Texas is a huge place, which is why Texas metalheads spend most of our time driving between cities to attend shows far away. We drive the equivalent of several eastern states — Texans measure distance between cities in a unit called a Massachusetts because that dinky little state is a great yardstick — just to see some of the many great bands that Texas has produced.
It is for this reason that Alfred Fuentes III is known to most of us. A fixture at Houston, Austin and San Antonio shows for the last two decades, he always shows up early and supports the bands through intangible ways as well as tangible. He has known many of the Texas metal musicians for even longer. Unfortunately, he has run into health challenges and to counter this, Texas metalheads are throwing a benefit bash to help his family.
Interest grows in The Beast, the latest concoction by famed blending house Cornell & Diehl, which was inspired by Aleister Crowley and built around his favorite recipe of rum soaked Perique. As it turns out, all of the lore and fame is deserved, because The Beast is a densely flavorful blend for the experienced smoker without going overboard and becoming the dreaded “acquired taste” that is not enjoyable by the casual smoker.
St. James Parish Acadian Perique is notoriously difficult to work with. This tobacco is fermented under pressure in barrels to remove some sugars and bring Nicotine to the fore, giving it a reputation as an ingredient in high-powered blends. In the presence of different tobaccos, it reveals multiple faces of its flavor: sometimes an acidic fruity taste, or the sensation of pepper on a dried fig, and in some cases, it tastes almost like a pickled jalapeño. For most smokers, more than one part in ten within a blend causes uncomfortable levels of spiciness and Nicotine, so these blends are kept in the back of the pipe cabinet for the hardcores and well-worn codgers.
With The Beast, Cornell & Diehl brings a new face to Perique. At first open, the tin gives off a smell like fertilizer and olives in brine, but then the smell of the rum comes through clearly over a strong natural tobacco scent. As it dries, the tobacco and rum combine to give off an impression of fermentation with a rich undertone, like fall leaves decaying into humus. In addition to the St. James Parish Acadian Perique, the blenders added Black Cavendish, Red Virginia Cavendish and a tobacco that I think is as intense as Perique, the Dark Fired Kentucky Burley that originates as a strong leaf which gains potency when it is smoke-cured and aged.
The first match brings out the top note of rum and successive waves of sweetness as the Cavendishes and Perique wake up to the heat. Then, the dark and smoky taste of the Dark Fired Kentucky Burley rises to the fore. At this point, the tastes combine, and it is this singular flavor that dominates the taste profile of this blend to the bottom of the bowl. Imagine a summer day barbecue, with meat dipped in a sauce of tomatoes, wine, molasses, teriyaki and a shot of rum. Ablaze over the grill, it gives off an enticing scent: a rich natural smell, giving rise to a flavor as powerful as the olfactory stimulation.
The Beast smokes smoothly and gives off a milder but still potent version of Crowley’s famous recipe which is its heart. You will taste the Perique basted in rum as a spicy fruit, like peppered date-stuff jalapeños that have been charred over an open campfire. Its supporting cast is just as important. The Red Virginia comes through as a tomato-like, vinegar-ish flavor, and together with the black Cavendish, it sweetens the blend and makes the spice and fruitiness blend into the rest of the leaf to create a single flavor. The Dark Fired Kentucky Burley creates the barbecue effect and lifts this blend up into the realm of serious intensity in both Nicotine and woodsy, nutty, natural flavors.
The wisdom of the blenders comes through in how little the top flavor obstructs the natural flavor of tobacco underneath, and how well these different leaf types meld together into a single flavor that is all their own. Some will taste notes of ketchup, leather and perhaps a hint of a fine stout beer; others will note the smoky tempest of the dark leaf alone. But really, these are fragmentary descriptions. The whole comes together into a mulled, smoky flavor with the fruity/peppery flavor of the Perique channeled into a sweet and spicy mixture. It burns evenly, down to fine grey ash, and while it pops out of the tin relatively moist, requires little if any drying. I left these samples in the pipe for only a few minutes before setting them gratefully ablaze.
