CRASHING FALCON OVER PEPPER STEAK (TAKE I)
Sunday now, and I’m waiting in a parking for a cat named Drew Shefflit. He’s the drummer of
The Crashing Falcon, a pulverizing tech metal band from Huntsville that cakes on striking Iron
Maiden-type leads over violent math explosions. The OCTAGON tribe are oblivious to them, but
in usual kvlt mode they remark, ‘Isn’t that one of those million-word name bands? Like ‘I Saw
Your Girlfriend Skinning A Cat That Looked Like The Number Ten Last Autumn?’ Jumping from
one berg to the next, riding these little divisions…
This will be good because Shefflit represents so much of the scene I have no hope in
tapping otherwise. He’s been a long-time promoter since the late 90’s and has been on the
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friendly end of the metal/punk spectrum: “I came from Saint Louis, I moved around ’97, and I’ve
got a harder Southern accent then anyone from here, ha ha. I am the drummer of The Crashing
Falcon. Our history goes back fairly far in the Huntsville scene. Where you can give the whole
evolution of Detroit, I can basically do the same here. You’re hanging out with the OCTAGON
guys? They’re basically the black metal scene right?”
“Yeah, but it’s funny. The typical ‘you’re a poseur’ corpse paint black metal bands
hate them…” Drew Shefflit: “(Chuckles) That’s interesting…” “They’re definitely more
oldschool and don’t really get the tech stuff, but I’m into all that shit. I think your material is
really tight, really well done…”
“I appreciate that… Well, I came in here in 1997, this is when everyone loved Operation
Ivy and Rancid. There’s that side, then you have the people in love with Metallica. The death
metal scene is interesting. Back in the day there’s this guy named Garth, and those OCTAGON
guys probably talked about him already [Lance Wright’s guitarist in Tipper Gore]. He basically
ran the death metal scene and was one of the nicest motherfuckers as far as death metal goes. If
he wasn’t so cool, we would never have been accepted enough to even play a show with those
types of bands. He was always open-minded. He was in Fleshtized -- they were in the vein of
Hate Eternal, super-tech death, but doing their own thing. It’s one of the best albums ever to come
out as far as this area is concerned.
“What about your project?
“I guess our evolution would have been ‘nu-metal’ at the time, but more on the hardcore
vein like Vision of Disorder.
“Well this is like ‘97 right? All that shit ran over everything because it was fresh and
new…
“Exactly. There was no Napster, there was no exposure. Korn and Manson were still at
their peak, Soulfly… I had this band Postal. We’re still kind of in the grunge era, System of a
Down and Incubus started picking up… We even had a DJ at the time. The records he was
scratching were weird shit though, like women screaming. The whole skater scene was involved
in that too. My band was weird enough to where we could play any shows.”
“How did it play out?”
“Columbine affected everything. I had a black trench coat with red spikes, so I looked
almost Gestapo (laughs). There are some skinhead crews around here, but I was never into that.
Columbine happens, and everyone freaks out. The parents have ‘think groups’ to figure out what
to do for the kids. They asked kids to be on committees and they decided to start throwing shows
to give them something to do on a Friday night instead of going mudding, getting drunk. These
weren’t like dark, scary kids. They got their clothes at the thrift store, shit like that. The
‘Neverland’ shows were central to the evolution of hardcore in this area. They started doing huge
ones with 200 kids easily, all local. We were doing those until this kid with an Albert Einstein
haircut yells ‘fuck you buddy,’ and my singer throws it back into the microphone. We were
expelled from the program. There are so many places we play that have ‘no cursing’ rules.”
“Were you out for good?”
“The only way to change expulsion is to join the committee. Once we infiltrated that they
told us they wanted an area so kids could do homework, which is fucking crazy, because every
church in this area has some huge gymnasium, a coffee shop, so they handle all that. The adults
were like, ‘we don’t like this, its bringing out the wrong crowd.’ What do you mean by ‘the
wrong crowd?’ Are these not the kids that you want to be watching over? These are the ones you
should be worried about. These are the trench coat kids. If you give them a community and
something to look forward to… They thought it was going to be some clean cut thing, they didn’t
even understand what their original objective was. You know that band The Pink Spiders?”
“Oh yeah, we did a show with them in Detroit back in 2005.”
