[FEATURE] SPEWTILATOR's violent restitution kicks into high gear. Interview, album stream and more "then some" than you can shake a stick at!

"I don't even think WE know what kinda band we are. Any time I have to try and describe our sound I always make up something stupid instead because it feel like I gotta list twelve damn genres just to try and be accurate"

Unlike love being no stranger to Whitsnake's David coverdale, Atlanta's Spewtilator was a stranger to me. That was until Clawhammer PR ( C'mon, why didn't you name the company Clawfinger? I know you wanted to! Right?) sent me the band's latest, Goathrower (out on Boris Records). At first I was turned off by the band's name. I thought to myself, here's another American party metal band with little to offer. But it was a good day, so I gave them a spin. Immediately I was drawn in by the band's infectious fervour and frankly some damn good song writing ideas. During the five songs on display (including a ass hurling Zeke cover), raging riffs, crashin' and smashin', Nuclear Assault-like bass (you read that right!), blast beats and two speeds, shrieks, vomits and growls tear up your face and pour strong spirits into the wounds. It's a wear 'n' tear affair that is over before you know it. And as such, it's damn good slab of unbridled aggression and savagely good time.
Now, what was supposed to be an somewhat depth interview about the band and it's newly born, turned into a metal hang out of two likeminded studs that just got to know one another and figured they could shoot the shit with ease. You've been warned. Too help the more impatient readers here and those of you that don't care about Unleashed, horror movies and Dan Lilker for example and have no time for informalities, just use your search/find options and punch in the words Spewtilator or Spew or Goathrower. There! Thanks to Ryan (vocals/bass) for taking the time.
Goathrower can be streamed in its entirety and downloaded below.



How have things been going for the bans since the release of your latest album though? I think it's a good album.
Thanks man, glad you dig it! Things have been good, been really stoked on all the positive feedback so far! We're kinda all over the place, influence-wise, so its been cool to see other people are into it.

The first song name to catch my attention is "Cherokee Curse". Seeing as I'm interested in matters of aboriginal, native peoples and First Nations, I'm super keen on knowing what the song is about. Musically it absolutely rules. That heavy metal scream during the chorus is killer. Also, this might be a stretch but, listening to "Cave Of Hatred" I'm forced to ask, is the bass sound influenced by Dan Liiker? Also the first two "Afterworld Inebriation" are hella S.O.D. and Nuclear Assault (one of my fav bands ever).
[Laughs] Fuck yeah dude, Lilker is one of my biggest influences as a bass player! Got to meet him when we opened for Brutal Truth a while back. Awesomest dude and he borrowed my rig that night and actually told me I could have borrowed his bass when I broke a string during our set. Definitely a highlight for me and a huge compliment so thanks! S.O.D. was, and continues to be, a big influence for me. We've talked about covering "Milk" or "Fist Banging Mania" a bunch of times, maybe we ought to get around to that sooner or later [laugs].

Lilker is also my hero. I met him at the Dynamo festival in 98. He was playing a shitty set with an awkward S.O.D. We hung out for a while and he was super keen on my metal story and just took a helluva long time chatting. I was in awe the whole time.
[Laughs] Dude, he totally introduced himself like "Hey, I'm Dan, nice to meet you" like NO SHIT MOTHERFUCKER YOU'RE DANNY FUCKING LILKER UAGHGHGH!!! [Laughs] we hung out and smoked a bunch of weed out in the parking lot, one of my favorite times ever! Dude is a total testament to the underground and a major inspiration for me personally. He just loves the shit out of extreme metal and that's all he wants to do and that fucking rules.
As for "Cherokee Curse"... It's actually about one of my coworkers haha This dude was a pathological liar and would go on and on about being a tank commander, submarine captain, air force pilot, prison sniper... You name it, he did it. Supposedly. So I used to fuck with him at work. Whenever he'd leave the room I'd siphon all the water out of the machine he ran so whenever he'd get back it wouldn't run. I had the machine technicians in on it so he'd come to them telling them there must be a leak in the machine or whatever and they'd give him a hard time and ask him if he had filled the water up even though they knew he just had before I siphoned it out. This went on for months...
And Barry was a big enthusiast of native American culture, claimed he was part cherokee and that his wife was full blooded, collected dream catchers 'n' shit and even wore full-on indian garb with a big head dress and did a presentation at work about the Trail of Tears at which he fucking wept in front of all these people at work It was incredible [laughs]. So eventually he figured out that someone was fucking with him And he told one of technicians that he was going to put a cherokee curse on whoever it was [laughs].

This is a story for our children and our children's children. Good old Barry.
[Laughs] He was incredible dude, one of the strangest dudes I've ever met. Now, there is no such thing as a "cherokee curse," I looked [laughs], so the song is just what I imagine might occur if such a thing did exist. Psychedelic visions, hallucinations of death, ending in self disembowelment on a cryptic swamp altar.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Yeah man, real deep shit [laughs]. I think all the horror movies I've watched have permanently altered my brain.