Now, a bit of warning. This is a Crowley-inspired blend, and it probably is not for the newly-minted pipesmoker or those who look for the word “mild” on the shelves of their local brick & mortar tobacconist. In intensity of Nicotine strength, The Beast is probably medium to strong or slightly stronger, with the mysterious effect of the Perique which brings out additional dimensions to the Nicotine effect. You may find yourself making goat horns on the side of your head with your fingers, or perhaps chanting in mixed Hebrew and Enochian toward the stars… it is not a knock-yourself-flat blend, but this leaf has a potency that will satisfy even the most hard-driven pipe smokers while not damaging the rest.
As the bowl winds down, the flavors separate from that singular core and mingle. Olives, wine, teriyaki, blood, and the fires of Hell, with hints of a sweet inner core like the smell of death on an August afternoon… mysteries from beyond the boundaries of time and space… strange eyes move in the darkness as fell voices are heard. My favorite time to smoke this is at twilight, looking out into the forest hung with Spanish moss, as human sounds recede and the tumult of nature takes over. There, a kindred sensation is felt to The Beast: a fierce independence and great strength, tempered into a picture of beauty and solitude, under infinite stars.
“Punk’s not dead,” goes the old joke, “It’s only sleeping.” Since the mid-1980s, very little of interest has come from the punk community as it has struggled to deal with its popularity. Teenagers want rebellious music, but they want it to be safe enough that they can use it for those difficult teen years, then move on to lite jazz and album-oriented rock as they age.
As a result, punk became a market, and that market favored brain-dead angry rebellion that did not shake any actual foundations but simply attacked socially-acceptable enemies with a more angry approach. Punk went Leftist in the 1980s, but it is more accurate to say it “went bourgeois,” or searching for targets it could bash without really offending anyone. It is always acceptable to target cops and Hitler, but not so much to mention anything which could make us all doubt our participation in society.
The Cro-Mags were a breath of fresh air in this dying scene. Like other classics of hardcore punk — Amebix, Discharge, The Exploited, Black Flag — they paired a Leftist distrust of the profit motive with a right-wing view that human culpability at the individual level was destroying our society from within. This complex view makes for uneasy coexistence with people who depend on both profit motive and patriotic views of strong defense and economy.
Harley Flanagan, bassist and founding member of the Cro-Mags who identifies Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead as his greatest influence, drove his band to create a form of punk that was actually rebellious. For many of us, “World Peace” was an early Red Pill, awakening us to the fact that the most cherished values of our society were in fact moronic illusions that were consequently quite popular. People love an excuse to turn off the brain and go with the flow.
Nothing as intense as the Cro-Mags could last, and after a brilliant first album (The Age of Quarrel in 1986) the band struggled with internal instability, putting out a speed metal influenced album (Best Wishes in 1989) and a softer, more contemplative and Hindu-influenced take on punk with Alpha Omega (1992) and Near Death Experience (1993). One version of the band released a followup in 2000, and several compilations have tried to resurrect the early material, most notably the demo/live compilation Before the Quarrel (2000).
Cro-Mags, the most recent solo offering from Flanagan, channels quite a bit of rage at the personality conflict behind the collapse of this once-great band, but also at the collapse of hardcore itself. Interestingly, it merges the speed metal era Cro-Mags with their earlier intensity to come up with a metal-influenced (but not metal-flavored) blast of rage and melancholic isolation.
Songs on this album take a form of simple riff loops with introductions and interludes, often fading out in explosive and sometimes bluesy solos. Musical focus targets a good solid riff and a strong chorus that plays off the tension in that riff, guided by the vocals of Flanagan which vary between angry riot shouts and a type of unnervingly emotional but aggressive singing that has never been done successfully in hardcore before.
Like most return albums, this is a foray that tests different waters. The band experiments with — or mocks — Pantera-style riffing on “I’ll Fuck You Up” and revisits punk and metal riff archetypes with earlier songs. None of these are off-the-shelf however; in each one, the riffing remains distinct enough to be its own entity, a hybrid of Motorhead and punk hardcore and the aggressive speed metal from Slayer, Exodus and Metallica with a voice unique to itself.
