fogging out their Nissan window as they drove away smiling. Before they left the greatest death
metal band in the world even bought me an ice cream cone…
I’d lingered around The Funhouse anticipating my next adventure when it appears that
word has gotten around about who I am. In the BBQ tent this Betty Page looking chick
approached me. “Are you that guy doing that book?” “Yeah, I guess you could say that. You a big
Mad Max fan?”
Her face turned to a scowl. “Did you just say Max Hardcore? What the fuck is wrong
with you, you sick fuck?” “No, no, I mean like Mel Gibson, the apocalypse…” She lightens up for
one second, then I finish, “But that creepy old man with the cowboy hat does some pretty sexy
shit, don’t ya think?” Killed that one pretty fast…
Luckily I got a ride back to the Plankton house from some guy in a Slipknot hoodie
whose girlfriend was the bar’s co-owner. Otherwise I’d been sleeping in the bushes of the Space
Needle, which kind of resembles green pubic hair in the right abstract lighting…
Back to the current moment. Mike Gilmore approaches with a curt handshake, and buys us a
pitcher of PBR. He’s about 5 foot 10 with a medium build and short black hair. Friendly
demeanor, and a jeans and t-shirt guy all the way.
“So tell the me the usual for starters – Seattle, Hunab Ku, who you are and what you
do, blah blah blah.”
Mike Gilmore: “Where to begin? Well… I was in a band called Tub Ring.”
“You were in Tub Ring?!?”
“I was in Tub Ring from ‘93 to 2001, I was the drummer. I’m the singer in Hunab Ku
now. I thought as a drummer, you know how you feel overlooked as a composer and whatnot… I
broke off with another dude who played guitar and we wrote a record. Pretty much did a lot of the
instruments for lack of musicians. So we assembled a record, sort of put it out here to get
members for the live band. That really caught a lot of people’s ears. Surprisingly enough,
Dillinger Escape Plan – that’s how I met them. I started going back and forth with Between The
Buried And Me, The Red Chord. It was really promising to get that feedback… We’re still in
Chicago at that point and it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t even tell you how many drummers
we tried out. So we head out here at the end of 2003, just picked up and left – a bass player, a
guitar player and myself. After two years of searching – and I mean searching – we put a reward
poster up: ‘Anyone who can play one Hunab Ku song to the tee within five takes gets $300.’ We
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had so many takers and it never happened. No one… It is very complex. There’s just not many
people who can pull it off perfect.”
“How would you describe the music?”
“Very progressive. It’s always easy to compare bands, and I know no one wants to, but
the fact is you gotta relate to people what they’ve already heard… Tech metal, like if Dillinger
Escape Plan, Fantomas, and Meshuggah had a big baby. A big, weird, fucking baby… It’s got
like umpteen tempo changes, soundscape-wise its all Mike Patton stuff. Its just out of left field,
you don’t know what’s coming. Meshuggah heavy ass-kicking type groove stuff…”
“What about the message, the lyrics, the presentation…”
“We’re very untypical. We don’t really look like metal guys, half of us are jazz guys &
lovers of all kinds of music… You know, I’m 33. When you go through your 20’s a lot of shit
happens -- becoming an adult, traveling, moving away from your family. Art is supposed to
reflect life, and what could be more reflective? I’m not all about partying, I just don’t feel like
that. It’s no girlfriend stuff, none of that crap. Just real, true life stuff.”
“The Tech thing…”
“We got a drummer after two years of moving here, and then it took about a year to get
him up to speed, ‘cause he was a straight-up fusion drummer, like a jazz drummer. But he was
always a big metalhead, into Necrophagist and shit. We’ve played about 13, 14 shows since last
summer. All winter we didn’t play, took some time off to get this record out… Music like this,
you don’t sort-of just practice. It’s all the time or it’s nothing. We practice 4 times a week, at
least…”
“Do you have a distributor yet?”
“No, it is independent. We are having some help from a local label called Black Sheep
Records. It’s just cool for someone to latch on and say ‘I believe in what you’re doing’ and
honestly help. Granted, it’s not tons of money – they’re just helping with the street team, helping
get our disc in local press, sending out 100’s of press kits and absorbing the cost for that. It may
sound like a little bit, but that’s a lot of work… We’re so happy to get this out. I know its gonna
turn heads, ‘cause even if we were on a bill with those bands I’d mentioned, it’d be like, ‘whoa,
those guys are aliens.’ The core of what we do is pretty much metal, but we’re way on the
outskirts of that. Metal crowds can relate, but some purists would be like, ‘what the hell are they
doing?’ I’m all for the fusion of different styles, that’s how music evolves.”