“We used to have them all the time when they were Silent Friction. My Epiphany from
Nashville, Curbside Service, 25 To Life. This is where DIY took over, ‘we’ll run out of Knights
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of Columbus.’ We totally broke away, took all their shows, and it ruined that crew. Then you had
Axion [promotion company], who did Buddyfest. They had Underoath, Dead To Fall, Aria, Bury
Your Dead before they blew up. Axion were introducing two-steps and breakdowns in this area.
On the other side the death metal scene are booking Nile back when their guarantee was only
$200. This is Catacombs of Nephran Ka era. They already had their distros, they had their shit
together, bringing in Jungle Rot, a lot of Relapse bands before they started getting big. They
pretty much stuck to their own.”
“Are there many Christian hardcore bands in Alabama?”
“There’s a ton of Christian bands around here, which to me perverts the straight-edge
notion. Straight-edge (sXe) is supposed to set you up where you have the clarity of mind to help
make the world a just place. It’s definitely not an end in itself, only a means to an end. Many
Christian bands decide that it goes with their religion. To have that type of attachment to faith,
which is belief in something you have no proof of… If you read the Bible word for word, it’s a
horrible, horrible thing. If we compare that to Star Wars, who are we rooting for? We’re rooting
for Luke and the Rebel Forces. The bad guys are the Imperial Army with the Emperor in charge
of everything. He’s got his right hand man, the martyr Darth Vader. We’ve got Storm Troopers in
their white Imperial uniforms – the angels fighting for the lord. But who do we root for? The
rebels, the one third of the angels that were expelled. If you look how petty that god is in biblical
terms, it’s horrible to say this is holy when we can look at the witch trials, the Spanish inquisition,
the crusades, oppression of women. You can find a verse in the bible to justify any sin you want.
My favorite verse is Ezekiel 23:20 where it talks of two adulterer sisters, something to the effect
of they ‘lusted after lovers whose genitals were that of mules and his emissions were that of
horses.’”
“Is this a prevalent theme in your lyrics?”
“That does play into what our message is politically. We’re saying all these nice and
beautiful things about god. We’re trying to set up a deity who isn’t this petty, cruel kid with a
magnifying glass to an anthill. God is something that you cannot define. With our human
comprehension, this is something we can’t grasp. The only thing we can say we’re gifted with is
our own existence. What we should be dealing with instead of the afterlife is what happens right
now. A lot of the Christian bands have a dark and scary image, yet they parade their Christianity.
And when Jesus is supposed to be the prince of peace? It doesn’t add up when you think of their
logic and their ideals, but when you realize heavy Christian music is the fastest growing music
industry in America… Kids are there to throw down, listen to heavy music, and socialize between
the sets. They’re not leaving there with any more knowledge about Jesus Christ. Then you look at
the world situation. If we do let the Christians hold our political power, are they now trying to
push a foreign policy that’s trying to make Revelations come true? Your foreign policy is making
Armageddon happen? Fuck that. They’re trying to legitimize prophecy by their policies, and
that’s a scary fucking thing.”
“Where does the band name come from?”
“Back when we were Postal, The Crashing Falcon was going to be the next album title. It
just sounded cool, like cellar door. This is the same idea for kamikaze pilots. The phoenix rises
from the flames. What would be the antithesis of that? The Crashing Falcon. But it also works
like ‘Fist Of The Lotus,’ like a kung fu move or something.”
“Tell me about the music itself.”
“As far as heavy goes we’re looking for a certain emotion. It is a thing like ‘what does
madness sound like?’ Not necessarily anger, because speed isn’t necessarily power. We can
watch the fastest death metal bands play. If they are doing a blast-beat at 270 BPM -- if he’s
barely tapping his snare -- if you don’t have good triggers or a good PA, it’s not going to come
off in some underground dive.”
“What do you have to say about the straight-edge scene?”
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“People will say ‘it’s not for me but I respect it.’ You don’t even have to respect it. This
is picking abstinence over moderation, because abstinence is either ‘I’m not gonna deal with this,
‘cause it’s going to fuck me up,’ or a dietary choice. Alcoholism runs in my family. They’re not
nice drunks, their violent drunks. I have that stigma, and I don’t need to deal with that. Many of
the sXe are right wing conservatives. Especially with people talking about bringing back
prohibition, which is a terrible idea. If it were up to me I’d legalize drugs. Certain parts of town
should have a red light district. It keeps down violence and crime, just like New Orleans.”