The question before the reviewer is not whether Cro-Mags is a decent comeback album or an acceptable substitute for the Cro-Mags, but whether the music stands on its own. Over the course of several listens, I have concluded that it deserves listening on its own merit. These are aggressive but thoughtful songs with a core of dissident outlook not toward politics, but toward humanity and its default impulses as a whole, and in so doing it continues and enhances the best of what hardcore punk had to offer.
This interview was completed with Blender Jeremy Reeves, Adam O’Neill and Ted Swearingen.
Like many Hessians, I enjoy Nicotine, not only for its calming mental state but for its cognitive benefits. While I love cigarettes, snuff, chew, cigars and cigarillos, my ultimate love is the pipe: a method of absorbing Nicotine slowly, with maximum flavor, that rewards the contemplative mind.
Cornell & Diehl is releasing a new The Beast tobacco blend. Some have said this is just an extended April Fool’s joke. Is it for real? When does it come out?
The Beast is certainly for real, and will be C&D’s second Small Batch release. There will be 777 tins made, and the official retail release date is April 29th.
What will The Beast be like, and will it feature tribute to Crowley’s lore-famed mixture of rum-soaked Perique?
The Beast is quite powerful and very heavy, being mostly Perique, and the whole blend has been soaked in rum for 7 days. It is undeniably Crowley inspired, and that in and of itself is our tribute.
Have you ever smoked rum-soaked Perique straight and if so, what did you think of it? How will The Beast compare?
I have and honestly I rather enjoyed it. I actually smoke our long-cut Perique straight occasionally on my drive home. If you puff like a freight train, it will knock your socks off, but if you just keep it simmering, the depth of flavor is mesmerizing, and the nicotine is slow to come on and builds nicely.
The Beast is a powerhouse, but it is not straight Perique. I like to think that we have tamed the beast a bit.
How long does it take you guys to invent a new blend recipe? Is there a lot of trial and error? What’s the most fun part?
That all depends on the specific blend in question. I always make several versions of a blend and try different approaches or methods. Sometimes I get it in the first few tries, and sometimes it takes weeks or months of experimentation. There are two blends that I have been working on for about 6 months, and they are getting close to completion but still aren’t quite right.
In the case of The Beast, Ted Swearingen and I collaborated on the blending. We each came up with several recipes and then smoked through the lot together with Shane Ireland and Sykes Wilford. What a time that was! Four guys in a little room smoking seven different versions of this really heavy, rum-soaked Perique blend for about an hour. By the end of it, we all were glazed over, dazed, sweating, and dizzy!
With the new C&D “small batch” line, you’re trying something different. Is this a way for C&D to “test the waters” with new blends? About how much of each small batch do you initially produce?
Yes and no. I don’t necessarily think of Small Batch as a way to test the waters for large scale production, but rather a way for us to be creative and try new things without having to commit to a blend that may be too niche to produce on a more permanent basis.
The C&D line is quite large already, so this model gives us more freedom to try things that might be be difficult in regular production or to use special ingredients that are in limited supply. The possibilities are a lot more open in Small Batch, because we are only going to make the blend one time.
The first round of Small Batch was “Straight Up English,” and we did 400 tins. They all sold in two hours. There will be 777 tins of The Beast released. Next time? That’s anybody’s guess.
Did this approach grow out of a previous marketing strategy by C&D? It seems like you were very adventurous in putting a lot of blends out there and seeing what “stuck” with the audience. How do you know if a blend “sticks”?
That’s actually a remarkably pertinent question given that The Beast is coming out under our Small Batch label. Our main vision for this line was to be able to be more flexible and creative in the blending process without having to commit to production of a large run. In the case of Straight Up English, we’d received some particularly good bright Virginias from Canada and wanted to showcase the interplay between those leaves and Latakia. In the case of “The Beast,” we just wanted a chance to tinker with Crowley’s famous blend, which is an idea we’d always toyed with, but we could never do before now.
As for whether or not a blend “sticks,” we use a combination of feedback and sales. Some blends might not sell so well, but get a lot of positive feedback. In these cases, we’ll usually just scale back production and keep the blend around.
When your team designs a blend, how do you handle the balance between “I would like this” and “our customers would like this,” or are the two very similar?
