. Tasty as it was, it certainly made the rounds..... and continued rounding out the night as well as the next morning...yeeesh! I'd like to pretend that I know the songs pretty thoroughly, but when these guys start recording, the fine toothed comb definitely makes its way through every note in the songs... in death metal, that's a lot of notes. The 4 songs were rather smooth and efficient. There was some deliberation and reconfiguration to guitar solos, but that is to be expected. Remember kids, if it goes to tape it's there for life. So do it for the kids. Crushing tones, shredding solos, and ripping farts ended day 2 of recording. I made a fish dinner and we drank ourselves to sleep.

Chocolate peanut butter with apples.

Guitars finalized, Drums tracked, time for bass and vocals. Winslow's time to shine. By "shine" I mean to assault your ears with a ultra violent bass tone coming from his killer '83 mockingbird, early 70's V-4 and maniacal playing. He was the brightest bulb on the block that day. We know this because the neighbors confirmed it. HA! Winslow blazed through the tracks like he normally does. Probably due largely in part to the fact that we had all just spent the past 2 days combing of over the songs so meticulously. All of which is good thing, because in the studio, proficiency is king. We ended day 3 with a trip to Jamie's tattoo appointment to meet his awesome tattoo artist that goes by the name of KANAN (pro: Kaa- nan). It's a well earned title, seeing how this guy is over 6'2" built like a shit brick house and actually owns a SHARPENED replica of the 11lb sword used in Conan the Barbarian. That's not all he owns either.... he gave us a tour of the shop, showing us the hidden doors he built into the shop and the methods they are used for in the event of a full on zombie attack. He also showed us his replica masks of Mike Meyers (Halloween), Darth Vader, and a Tuskin Raider. Finally, he dug into the attic of the shop and lowered a real life BABY COFFIN onto the shop floor! Kanan asked us to sign the coffin, So we did! It was awesome, we drew crude images of dead babies, tombstones and weapons. What great end to a day of recording.


Day 4 was quick, just track some vocals and finish before the neighbors call and report a torture scene! Ha! Jamie constructed a simple make shift iso-booth for vocals... we properly accessorized it with the best photos of the Huslter's amateur section, one of which a rather obese woman had scribbled "slut for black cock" across her naked vagina. Oh the limitless inspiration that smut can provide. With vocals as finished as they could get and the cops still not outside, we concluded our recording session at Sarcophagus Studios with Jamie Uertz. The rough mixes sound killer! I cant wait to hear the final versions, especially once they are released on splits with some of our favorite other bands. Far out man, far fuckin' out. -Robert Nelson

Savannah... didn’t pull much expectation from me personally. We were booked at a punk house called PonyPen somewhere residential in or around Savannah (I’d have more of an idea about it, but a lot of the south looks the same to me). It’s always funny in an unfamiliar city playing “find the venue by looking for metal dudes”. The house was visually similar to most punk houses I’ve ever seen: wrecked and graffitied couch on the porch, random bits of signage from stores and municipal buildings, clever shit on the walls and a rescue pitbull.

Our hosts, Andy and XXXXXX were quite gracious in their offer to set us up with air-mattresses and floor-space for the night, so a convenience store excursion was in order. Sam settled for a $7 bottle of sake instead of the usual shite beer routine, and he came out of it satisfied enough that when the final third of the bottle was knocked over and spilt, he crawled back to the gas station and grabbed another. We got our gear moved inside and against the walls since we were playing at the last of the three band show. Savannah knows how to appreciate some live music, or at least this particular crew of folks. The house was about as packed as could be without stacking people on the shoulders of others. Luckily for all of us, the police kept themselves busy elsewhere that night as our amps made quite a storm of sound in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Eventually people were climbing on each others heads for lack of stage to dive from. It was a truly pleasant surprise to see such enthusiasm for death metal in a punk setting. Miraculously, nobody stepped on our pedals or knocked anything unplugged in the whirlwind mosh that was cooked up. I borrowed a Bass Muff pedal from one of the residents who was in the first band, and it sounded fucking fierce through my old Ampeg. Four Loko felt fucking fierce in my guts as its lemony poison took hold. When the smoke cleared, pizza appeared and we’d sold a good amount of records patches and shirts. Thank you Savannah! Perhaps we’d break even this tour, hehe. -Winslow

Okay so I'm not much of a writer, so I'll sum up the rest of the debauchery because the Mutante Supremidado dudes left the last few days for me. Here you go in a nutshell... Raleigh was invaded by Richmond's Cannabis Corpse (which started the last few string of dates with them) and Inter-Arma. In Richmond we stayed with the Parasytic dudes (Erik, Nick, Ethan..) and Mutant Supremacy, Cannabis Corpse and Short Bus Pile Up played a killer sold out show at Strange Matter. Fast forward, Philly included some blaspheming at a loft/house show with a couple of religious text books we found in hotel rooms around the country. And then back home to Brooklyn for the home show. All in all, it was a ridiculously fun tour and I can say I've never been with a group of people that fart as much as Mutant Supremacy. -Suren

Raleigh, Inter-Arma and Cannabis Corpse




Richmond





Philly









View the Flickr photo set here.
Stay tuned I've got a few shows to post that I've been too busy to post, they include Magrudergrind, Nails, Misery Index and Strong Intention.