a testimony

Got this email from Tara, from a fan in Belgium named Iwein. thought it was a cool story to share.

That day. It must have been a stormy one. But I can’t remember anymore. Who cares, actually?

The year was 1997 or 1998. I can’t remember the day or month… but the impact proved to be everlasting.

Doctor Vinyl, at that time my favorite music shop, had a new batch of hardcore delivered. Hell, the guy was an avid technohead, specializing in dance, drum ’n bass and all kinds of weird shit. That time, hardcore was all but mainstream. All 12 kids in our scene (it was that big…) went to Doctor Vinyl on a weekly basis, just to see the new stuff. He did us all a favor by importing the finest wares in hardcore.

I browsed through the newly arrived stuff, quickly. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Just hoping to encounter some new cool tunes.

And there it was: a dead body on the cover, not a particularly special bandlogo but it stuck with me. My curiosity was aroused.
But what did it sound like? I asked my dear friend, Doctor Vinyl, to spin this thing for me.

I still remember the look on his face. This was not the ‘hardcore’ he used to hear when we were around. As for me, I was fascinated. This band, disembodied, took me by surprise. I expected yet another Slayer-ish take on hardcore. But no… disembodied chose to strip 90’s metalcore of the fast riffs and thrashy rythms. They introduced heaviness in hardcore. They proved hardcore could be slow and intense at the same time.

I didn’t let Doctor Vinyl finish the first song. I immediately purchased the CD, skipped school and went home to listen to ‘diablerie’. No fucking ipods these days, so I copied it to tape and had it in my walkman for the next couple of weeks. We’re nearly speaking of addiction here… I was going through some difficult times back then. Maybe it was this that made the music stick in? I like to think so…

At that time, the internet wasn’t as omnipresent as it is these days. I wasn’t a very big fanzine reader, so the mystery that surrounded Disembodied remained. The impact of the music and lyrics was this big, I decided to send the guys and girl a fan letter. This became the first and last fan letter I ever wrote to a band. I just needed to write down how I felt about the music. I’ve never received a response but that didn’t matter.

I still feel the same about what I wrote in that letter back then. The cold, distant yet highly emotional mood on all records, is something that has had a lasting influence on myself. Musically and emotionally.
When I’m feeling down or depressed, Disembodied will uplift my spirits every time.

After ‘diablerie’ came ‘if god only knew…’ and ‘heretic’. All three of these pieces of noise are in my car all the time. If some young kid claims to have found the heaviest band on earth, I simply put on some Disembodied. Most of the time, they’ve got a hard time getting into it. It truly must be music for wicked souls.

When I received news that the band split up, I cursed a few times. Never going to see these songs performed live, was a huge disappointment. What I regretted the most, was missing the chance to unravel the mystery behind this band. What about these lyrics? The heaviness? The, obviously, deep emotions that kept singer Aaron cry out these fantastic lyrics?




Fast forward 12 years: *shock* Disembodied reunites. I was in awe and also disappointed. Only three US shows, so it seemed. But there was more to come.

It’s like a strange coincidence, actually: after 6 haunting and very disturbing months at work, I’m feeling emotionally wrecked. It’s in this episode of my life that I’m going to see Disembodied at the annual Ieper Hardcore Fest in Belgium.

When expectations are that tense, disappointment always lurks around the corner. But not this time.
During the show, I felt intensely happy. Moments before, I was able to talk to Tara, Chaz and JJ. I felt like a 33 year old kid. I was fucking nervous. I told them about my fan letter. I told them Disembodied is one of my all time favorite bands. I was happy to get it all out of my system. There were a lot more things I wanted to tell and ask them. That’s why I wrote this all down.

Funny thing is, there were a bunch of other 30 year old ‘kids’ getting completely psyched over the fact that they were at last *sigh* going to see Disembodied play live. Apparently, disembodied have had the same impact on them as it had on me. One of them fucking barfed due to the intensity and psychedness because of this show.

During the gig, I was singing along, filming and taking pictures at the same time. Man, I’ve had the time of my life.

So this is it. My testimony to one of the bands that influenced me big time. I’m sending this over to the band. So they know they did a great job. I like to thank people when they’re still alive.

In conclusion, I wanted to sum up: what, exactly, is Disembodied? Don’t know if you guys and girl are big Star Wars fans, but the best I could come up with:

A beautiful disturbance in the force. That’s what Disembodied is to me.

Big up and see you next year!

Europe 2009

Well, i thought i would post a little something about our recent trip to Europe.

