Thrash death go getters DEAD ALIVE a band of skeletal remains, have been actively doing music for sometime, playing shows, creating music, with so much else in the works, new music, touring, more shows and more! The main man behind this act does the talking about all of this in a very lengthy discussion found below!
1. Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Dead Alive, and how long the band has been together.
Greetings! I am Count Scapula, the leader and screaming skull of the monsters that make up the Thrashville metal band, Dead Alive.
The idea for Dead Alive started in 2015 with me and my second in command, Manthing, wanting to make old school style metal music - we didn’t start writing the initial demos until 2017. At the time It was difficult to find other metalheads in the Middle Tennessee area that wanted to play old school styles of metal as Metalcore was surging in popularity and I'm not about that stuff. I used to be more gatekeeper and hateful towards metalcore when I was younger, but now I just don’t give it any breath or attention. We finished the initial 7 demo songs which would later all be recorded on our debut album, but we ended up shelving the project for a few years as life would get in the way of my undead dreams.
In 2020 I was invited to jam with some other musicians as a vocalist, and after a few months of playing together in a hot storage unit it became clear that there was no unified creative direction, so I unearthed the songs from the demos and pitched that as something to do, and they got on board and our drummer at the time, V, booked studio time and we recorded our debut album, Rise of the Skeleton Army, which we released October of 2021. Unfortunately, Life got in the way of my undead dreams once again and then we went on a hiatus.
In January of 2023 we got reached out by a booking agent to play a show in May. I saw this as my “grab the sword” opportunity and called in all of my friend's favors and got Manthing back and we played our first live show May 7th 2023 and have been rattling bones ever since.
2. Where did you get the idea for the band name, did you plan it or did it just happen?
Originally back in 2017 I wanted to go by the band name, “HORROR,” until I discovered the artist Ho99o9 and thought we could go by “HORROR U.S.A.” with a whole road sign motif, But that felt a bit too clunky.
Around the time we went to record the first album I was throwing around band name ideas and studying how other bands named themselves. It needed to fit the vibe of not only the music, but also the stage show. There are the tropes of “use a name/word from lord of the rings,” “Name yourself based off an old horror movie,” “Oxymorons,” “have some sort of symmetry in logo design” etc etc. I started thinking of names from old horror movies like, Evil Dead, Screaming Skulls, Monster Squad - Some of these were already taken, but then I was looking at my movie shelf and realized Dead Alive was the perfect name… It’s a horror movie, made by Peter Jackson (who directed the lord of the rings movies), with an oxymoron, and with the stacked logo how we have it the two D’s in DEAD have a visual symmetry, and…. The design kind of has the silhouette of bat wings. Very spooky.
3. What genre would you describe yourselves and why did you want to play this genre?
Primarily we are a Thrash metal band, the metal archives have us listed as Thrash/Death. We blend various styles of metal subgenres into our songs - mainly Thrash Metal, Doom Metal, Death Metal, and Black Metal, and with the new album we’ve taken a crack at incorporating some Industrial Metal elements into the songs. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the horror punk influence from bands like the Misfits, 45 Grave, and the Cramps. There are a few niche genre tags that have been thrown around I would say we could fit with. “Horror Thrash” “Haunted Thrash” “Blacked Thrash” but I personally like the tag “Splatter Thrash” inspired by the Ghoul song of the same name. Ghoul was a big influence on my approach to writing, especially when it comes to utilizing different vocal styles throughout the album and within songs themself, as well as the general approach of blending (Splattering) genre styles together. We also have the whole “halloween costumes'' motif on stage, and as we grow as a band I definitely want to get to a point where we can spray blood and other bodily fluids on the audience.
On the question of Why I decided to play this style. I love metal. I love horror. I love performance and theatrics. It’s who I am. It’s all an extension of my passion for the overarching genre of Heavy Metal, and a passion to entertain people in a way that I am passionate about with costumes and characters and a Halloween vibe. Dead Alive is the band I want to listen to. Dead Alive is the band I want to see live. It’s so exciting to create and bring to life my passions in music and on stage and have people come up to me afterwards and say “You guys remind me of the Misfits” or King Diamond, Slayer, Death, Ghost, Ghoul, or any thing they think we remind them of, because at the end of the day they are all correct, because I am passionate about all of those bands, and if we can connect to one thing that they are mutually passionate about then I know I’m doing something right.