My approach is to blend things that taste like I want them to and then to consider whether there is broader appeal by taking it around the office and getting feedback. With a quite diverse group of pipe smokers with varied style and taste preferences all in one building, this approach helps me to hone ideas, improve blends, and gain insight into what other members of the pipe smoking community might think of whatever the blend in question might be.
Did you read any Crowley, practice any rituals or listen to any occult-influenced tunes during the invention and production of the blend?
Ted has read quite a bit of Crowley’s work, including The Book of Law, The Book of Lies, The Book of Thoth, and Liber 777 — the title that inspired the number of tins for this blend.
There was not enough room in the production area to make a proper altar, and not enough time in the work day to draw a sigil, but I listen to a lot of occult inspired music of many different genres. Pentagram, Diecide, Asphyx, Possessed, the Devil’s Blood, Celtic Frost, Bathory, Diamanda Galas, Skip James, Iron Maiden, Axe, Black Widow, Sabbat, Black Sabbath all find their way into my regular listening rotation.
Why a tribute to Crowley? Will you be doing tributes to other “interesting” writers?
It seems that Crowley’s idea of smoking Perique soaked in rum in order to reach an altered state for the purpose of performing the dark arts has really resonated with a number of people in the pipe community, inspiring many to try it, and many more to talk about it with varying tones of trepidation, disgust, or fascination.
We wanted to do something that was evocative of Crowley’s mixture but would also be a little tamer and more interesting than just Perique and rum.
I can think of no other author who has inspired such an intriguing bit of pipe lore than Aleister Crowley. That said, you never know where our next inspiration might spring from.
I write for the net’s oldest underground metal site and our audience are rabid death metal fans. Do you all listen to any heavy metal or death metal over there, especially when mixing up Perique? Why should a death metal fan adopt the pipe?
That’s really cool to know! I will have to check out your site!
As I mentioned earlier, I do listen to a lot of metal, and old school death metal is some of my favorite music. Cancer, Disembowelment, Death, Slayer, Onslaught, Monstrosity, Exhorder, Goreguts, Cannibal Corpse, Pestilence…. not counting my physical collection, digitally I have over four months of music, and I’d guess that about 60% of that is metal of various styles (doom, thrash, death, tech, grind, classic, prog, shoegaze, etc.). A couple of the other guys here listen to metal as well.
I think that pipe smoking goes beautifully with classic doom like Candlemass or Solitude Aeturnus, or even the sludgy kind of stuff like Crowbar. I find that I have to concentrate a bit more on keeping my smoking cadence slow if I am jamming to something really speedy like Origin or Pig Destroyer.
How did you get into smoking pipes, blending and eventually working for an innovator like C&D?
Really, that all started in 2003, when I took a position as a sales clerk at a cigar shop in Chicago called Blue Havana. The owner of the shop rented a number of properties in the area, and as it turned out, one of his tenants was our shop’s Lane sales representative, Jeff. I smoked cigars and cigarettes at this point, but Jeff was a dedicated pipe smoker and gave me my first pipe, an old Stanwell sandblasted Billiard that was well smoked.
This pipe and Jeff’s careful tutelage really started my curiosity and interest in pipes and pipe smoking, but it wasn’t until I left that position in 2006 and went to work at Iwan Ries that pipes really clicked. I have always been an adventurous smoker, always looking to smoke something new, and Iwan Ries certainly offered more pipe tobacco and pipes in one place than any other shop. Suffice to say, I tried as much as I could get my hands on. It was also while employed at Iwan Ries that I first became aware of the greater pipe smoking community, eclectic and strange as it is. This was also the first time that I became aware of Smokingpipes.com.
When I left Iwan Ries in 2007, I went back to working in restaurants, and when I left Chicago to move to Portland, OR, Smokingpipes became my primary source of pipes and pipe tobacco. I was continuing to work in food service, making wood-fired pizza at Pyro Pizza. We were using local ingredients, making our own mozzarella, butchering, and curing our own meats, making our own sodas, growing our own herbs, etc. I had always cooked from a young age, but this was really creating food on a whole new level. I also had the opportunity to build two wood fire ovens for the company, which was really cool.