We flew into Berlin and had a day to just chill and walk around the city. Berlin is a really beautiful city with lots of history. I wish we could have had more time to explore there. It was nice to get some sleep before the shows though. Who knew that would be the only real sleep i would get the whole time we were there. We walked around the city and then ate dinner at a mexican joint while enjoying some drinks and people watching before crashing at our hostel.

We played 4 shows during our time there. Our first show was in Rosswein, Germany. It was fucking amazing. We didnt really know what to expect, we had never played in Europe so we didnt know if people would be into it or not. The crowd was amazing. We were lucky enough to play with Darkest Hour who killed it both nights that we played with them. The show is kind of in the middle of nowhere in this little village but the show was so great. Afterwards we went to the place where we were to sleep which i think was a dorm by the way it was laid out, however we never saw a person walking around so i really have no idea.

Got up the next morning and went to a local bakery and had some amazing coffee. The city was beautiful and then we were off to the next show since it was about a 7 hour drive.

We got to Trier a little early. Loaded in and got some food to eat. The club is this weird building which consists of two clubs, an outdoor stage, a youth center, and at night, fucking raves. The show was good. A dude hung upside down from the rafters while we played which was entertaining. Ate some good food that the club provided, and then was hoping to get some sleep which i was in need of. WRONG! There was a rave in the other building which was attached to where we were to sleep. Of course you had to sleep with the windows open because Europe doesnt believe in AC so it was so loud. It was impossible to sleep so we went downstairs to hang out for a while. Talked with some Germans who were speaking English with a British accent. It was pretty entertaining. It was INSANE the amount of drinking and bottles that were being thrown around. It was around 3 or 4 and i tried to go to sleep to no avail. I think the music actually stopped around 10am. So, that kind of sucked, and the promoter yelled at some of the guys because they thought they were breaking stuff, which they werent. You couldnt even take a shower because there was glass in the shower rooms. It was insane.

Off to the next show in Amsterdam on no sleep once again. Got there a little early but really couldnt figure out how to get to the show. It was in the Red Light district and so you cant drive there. The club wouldnt let us load early so we had to go park and wait a while which ended up as us loading late. The show was kind of small due to the fact that Ieper Fest was pretty close but it was still a good show. Except for the fact that the cabinet Charlie was using blew a speaker and then the head stopped working. He just played along anyways. We didnt get much time to hang out that night because it was raining and once we loaded we just had to bail.

We did get to see Jan who was our(Martyr Ad's) driver for the Zao tour. It was nice to see him and talk for a few minutes.

We stayed with Sam and Eva. They were very nice to let us stay with them and got showers and a decent night sleep.

We left a little late just because we needed some time to just relax and not rush. I wanted to leave early to see Polar Bear Club at the fest but knew that wasent gonna happen because they played way too early.

Got to the show about 2 minutes before Set Your Goals played. That was the other band that i wanted to see so i was stoked i got to see them. Went and set up merch, which wasent really worth it because we only had size xl left but sat there anyways and talked to some people.

Played a great show. It was kinda cold when we started but it was perfect timing as the sun was going down. The kids seemed to like it. We thought it was an amazing show. We packed up and hung out as the show was winding down. We got a bunch of drink tickets and just went and redeemed them all and oddly enough when you have like 30 beers sitting at your table, you make alot of friends. Talked with some Brits who were singing along to the Descendents and No Doubt. It was surreal.

Went back to the place we were staying and once again i couldnt sleep. I sat staring at the wall listening to my ipod for hours until finally getting up and finding a computer to look at.

Got everyone up and ate breakfast and headed to Brussels. We had decided to stay a few extra days to just look around. We stopped in Brugge first. We were there on the Martyr tour but it was so close we decided just to walk around a bit. Wanted to climb to the top of the tower but we were too cheap.

Headed to our hotel in Brussels, cleaned up, and took the train into the city to eat waffles. We only ate one waffle and i kinda feel cheated. We had this plan of basically stuffing ourselves with waffles until we wanted to puke but i think due to exhaustion we just werent feeling it.

We walked around for a while, looked at some cool shit, and then headed back to the hotel. I was feeling like shit from the night before so i just headed to bed.

Then we headed off to Amsterdam in the early morning. We were flying out of Amsterdam so we decided to spend an extra day and a half there. Of course we walked around the Red Light district a hundred times, looked at stuff, some people smoked some stuff, had some drinks, watched a Twins game at an Irish bar, and had a good time just hanging out together.

It was a whirlwind of a trip and we were glad to go and glad to get home.

Europe hates the following things:

Hot Food

Air Conditioning

Nice Toilet Paper

Thanks to everyone who came out to the shows, bought a shirt so we could live, and all of the people that we met and took care of us. We really appreciate it. We couldnt have done it without any of you, especially Marco, Ivonne, and Avocado. Well see you again next year.