“Was it the same way with Tub Ring? Because that was heavy, way out there, really
weird, but it’s a different kind of heavy. Did the straight-forward metal guys really hate Tub
Ring because you guys were more whacky and fun?”
“The last one I was on was Drake Equation. That was produced by Trey from Mr. Bungle
and Secret Chiefs 3. Since then, they’ve changed drastically. I wouldn’t want to say pop but…
There’s more actual songwriting and tons of catchy melody. I seriously love it. It’s like they
became one of my favorite bands after I left, which is funny… Hunab sort of has that thing, but
we’re not as misfit-ish because we are very heavy, and live it’s very brutal, even though there’s
these strange-o, whacked out breakdowns and weird sounds, samples, effects & electronics. The
core of it is metal and I think that’s going to catch people. I don’t want to be a faceless band. I’d
rather have people be ‘I hate that, I know I hate that’ then ‘Wow they were good, what’s their
name?’ Blah. People just latch onto what they know. I want to push the envelope.”
“Well you understand where I’m coming from. Do you think Seattle is the best city in
America for people such as ourselves?”
“Man that is a great thing you brought up because this city is very accommodating of
people like ourselves. It just drew me out here -- that was the most major thing. It’s not ‘go to
high school, go to college, job, car payment, blah blah,’ that thing. Here there’s people in their
50’s and 60’s doing art. Maybe they do have a day job. Sure, everyone’s gotta live, but seeing
painters on the sidewalk – I think that says something about the city. It is very liberal too, and not
very accepting of this cookie cutter lifestyle. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Coming out
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here, it made me realize, ‘What the fuck? Why does the number of years that I’m on this planet
dictate how I have to live or when I have to stop doing my art?’ The only thing it does mean is
that I’m honing and sharpening my tools. I’m not a regular guy. I work but it’s all in the name of
what I do. I don’t go there for one moment because of anything else but music.”
“Got any good acid stories?”
“Now we’re going there? I used to be huge into Grateful Dead, I traveled with them a
little bit. That was… I’d never shied away, especially being quote-unquote ‘metal.’ I’m a very
non-typical ‘metal guy,’ ‘cause I think its so played out. Any stereotype gets annoying, and
there’s narrow-mindedness in every subculture. I’ve never been a scene person. I don’t care about
what people ‘have’ to look like. That shit has no bearing – I just want to make innovative music. I
think people get so caught up in that, and metal -- it’s just so cheesy. I don’t have any ill feelings
towards anyone, its just like ‘shit man, that sucks for you.’ Music to me is supposed to evoke
emotion. Life, at the end, is all about the emotions you’ve had, and it’s important to get that from
a broad spectrum of art. But it’s extra funny when we’re opening up for a larger metal band and
the crowd is just stereotypical metal. We get these looks, like ‘these non-metal guys.’ I grew up in
the early 80’s, I have tattoos. I idolized motherfuckers like Slayer with leather & spikes, but I
don’t feel like I’m a part of that. I feel comfortable just being comfortable. Maybe it’s just over-
analyzing on my part, but I think people are like ‘you don’t fit here,’ and then we get up there and
we’re insanely violent and fucking crazy and weird. Then people come up to you like, ‘whoa
man, that was fuckin’ killer, so heavy and just nuts.’ Just drop the pre-conceived stereotype shit
man…”
SO METAL WE SHIT BOLT THROWER RECORDS
Capitol Hill with In Memorium vocalist Nihilist, who’s has just ordered our second pitcher of
beer. It’s been a long day of drinking. By the time Mike Gilmore left, we’d ran through two
pitchers of beer and some vodka & cranberry. I spent the next two hours outside Nihilist’s work,
slobbering like a buffoon and forcibly singing Dragonforce to yuppie onlookers…
It’s metal discussion tonight, and we have quite the fantastic kvlt metal character on deck.