4. Did you know one another before the band was even formed?
Manthing and I were both in an arena rock style band with some other friends of ours in 2015. That was our first band. We played some shows together and released some music with that. It wasn’t my vibe and the whole time I just wanted to do extreme metal. Manthing was also a Metalhead so we had that in common and we would talk about doing old school thrash metal. Because the music was kinda bad and cringy we all think it’s funny to not tell anyone the name of that band and see if anyone can dig up the old music. I was in another modern hard rock band with the other guys from that first band for another year and a half or so after that first band was shelved. It was fun playing with those guys but again the music wasn’t my thing. Manthing wasn’t in that band, but we started working on Dead Alive together around that time. The other members I met after we started playing live shows, and I was on the hunt looking for more permanent members.
5. Where is the band based out of and what is your local music scene like there, have any recommendations?
We are based out of Nashville, Tennessee. Over the years there have been many attempts at really starting a metal scene here in Nashville. Over the last 3 or so years since covid has died down
there’s been a really refreshing boom of great metal coming out of Nashville.
With what we’ve joked around calling “The Thrashville 4” there is us (Dead Alive), Savage Attack, Phantom, and Outpost. We’re the trashy bands.
Savage Attack has been on the GRIND, they are playing a lot of good shows with touring bands that have been passing through Nashville. Recently they opened for EyeHateGod! They have a new single out as well as some demos on spotify. Very Aggressive Raw thrash.
Phantom are really cool guys. They’ve thrown house parties pretty regularly and it's always a fun time with those guys. They recently released a demo EP “All Scratched Up”. They’re really solid live, awesome performances from all of the guys. Very Melodic Thrash.
Outpost recently released their debut full length “Midnight Oil.” It’s a very solid album with very groovy riffs and heavy melodies.
Photo credit: Ray Lee Rose
On the more extreme side of metal there is Ghost Gore the “Ween of Death Metal”. Nick Bartel did a vocal feature on one of our songs “Fear…Conditioned” our upcoming album. Good hangs. Nick is a huge fan of Ween, and has made me a fan as well. They’re working on a new 3 track album, which I’m very excited for. You just gotta listen to these guys, and listen to the albums in full. Violent Void is a pretty fresh face in the scene. I haven’t seen them live yet, but I keep hearing good things about them. Hung out with a couple of the dudes at one of the Phantom parties. They have a single out called “No Path to Salvation” which is really solid and heavy.
One of the longest lasting bands from Nashville is Act of Impalement, they’ve been around since 2012. These guys are the real deal! Death/Doom and a solid three piece. Check out their album Infernal Ordinance! Their frontman, Ethan Rock, is really cool and is like an encyclopedia for trve kvlt metal, and he knows a ton of people. We’ve had back and forths of being like:
Count Scapula: “Have you heard Hexenhammer from Columbia TN?” Ethan: “Yeah I’ve heard of them. Have you heard of Goat Smegma?” Count Scapula: “I Haven’t heard of Goat Smegma, have you heard Goat Fucker?” etc.etc.
With black metal we got Lenax, they're pretty new in the live scene. Previously was just a solo project by the frontman, Venomous. I saw their first live performance opening for Witching and Folterkammen.
Another Black Metal band I just saw recently was Saidan. And I cannot recommend them enough! Amazing stage show. It was like a romantic approach to Black Metal, with shocking stage theatrics that reminded me of Mayhem with blood and (fake) self mutilation. They have a whole Japanese Horror thing they’re doing and it's really cool. The only thing that is separating them from being a Visual Kei band is not being in Japan. Unfortunately for them and seemingly with some other bands, even though they’re local they only play in Nashville like once a year. I’d like to play some shows with them though I'm going to see if we can get something rolling with them soon.
Lastly is Omenbringer, who is a witchy doom metal band. They just released their debut album T H I C C Darkness. They have an amazing live show. Great lighting, great music, very theatrical with a sexy edge to it from their frontwoman, Molly.
6. The band has unleashed their debut album "Rise of the Skeleton Army" released in 2021, with your newest single being "Green Hell", the single's artwork being a tribute to The Misfits "Earth AD/Wolfs Blood" release, am I right?
Yes! Last year we were approach by Horror Shock records to do a cover for their release of We Bite: A 40th Anniversary tribute compilation album for Earth A.D. By the time we we’re approach to participate on the album there were only 3 songs to chose from, so we grabbed Green Hell with a goal to one up Metallica’s cover. Literally by 1 bpm, lol. We also played with 16th notes instead of 8th notes, and we added blast beats! That was recorded, mixed, and mastered with Dan Emery who is also in a local hardcore band Thetan. It was a lot of fun to do, and Green Hell was also the first time we played with our now current drummer Dead Beat. He was in another local Thrash/Death metal band that had just split up before I asked him to record with us for “Green Hell.” Now He’s in my band and I think he is THE best drummer in Nashville.