After a few years at Pyro, I learned of a job opening at Smokingpipes and decided, at the urging of my girlfriend at the time, to apply. They called me the next day, and a week later I flew to South Carolina to interview. I was hired in the Customer Service department for Smokingpipes.com. Cornell and Diehl had become my favorite blending house, and I was delighted to learn that they were merging with Laudisi, SPC’s parent company. Later it came to light that when C&D was to South Carolina, head blender Ted Connolly would be taking retirement, and toward the end of 2014, I was offered the position as his replacement, which I gladly accepted.
I began traveling to Morganton to train with Ted C. and the team in the beginning of 2015, and in May of that year the company relocated to join the rest of Laudisi in the new facility, located in Longs, SC. That’s the condensed version, anyway.
If people like what you’re up to, how do they follow your activities and those of C&D online? Is there a C&D tobacco you’d recommend to start with?
We’re pretty active on all of the usual platforms — Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — plus, as you know, we tend to lurk around the forums.
New pipe smokers tend to roll with Aromatics when they first start out. As such, Autumn Evening (by far our most popular Aromatic) is perfect for newbies, as it smokes dry and cool, which means less relights and tongue bite. Plus it has the same unique red Virginia Cavendish we’ve used in The Beast, only with a topping of boozy maple.
Ripper picks up in the Merciless vein and keeps that Swedish landmark as its guiding force. This band keeps the attention of listeners however through its spirit and its refusal to adopt clichés. It uses riff forms found before, but keeps them specific to the song so that they relate to the other parts, preventing songs from being “grab-bags” of former ideas. (more…)
I love used book stores — generally libraries, thrifts and small independents — because the chase is greater than the catch, and finding a rarity or just something fun to read is an inexhaustible thrill. A selection of old books gives a distinct perspective not just of writing but of history.
Each time I look over the dusty spines, castoffs of previous generations or well-loved volumes containing advice relied upon by those who came before, I am reminded how human history is a lattice of ideas. Each great thinker is a nodal point from which others branch, re-combining with other ideas or adding their own. And each writer boils down to one idea, usually, with the greatest having a handful.
The rest is a support system for that. To take a great idea and fling it out into the world requires a book, a third of which is introduction, a third explaining the idea in depth and a final third gesturing at relevance and shouting down the inevitable counter-arguments. Then the author spends the rest of his/her career amplifying on that idea or chasing its elusive ultimate form. Then, RIP and all of that boils down to a sentence of summary that most people know.
Think of Charles Malthus (“utilized resources expand algebraically, but population grows exponentially”) or even Adam Smith (“the self-interest of the many results in a balance”). Metal bands are remembered the same way: Black Sabbath (“used horror movie aesthetics on heavy rock to invent proto-metal”) or Suffocation (“used death metal textural complexity with speed metal choppy strumming styles”).
And Carcass? They will forever be remembered as the guys who made clumsy grindcore based around medical lyrics. This is too bad, as their real strength was to expand the grindcore song structure to include longer riffing that often emulated Second World War era popular music, even if unconsciously.
In fact, most of their success comes from the fact that they did everything unconsciously. On the surface, they were having a laugh with gore lyrics and sloppy grind. The first album, Reek of Putrefaction, is entirely unselfconscious in this way. It does not want to be anyone’s friend, or appeal to an audience. It is just having fun and accidentally unleashes the subconscious mind through a biting parody of society and its fear of disease and death.
It was that awkward and offhand element that caught the imagination of an audience. That, and the ripping tunes: the first Carcass album made grindcore complex enough for songs to be distinctive, but kept its rumbling chaotic surface that hid the structure. This made it heavier than most of what was out there at the time and inspired a thousand imaginations.
After that point, however, the Carcass story tapers off. Every album since then has been the band trying to re-interpret its original unintentional success, but to expand it by making the music more like Led Zeppelin and Metallica so that it can be “serious.” And therein is the problem: this band suffers a deep neurosis and when it tries to be serious, it fails. When just drunk and goofing around, these guys are able to reach into the unsocialized parts of their minds and come up with something good.