“Are there fascistic, violent straight-edge movements here? Like the Salt Lake City kids
who were carving X’s into peoples backs? What about the Courage Crew? There are quite a
few of them in Detroit, or used to be. They actually ripped off some kids’ ear at the Bottle
Rocket Fest in 2004. I knew a guy that had his leg broken and half his ribs because he was
eating a hamburger at a crustie, vegan, sXe squat.”
“Thankfully no. The kids dance hard as hell, but overall they’re super nice. There are
occasions when you have people from different cities, different crews, or the Ozzfest mentality,
and if they get kicked in the face a fight is going to break out. But that’s any scene. We started
from where you had emo bands playing with ska bands, punk bands playing with heavy bands all
in one show. I know where things got divided, when these bands drifted apart. I guess that just
happens naturally, but there were personal politics. I’m a little guilty of feuding, but overall I’m
trying my best to stay open-minded and keep shows diverse. We’ve had Dysrhythmia play here,
we’ve had Origin…”
“What are some bullshit aspects within hardcore and tech that need end?”
“The whole macho Ozzfest, ‘I’m the alpha male of the bunch, let’s join the Marines.’ On
the East Coast people started swinging fists to clear space ‘cause they were sick of that. But
people get very particular about their dancing. They’ll make fun of a kid whose two-step isn’t as
superb as theirs or his spin-kick is too karate-akkata. I think that overall hardcore needs to be
more like Don Cornelius’ Soul Train. That would be awesome. If we look at the evolution of
dance – we have punk, the grunge, people getting drunk and not caring about manners. You got
your picking up change, two-steps, skanks, windmills, spin-kicks, cartwheels. A lot of times there
might be less females then males.”
“How do we up the female quotient?”
“It’s interesting -- we still haven’t figured out how to make it a couple’s dance for
hardcore. People will say ‘that’s gay,’ but when you think about what music is and the role its
played in human evolution -- whether we want to admit it or not -- it’s basically mating dances.
You look at the male dominated, chauvinistic, ‘I’m the silver back of the pack type gorilla
dancing.’ Its spiders throwing their legs in the air, ‘I’m the crab with the biggest pinchers.’ It
would be great if people were more pro-active in evolving that. Let’s get hokey with it. Rock and
roll is supposed to be freedom. It needs to go back to a lack of rules….”
THE ANGELIC PROCESS OVER PEPPER STEAK (TAKE II)
Keep repeating to yourself that it will pass. These shakes aren’t permanent; you don’t have a
developing case of Parkinson’s. My hands won’t stop trembling, my body is shaking
spasmodically. The walls keep sliding, objects distorting, faces keep breathing. I feel like Keanu
Reeves at the end of A Scanner Darkly…
Then I realize I haven’t had any R.E.M. sleep since the LA Murderfest in April. The body
goes under, but the mind keeps buzzing. The second I come to I wake up in an unfamiliar place,
never really sure where I am at first or what’s going to happen next. Then I recall my lack of
water or healthy food, and that all I’ve been able to drink in Alabama is scotch or whiskey.
It’s been relentless party-wise. One second I’m crawling around a sleazy club, the next
we’re stoned listening to Akitsa or Godless North at the apartment, or Mortigan is on drums and
I’m flying through guitar scales in our joke grind band of the week “CHINESE WORK ETHIC.”
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We’ve been taping our sessions on a karaoke machine at Profana’s shack-turned-HQ,
which like a splice between a Stan Winston horror workshop and a down-south haunt of the
incarcerated Damian Echols. The mini-home is filled with candles, live-band flag backdrops,
pentagrams, splatters of fake blood, Jason Vorhees posters, and thick pieces of leather and spent
bullet shells. Profana utilizes it all to run his hand-made, BM war-gear online store...
At any moment The Angelic Process will be picking me up for Pepper Steak at a little Chinese
joint on Logan Street. These two are driving a 2 ½ hours from the outskirts of Atlanta, and I’ve
had enough difficulty getting musicians to walk a single block.
The duo pull up in a small black hatchback, backseat cluttered with promo boxes. They
are both genteels. In Shotgun is K Wood; a sort of quiet, polite, farm-boy gone soundfreak with
tribal tattoos on his arm and long black hair. His wife [and bassist] M Dragynfly is pure southern