I can see that happening. I'm interested in the dark side and the undiscovered and unproven as well, have been that since I was a kid, but I have a hard time enjoying fun/goofy horror movies. The older I got the less I liked them. I'm a hater of good times? Help me out here. I cannot enjoy most zombie movies and when my friends have a b-movie/bad movie bas at their house, I find myself drifting of and playing with my butt in the bathroom instead.
[Laughs] well ya know, different strokes for different folks! I love all that shit. Serious, goofy, poorly done, it's all good here! I'm mostly in it for the gore though. The really great effects, especially in the '70s and '80s, are really something to behold and I think that kinda stuff hits home for me because a lot of it is a labor of love. The meticulous aspects of getting everything just right to make it as gross as possible... Not because there's really any money in it or anything, but because it's what you love and enjoy... I think that rules and being into heavy metal, grindcore, punk, etc I can really appreciate that sort of dedication to something you love. As for stuff dealing with the unexplained and dark shit I always think of Cronenberg's work. Scanners, The Fly, Videodrome...

Exactly. We just did a big Videodrome feature on the blog (here, cheers Bob!) a couple of months ago.
There's some dark shit. Killer movie, I need to check that out!

So you find some resonance and kinship between low budget, crappy horror down with passion and not for money and Spewtilator?
Most definitely. We started the band to play house parties and drink free beer. No delusions of grandeur here [laughs]. We play the music we do because its what we like. We like drinking beer and doing drugs and playing wild heavy metal so that's what we do. It'll never pay the bills, hell, we'll probably never break even as far as the money we've put into the band is concerned but that's not the point. Those practical effects artists, especially on the b-grade stuff that never has any hope of being some sort of blockbuster or whatever, they do that shit because they love it, because they think it rules super hard... Because they saw some rad shit when they were kids that turned their world upside down and they've been obsessed with it ever since. I can definitely find a kinship with that!

True. Even with higher budget films like The Thing and Prince Od Darkness - both emitted the sense that the director need more resources yet went with the best he and his crew could muster. Some of the make-up and special effects yield unnerving shit CGI has a hard time doing. I'm also thinking of the "hell dimension" video footage in Event Horizon married with those sound effects. It came out perfectly. Chilling shit.
Oh dude, totally. The initial reviews of The Thing actually said the effects were "too gross" and took away from the psychological aspects of the movie haha. Now THAT is when you know you're doing a good job as an effects artist! I think the main problem with CGI is that no matter how good it is your brain still 'knows' its not real on some primal level. And now it's just a cost thing. It's cheaper to just make everything with computers instead of do it right. I will say I've seen a couple films recently use CGI effectively in combination with practical effects. Cabin In the Woods comes to mind.

For a drunk and stoned metal dude you remember a lot of dorky stuff and the anecdotes and on-point references spill out of your brains. I salute you.
[Laughs] I'm a total dork for that shit. That and heavy metal And Rafay (guitar) got me back into reading Dungeons and Dragons books after years of not really being into fantasy stuff. Now I can't get enough of that shit either [laughs]. All that Forgotten Realms / Wizards of the Coast stuff. LOVE IT.

I'm going out on a limb here saying that it'd be refreshing to replace Bolt Thrower as a sound track for Warhammer and use Unleashed instead, just to do it fresh-like...
Oooh man, I love Bolt Thrower, especially In Battle... There is no better soundtrack for war than Bolt thrower but Unleashed would also be a perfect fit, Where No Life Dwells is a beast of a record.

So lets talk about the mother fucking band already! We're way off-topic here. 
[Laughs] I guess we should talk about the band at least a little bit...

Hedlund's (Unleashed's vocals/bass) battle cries and lyrics are crazier than Bolt Thrower's, that's why I'm submitting them as the "new band" for this kinda shit. Yeah, lets talk about your band now!
[Laughs] I'm gonna have to put on Unleashed for the rest of the interview now. I've been jamming this Tytan record Rough Justice all day. Totally killer UK NWOBHM, but I've got a hankering for Where No Life Dwells now, So yeah Spewtilator [laughs].


I'm of the mind that Across The Open Sea and Where No Dildo Dwells are underrated. Jesus! We cannot talk Spewtilator! I had a Spewtilator talking point back there. Fuck.
Yeah man, for as rad as Unleashed are they don't get hailed nearly as much as some of their peers. [Laughs] Let me go back and find it...

So there's a lot of things going on on this short release, short songs but a lot of sub genres references strewn throughout.
Well we all listen to a lot of different music, especially fast stuff, and we're all waaaaaay too scatter-brained to only play one style so whatever shit we've been getting stoked on lately invariably finds its way into a song.

Then it'd be a mistake for the uninitiated to fancy you a throwback thrash or house party grind band?
[Laughs] I don't even think WE know what kinda band we are. Any time I have to try and describe our sound I always make up something stupid instead because it feel like I gotta list twelve damn genres just to try and be accurate [laughs].