Nihilist is a minor legend, having parlayed between a half dozen groups and launching a dozen
albums – In Memorium, Stahlmantel, Hatefuckers, Abazagorath, Thy Infernal…
One quick lick of the In Memorium bio tells all: “Spawned amidst the grim bedeviled
hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest in the vernal months of 1997, In Memorium was invoked to
channel the spirit of utter darkness and distill it into a musical avatar. The result was an aural
holocaust that has not merely continued to this day but has deepened, descended further and
further down into the stygian bowels of sheerest morbidity.”
“Well the predominant thing I’ve come to realize about Seattle is that it’s forever
1997.”
Nihilist: “It’s funny you say that ‘cause I was walking down the street a month ago with
shorts on and combat boots and somebody yelled out their window ‘IT’S NOT 1997 ANYMORE
ASSHOLE!!’ So yeah, I guess you could see that. There’s a lot here that reminded me of the 90’s
in general. It kind of never went away. They still play Weezer like there’s no tomorrow, they still
play Guns N’ Roses, all that shit.”
“Take that as a free license to rant…”
“To me the origins of Seattle comes from The Accused, Metal Church, Queensryche,
stuff like that. I’ve never understood the fascination with Nevermore being huge. Power metal is
pretty popular here, a lot of people asking if I like Blind Guardian, Stratovarius, Iron Savior. To
me its all Iron Maiden, Helloween, MANOWAR…”
“Weren’t you in Engorged?”
“Here’s how it all started. I grew up in Illinois 21 years, my sister lived south side of
Portland, so growing up we’d always visit. When I moved to Portland I was living with a bunch
of crust punks and made friends with Agalloch. Bunch of bands like Detestation, Resist, Landfill,
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Starving Delirious. I met this guy from Murdergod, which to me was the be all end all
culmination of Bestial Warlust and grindcore. Three of the members, we started doing a band
called Hatefuckers which was a grind kind of funk – weird culmination of stuff with two vocals, a
guy doing noise, samples, crazy stuff. Hatefuckers kind of morphed into Thy Infernal and
Engorged. I got kicked out of Thy Infernal in 97, right as we were signing to Moribund. Then I
got asked to move up here and join In Memorium.”
“What’s the Bethlehem/Juergen Bartsch connection? I heard he just got out of the
mental institution.”
“I work with him on a project called Stahlmantel. I was in Wraithen and my band mate
got an email from one of the guys in Bethlehem saying he really liked our demo, it got around to
Juergen too. I asked if they wanted to do a split 7” inch. So we did the split, we paid the rights to
the Bethlehem song -- $250. We did the covers ourselves, did the layout, pressed it ourselves.
Magic had control of all the stuff, had all the stuff sent to him in Alaska where he’s married to the
ex-keyboardist from In Memorium. No one has been in contact since their wedding… I basically
got 25 copies, took them to Europe when Abazagorath went on tour. Then I moved out to Jersey
to do the Abazagortah album. Juergen asked if I wanted to sing on two songs for a new
Bethlehem album. Sent me the songs, I recorded one but he didn’t receive it in time for the Mein
Weg album. You know ‘Dr. Meezo?’ He says he’s going to use it someday. So now I’m doing
Stahlmantel with him. He sends me all the music, I do all the vocals at my band mates house, but
there are a lot of times where I won’t hear from him for weeks, and then he’ll email me back
saying he’s having lots of problems. There’s a time I went like 5 months without from hearing
from him.”
“What do you think of Michael Jackson?”
“I like the Thriller video. Every time I hear this song now I think of Seinfeld, which I’m a
total fucking devotee of.”
“I recently realized that George Costanza is always going to take a shit, or coming into
the shot pulling up his pants from the bathroom.”
“The first time he meets the girl he really likes the interesting conversation they have is
how toilet paper has never changed and may never change throughout their lifetime. It’s the girl
he says ‘I love you’ to. I think the best white comedian ever besides Lenny Bruce would be Bill
Hicks.”
“Got any random weird crazy stories just for the hell of it?”
“I saw a ghost, the lady who babysat me when I was 11 years old. That really fucked with
me. Made me really understand there are ghosts out there. I wasn’t stoned, I wasn’t drunk, I was
11 years old, I didn’t go to her funeral. She babysat me for 11 years, she was murdered, she was
suffocated and they cut her finger off to get the ring.”
“Is this what launched your morbid fascination with death?”
“I’ve always had a total morbid fascination with death.”