Napalm Flesh: Spellcaster Interview

Welcome to another edition of Napalm Flesh. This week we have an interview with Portland’s Spellcaster, one of the bands spearheading the renaissance of traditional metal in the Pacific Northwest. We also have this week’s event rundown as well as exclusive reviews of the new releases from Animals as Leaders, Czar, Satan’s Host, Sunn 0)), and Vektor.

Tonight, check out Dead Vessel, Prosthetic Heads, Salvation is Calling and Ritual of Terror at Burts. $5 gets you in, music at 8 p.m.

On Saturday, December 3, Raunch Records hosts Full of Hell and Heartless with local support from Adipocere. Music gets underway at 7 p.m., and make sure to bring some money for the touring bands.

Also Saturday, Club Sound hosts a Sub for Santa benfit show featuring Gaza, Dismantled, Collapse, Beyond This Flesh, Outlet and Icebreaker. $13 gets you in and goes straight to benefit the Sub for Santa program. Doors at 6 p.m.

On Sunday, Burt’s Tiki Lounge hosts a slew of the nice grinding stuff with Buried at Birth, Behold the Kingdom, Graverobber, All Systems Fail, Burn Your World and Drag Me Under. $6 for six bands.



Wednesday December 7, Saviours return to Salt Lake City with Ramming Speed and local support from Oldtimer and Top Dead Celebrity at Burts, $10 to get in, music underway at 8 p.m.

Spellcaster interview
Revitalizing the Pacific Northwest tradition of '80s metal bands, Portland's Spellcaster claims it is only the spearhead of a rapidly emerging heavy metal renaissance. Their self-financed tours and dedication to the true essence of metal has garnered them significant attention, and from the first moment I heard the chorus of “Chainsaw Champion,” I was unable to get it out of my head. Spellcaster sounds like true heavy metal at its fastest and finest, fitting somewhere between Thundersteel-era Riot and the driving heaviness of Raven's early career. At their Salt Lake show on November 19, Raunch surged with headbanging fans—an intimate record store setting that seemed a perfect fit for their nostalgic style. Supported by local metal gods CastleAxe and Visigoth, Spellcaster's set electrified the gathered masses, holding the entire audience under their spell. After the show, I sat down with Gabe Franco, Shad Covert, and Cory Boyd to talk about their tour, future plans, and origins.

SLUG: How's the tour been going so far?
Gabe Franco: Actually pretty good. This is our fifth show I think we've played in the last nine days. We went down the west coast, and Portland was cool, you know, we've got our local fanbase there. We headed down to Bedford, we've actually never played there before. My mom lives there, so we stayed with her and shit, but the crowd there was actually pretty cool, a lot of people showed up. Oakland—
Shad Covert: Oakland was great.
Franco: Yeah.
Covert: We got a buddy named Steve, he's in a band called Midnight Chaser, who was also out there touring, and they're really fun, really good live. And they're really cool guys. We met him on our last tour, and this time around we ended up staying with him. That guy knows how to party, the band is good.
Franco: Yeah, gotta give a shameless promotion to Midnight Chaser there. Those guys kick ass.

SLUG: Any plans for a bigger tour in the future?
Franco: Yeah, I mean eventually. We want to do a lot more of these west coast ones, in the next coming months, and then maybe if we could hook up with some other bands, we could go on a U.S. tour.
Cory Boyd: The main idea behind it is, we want to get a solid fanbase in the whole U.S. but start small with small areas, instead of trying to do the U.S. tour the whole time. Do the west coast over and over, and once we build that solid fanbase, move maybe over to the midwest, and the east coast. Then we do a big tour.

SLUG: That's a pretty smart idea. Tonight you were asking for a five dollar cover to pay for your travel expenses. Do you guys usually finance your own tours?
Covert: Yeah. (laughs) We go to work, save up the money, and everyone goes, “Oh, shit, we got enough money, let's go!” Then we hit the road.
Franco: The tours are definitely still costing us. But that's, of course, with the hope that it'll pay off.
Covert: And it seems like, in the end, it's always worth it, because we always end up havin' a blast.

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