The cover art for Green Hell was made in reference to the Earth AD cover, but I inverted the colors so the green was the prominent color on the cover, and collage bashed pictures we’ve collected from my partner, Ray Lee Rose, who is an amazing concert photographer. They’re actually on the cover on the bottom left of the cover flipping the bird.
Backtracking to our debut album, Rise of the Skeleton Army, which I mentioned some of the background of that album previously with the demos and jamming with the dudes in the hot storage unit. I’ll start by mentioning that the intention the whole time with Dead Alive was to create albums focusing on the themes of different monsters on each album. So the first album is about my favorite monster, the humble skeleton. At the time of when I was writing the album, and I guess still yet, I felt like the skeleton didn’t get enough love in horror media as at the time we were in the midst of a zombie craze - which seems to have died down a bit since then. It is also the quintessential rock/metal icon, with skulls and skeletons appearing in album covers everywhere.
In some references to the skeleton monster, such as in the Dungeon and Dragons monster manual, Skeletons are animated by some dark force, and are limited to their ability they had when they were alive. So the “Skeleton Army” of the album is about us metalheads who are animated by this music, and are stuck in our ways in this niche. I think the cover song we did for that first album sums up my feelings on the skeleton and how it relates to metalheads. We’re semi-serious, silly, and we’re misunderstood. We want to socialize and become big bands like the glory days of the 80s and early 90s, but there are still metalheads that think metal should remain underground.
The Skeleton Army/Army of Darkness thus becomes the nickname for our fans.
7. Does the band have any other newer music in the works that we can expect to see or hear anytime soon?
We have a new single releasing on July 26th 2024 “Flip The Switch” for our upcoming album The Madness of Dr. Ludvig Von Brainmatter, which should be arriving in October, along with a couple more single before then. This album is our second monster story, this time about a Mad Scientist. We recorded the album with Jeremiah Scott (Destroy Destroy Destroy, Demon Hunter) who also did the mixing, and the album was mastered by Davey Oberlin (All The Damn Vampires) who also provided his creative touch to adding cinematic sounds and synth wave elements throughout the album. We’re very excited for this album to come out. I’ve been working on this one since 2020 while we were recording the first album. Hopefully it won’t take us as long to make the third album.
8. On the band's TikTok you have some videos posted, one is of "The Zombie Stomp" discuss this for us, and I believe another video had the frontman discuss another type of skeletal dance but can't recall which video it was, perhaps I am mistaken?
You’re thinking of the same thing. The “Zombie Stomp” moment was kind of an improv accident. We had some dead air happening at one of our shows while our drummer was trying to fix the triggers on his kick pedal. Our Bassist at the time, Dedmen Walken, was trying to hype up the crowd to mosh more - but we were about to play our song Gravestoned which is our slow doom metal track… which you can’t really mosh to. But my brain immediately went to the dance from the music video for Candlemass’ song “Bewitched” and I coined it as being “The Zombie Stomp.” Basically have everyone to a conga line stomping each foot while swinging their arms and banging their head. The crowd, except my friend Rachel, didn’t know what I was referencing entirely so they ended up doing more of a slow circle pit with their arms stretched out like Frankenstein’s monster. Which was still fun! And is something we’ve done a couple more times at shows when we’ve played Gravestoned in the setlist. We will probably bring that back when we play Gravestoned in the future again. I wanna see that conga line!
9. Speaking of the frontman why is he the sole person to be said "skeleton" or is the whole band skeletons but they have not reached full skeletal power yet?
Because no one else wants to wear corpse paint but me apparently! Which is fine. I kinda like being the only one in corpse paint now. Initially I wanted the whole band to be skeletons, with different skull paint designs for each member, and we would change costumes for each album. But convincing other people to wear halloween costumes is already hard enough, and apparently people have a hard time not touching their face for long periods of time to wear corpse paint. But we’ve taken a more Misfits/Motley Crue (in definition not particularly a reference to the artists with the same names) approach to the stage and our characters. Because Dead Alive is about Monsters and the monsters inside of us all, As long as we are monsters on stage then it fits the bill. This will become more apparent as we release more albums.