As a former band bloke myself I appreciate that and understand.
Yeah dude, part of it is that we never really set out with any one thing in mind other than it was gonna be fast and I love Slayer so a lot of influence came from there. We love old thrash metal and that's a big part of our sound but I wouldn't really say we're a "thrash" band. Same thing with death metal or grindcore, we love that shit but we aren't any one of those specifically. I think I'd get bored playing just one style anyway, I get too pumped on all kinda different stuff. I'd have to start like 10 bands just to play all the shit I like [laughs].

I can definitely see how this materialises in Spewtilator. It's hard to pin the band down and I don't think one should try to. It's aggressive and raw music that's easy to cause a ruckus to.
[Aaaand we're back to Unleashed - The Ed] Fuuuuuuuuuck, I forgot how hard "For They Shall Be Slain" rips. God damn.


"ALLAH IS DEAD! ANCIENT LIES TIME TO DEEEEIIIIII!!!" Me and Unleashed go way back.
UGH! That first time they hit that part like a minute in, FUUUUCK that shit is soooo heavy. Looks like I'm gonna be on an Unleashed kick for a while now haha! As for Spew, there's really only one rule in the band "Thou Shalt Be Fast" other than that it's all pretty much fair game. We've always kinda thought of ourselves as a punk band playing metal. We all started out in punk bands, that's how we all knew each other, from our old bands playing together. Amos, our current drummer who joined shortly after we recorded all the stuff for the Inhale Awaits and Goathrower EP's, started playing with us doing a Descendents cover band [laughs].

Splendorous! Working with Boris Records, what has changed for the band? You've been around for a while and you've done a lot of legwork but I'm only finding out about you recently, and I assume a lot of our readers are too...
We're reaching a much wider audience which is great! All the stuff up until Inhale Awaits was either self-released or done by really small labels, the pre-Boris stuff only totals 360 physical copies [laughs]! Some of that was intentional, we're collectors ourselves so we like limited runs and shit like that, but it also just wasn't feasible financially to do big runs for us or the labels involved. Thus our circle of exposure has been pretty limited. Sam and Boris Records have done an absolutely fantastic job with our records though and we can't thank him enough. Goathrower especially really came together awesome and we couldn't be happier with the final product and he's done a fantastic job of getting the word out and working with Clawhammer to spread the word. Its been really cool to see the record get such positive reviews all over. We're kinda weird [laughs], we don't really quite fit in anywhere, so to see this weird mash-up of styles go over so well and see people across the globe get stoked on our stuff has been totally killer.

That's good to hear. With sound an dynamic bag of influences and that dirty raw sound, I wonder if you are anal and particular about your equipment. How do you go about recreating the sound that can be heard on the album?
Our sound on the record is pretty authentic to what we sound like live. My bass stuff was essentially me just plugging my chain of pedals into the recording interface and hitting record so the bass sound on there is exactly what you get live. Rafay did a lot messing around with different amp configurations and he and Josh at Dead Sound, where we record, kinda "frankensteined" this super gnarly tone together for the record from re-amping his guitar tracks through different rigs n shit. It cam out sounding reeeeeally brutal which is awesome. His tone is so fucking brutal anyway that I think that all that noodling was necessary just to capture how he actually sounds live on the record [laughs].

It comes through nicely recorded I must say. Here's a deep question for you. What are the band's aspirations going forward? Being a band in an underground in a scene clustered with bands also on labels that make no money, what would you like to be able to do as a band now, even though you do know it is somewhat impossible in today's climate?
I think for Spew the next step would be putting out an LP. We actually recorded all the stuff for Inhale Awaits and Goathrower at the same time with the intent of putting out a full length but it worked better for Sam (Boris Records) to do two EP's so that's what we did. Our only real goal once we decided to "be a real band" and play legit shows 'n' stuff was to put out a 7" so since we've accomplished that I think going to the next level and doing a full-length would be rad! I don't really give a shit about being some band that tours all over the place all the time or whatever, I'd just like to carve out our niche and put out records for the maniacs who are into it!

I'm ripping through Voivod's Killing Technology.
Fuck yes on Voivod! A fine Canadian export! Though I must say when it comes to thrash metal from Canada, Razor takes the cake for me!

Fair enough. Hail Razor!
Fuck yes! Violent Restitution and Shotgun Justice are so fucking brutal. Sheepdog's vocals are just sooooo nasty!


Please stop what you are doing, listen to this song carefully and give me your thoughts. For me, "Free" is one of if not the best Scandinavian heavy metal songs of all time. Impossibly perfect and that chorus tugs my heart strings like few others...
Heavy Load rules. To me that song is all about heavy metal! Like, even when things are lame its cool cuz heavy metal still rules and you can still go home and smoke a bowl and listen to rad heavy metal and just grind on forever.

Cool. So what's on the horizon, plans and such?
As for Spew's plans, we're just writing riffs for new jams!! Hopefully we'll get something together for a show this summer and maybe have a new track or two to tease people with haha! For anyone who wants to check us out, pick up a record, or just keep up with all our dumbassery they can do so by checking out Boris Records (link), Boris bandcamp (link), Spewtilator bandcamp (link) and our facebook (link). Thanks for the interview dude! It has been a blast, definitely the best one yet!!