Symphonies of Sickness came out shortly after Reek of Putrefaction, but already shows us a more self-conscious band. The title is cute, the songs more obviously melodic and prone to borrow hard rock riffs, and the production still vicious but in a controlled way. Everything about the second Carcass album is a managed environment designed to manipulate appearance just like the neat rows of houses in the suburbs, political speeches and advertisements for security companies. The band reversed its raw approach and joined what they mocked.
After that, it has been all downhill. The Tools of the Trade EP showed us the new Carcass: melodic songs, death metal riffs and none of the grindcore urgency or organic appeal. It was all very much a product of the conscious mind trying to be serious so that other people would like it. Necroticism — Descanting the Insalubrious shat the bed with more of the same. For the time, it fit in competitively with death metal, and I listened to it then, but found over the years that I reached for it less and less.
I feared becoming like an old punker I met back in the early 1990s. “Carcass, great band, but they lost it after the first album,” he said. I knew these guys, I felt. They were like the old bearded dudes in robes who stood on streetcorners in the 1960s with signs saying THE END IS NEAR. They were walking stereotypes: the bitter old “truist” who only likes the demos and maybe the first album for any band, and will tell you to stop listening to that commercial shit you’re pimping and look up some rare, expensive and ineptly-packaged 7″ or cassette instead.
But the old guy — at probably 35, already a curmudgeon-in-training — had a point: most bands have only one idea. In metal and punk, bands are artists first and musicians second; they become musicians to express some idea or feeling. They intuit that musicians become experts in making music that people like and as a result, the external form dictates the content and it becomes about like everything else: technically correct, artistically empty like all the other products, fast food and celebrity autobiographies.
Carcass went on to get a PhD in bed-shitting with Heartwork, which was a decent speed metal album with some nice technical touches, but lacked any purpose so became overly “emo.” After that, the grindcore audience fled and the hard rock audience — this was pre-nu-metal days — was scared off by the vocals, so the Carcass brand went into free fall. The band launched a bitter final salvo with Swan Song in which they realized that their responsible, middle class daylight personalities always wanted to just be Led Zeppelin because that is how you work hard and succeed in rock ‘n’ roll as a career!
I fall between your average suburban music fan and the old crusty punk. Perhaps the Peel Sessions, “Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment” demo and a few scattered 7″ and live shows are the “real” Carcass, but the first album is real enough for me. After that, the band gets self-conscious and soon there is a stinky speedbump under the sheets. But Reek of Putrefaction is great and every person who enjoys quality outsider music should hear it.
Back in 1995 someone cut metal’s balls off. Underground metal (death metal and black metal) had gone to the furthest extremes: denying rock music, smashing down mass religion, and finally, endorsing a Nietzschean natural selection against the will of the herd. There was nowhere left to conquer, except perhaps politically.
As the odious and 99% horribly boring and pointless NSBM movement showed us, however, Nazism was not just captured by a group of unibrow SJW types, but it was boring and not very extreme. Nazism was an attempt to stop the collapse of our civilization, its breakdown by good intentions, and as a result was like a nagging Nanny albeit one that committed horrible genocide, even if relatively mild compared to the USSR and Genghis Khan (elite company).
Metal needed to push further. When war metal combined the dark primitivism of Beherit and Blasphemy with the unrelenting forward drive of high intensity rhythmic death metal bands like Angelcorpse and Hate Eternal, it reduced the “busy” tendencies of those bands but created a type of monotonic texture music that was both comforting and violent. Intolitarian pushes things a step further by using the war metal model to incorporate a more technical version of early Napalm Death style grindcore, and harsh industrial noise.
Starting songs with samples and feedback, Intolitarian then launches into a song pattern like that of war metal but with more idiosyncratic internal structures, eschewing the darker riffs in favor of pure deconstructive chaos riffs in the Napalm Death From Enslavement to Obliteration style. From harsh industrial noise it takes a ton of guitar feedback, fuzz and abrupt samples, but even more importantly, the tendency to hang on a squeal or shriek and then let the chaos surge in again, like waves on a beach put on fast forward before a storm.