I (Count Scapula) am a skeleton because it’s my favorite monster and I feel like I connect to the skeleton. I’m tall, lanky, and I’m constantly cold. I'm a silly dude, I’m obsessed with my passions, but it’s who I am. I can’t be who I’m not and it would be unhonest to myself to change who I am. That's a skeleton to me. So as we move to this next album, I will still be wearing the skull on my face, but I’ll also put on a bloodstained Lab Coat as we sing songs about mad scientists. I think there are a few monsters in all of us, in ways that we can relate to.
With the other members of the band I've been open to them coming up with their own costumes and character ideas. I try to help brainstorm ideas but I want everyone to be the monsters and characters they're happy and passionate about performing as.
Our previous bassist, Dedmen Walken, was a punk rock Deadite-zombie. He spent two hours before every show putting on his face in practical make-up (After a while he finally decided to get a mask made but only wore it once before stepping away from the band). Dude had the look, the moves and the passion. He had to step away from the band recently because Life keeps getting in the way of
our undead dreams.
Our drummer, Dead Beat, started out as a wraith - which he kept up for a few shows, but now he is my hunchback lab assistant.
My second in command, Manthing, is the scariest monster of us all… just some guy…. It's kinda funny though, he's sort of a contrarian like that. I got him in face paint once back in 2017 for some “we got demos on SoundCloud'' photos. But after that he was like “I'm never wearing face paint
again.”
We're auditioning a new guy right now to take lead guitar duties now that I'm on bass. You'll have to see what he comes up with!
10. What are the plans for playing shows and or touring have anything laid out?
We've been playing locally about once a month. And we just played out of town for the first time at the NEW ENGLAND DEATH METAL FUNTIME BONANZA in Maine. It was quite the first trek out of town - about a 24 hour drive up and back. We got a trailer for it to haul our gear, so now we're technically ready to actually travel for a few days!
We're starting out playing a couple shows in Knoxville and Chattanooga this August.
We're looking at getting a booking agent soon to help us route and book shows for weekenders starting in 2025. See how far we can go in a 3 or so day run.
Unfortunately we still need to pay the bills and show up to jobs on Mondays. Dead Beat is also doing college. I do want to try to do a two or three week tour summer of 2025. Then ramp it up even more in 2026! This is the plan currently while we are still doing this all independently. This might all be accelerated if we get a good tour offer or we can get a record deal.
11. When it comes to a live show from Dead Alive, tell us the expectations of it?
Fun, Fast, and LOUD! It’s Heavy Metal with a punk attitude. Its theatre set to extreme music. It’s Halloween all year round! If you like headbanging, circle pits, push pits, walls of death, and fun times You gotta see a Dead Alive show. We’re constantly figuring out new ways to make each show fun and memorable. Our last show of 2023 we threw our Merch skeleton into the crowd to be torn apart. One show recently I was carried to the stage in a coffin, crawled out of it - and at the end of the show at the end of our song “No Rest In Peace” I fell off stage right back into the coffin. Like something you’d see from the WWE with the Undertaker! We’re occasionally limited by what we can do due to the sizes of the stages we play on. But the bigger the stage we can get, the more insane antics we can get away with!
12. What is up next for Dead Alive?
We’re releasing our sophomore album “The Madness of Dr. Ludvig Von Brainmatter” which is a huge step for us in terms of writing, production, and concept. We’ll still play a couple songs from the first
album here and there, but the songs on this new album are so good - and we can’t wait for everyone to hear it! All bangers, no skips!
We’ll also be working on more video content to support the album. We’ll have at least one music video out before the album drops, and then I’d like to keep making more music videos following its release. If I had a big budget I’d make a whole movie surrounding the album!
And as I mentioned earlier, hoping to ramp up our touring. Playing weekenders and such.
As much as I love performing and playing shows, I also love the writing process. So I’ve already started on some riffs and lyrics for album 3. Don’t expect that anytime soon though.
13. Have any final last words?
If you like what we’re doing please give us a follow on social media @deadalivemetal, and follow us on spotify. If you want to help support us financially consider buying some merch on our website www.DeadAliveOfficial.com or www.DeadAliveMerch.Store . We still have some vinyl, CDs, and Cassettes from our first album, as well as patches, pins, posters, and shirts you can only order online. The first album will not be repressed so consider those limited runs. We also have a lot of cool photos and old tour posters & setlists you can look at and see the history and development of Dead Alive.
Also talking about us or any small artist is very important at this time in our careers. Making social media posts on instagram, tiktok, or youtube or even just telling your friends about this crazy thrash band from Nashville, Tennessee. All of these things are so important to small bands and helps get the word out and help us get to a point where we can quit our day jobs sooner and play shows for you faster!
And Thank you Natalie's World for reaching out to us for this interview!
Post a Comment