Much has been said about the political dimensions of Intolitarian, and nearly all of it is painful nonsense. If this band wanted to be Nazis, they would have just joined up with the usual crew of basement-dwellers who have made “white nationalism” a walking joke like their liberal counterparts for the last fifty years. Intolitarian want to be worse than Nazis. There is no safety in politics with this band. Only a raw need to destroy the walking dead that is our society, and replace with with a feral and atavistic struggle for survival.
Suicidal Allegiance was recorded in 2012 and finally saw release last month through a yet-unnamed van-down-by-the-river underground label. If anything, it is too short; these songs feel like a window into a different world, and one that is more structured than industrial noise and more focused than grindcore with the easy engagement of war metal. Let us hope this provocative and stimulating band continues to refine its attack.
As the internet reaches its peak, the inherent deficiencies of the post-“Eternal September” online audience reveal themselves. Drowning in vast amounts of MP3s and data, they have stopped choosing best over better, and simply accept whatever is not offensively horrible on the first listen. As a result music quality has plummeted. Zines like Codex Obscurum are reversing this by shining the spotlight on the quality that stands out and ignoring the rest of the flood.
Issue Nine opens with an Immolation interview. While I love Here in After, I usually skim Immolation interviews because the Ross & Bob show are so focused on being nice sociable guys that very little is said that I could not glean from liner notes. Interviewer Kevin Ord however takes a subtle but aggressive approach in asking Immolation “where’s the meat?” The result is unsatisfying, as one might expect for the band that defecated out Kingdom of Conspiracy, a parody of their former works worthy of SNL. Ord gets to the core of where this band is now and if there is an echo, it is not his fault but an honest reflection of what happens when death metal bands realize that two-note speed metal with death metal vocals is a path to Pantera-oriented glory where Here in After makes fans happy and bands poor.
Interviews follow with Mitochondrion, Horrendous, Evil Power, Ectovoid, Beithioch, Savage Master, Cemetery Filth, Hideous Divinity, Akurion and visual artist Daniel “Sawblade” Shaw. Each of these tries to bring out the purpose of the band, acknowledging subtly that many of these bands are B-level art workers who merely hope to pay tribute to their influences before going back to day jobs. Beithioch may be most interesting with its culture-based, whisky-infused Irish tangent on the idea of death metal and black metal as resurrection of the invisible values that hold humans together and keep us all from committing suicide in gas station restrooms. Each interview is carefully posed and diligently edited, filtering out the noise of grammatical train wrecks and misspellings that blight most zines.
After a centerfold of intense zine branding art, the reviews come forth. These are more descriptive than critical, but in trying to make a narrative out of each band, reveal how successful these artists are in expressing something more than a vague genre identity. Some of these reviews tempt as purpose and aesthetic vision appear in the words, but others make me want to run far away from what sounds like disorganized aping of the near-past. The reviewers are gentlemen who let the music speak for itself in symbolic translation instead of vocalizing their critiques, which makes it both more informative and more fun for the reader.
This issue ended too soon, but not for lack of content, but mainly because I was all set to read all night! Issue Nine ends in an editorial which by focusing on criticism of the underground, issues some potent criticism of its own of the underground, which is gratifying to see in a time when most people are too busy playing “follow the leader” to notice the quality differential over the years. It rounds out a solid issue and gives some placement to the interviews and reviews which preceded it.
Codex Obscurum continues at full strength after quite a few years now of activity, forging ahead where the internet has abandoned metal and the industry has failed it. This zine emphasizes selectivity and so has avoided treading the well-worn ruts that most big magazines do, but has also avoided the underground fanboi mentality which holds that a fifteenthrate Incantation/Demoncy imitation is just as much news as the originals. These writers have kept this zine going strong and show no sign of stopping, which makes it fortunate for us readers who need a breath of fresh air in the fetid stench of the decomposition of the corpse of the underground about now!
Each of us finds a path through life. Along the way we collect things we believe in, and things we enjoy. Sometimes those become what our commerce-brained socially-manipulated society might call “hobbies,” but these are often closer to a calling. I was fortunate to interview someone who straddles that line. He calls himself “Metalhead Y Cigarguy” and he runs a successful YouTube channel where he analyzes cigars, pipes and often, heavy metal.
You’re both a metalhead and a pipes/cigar smoker. Do you think the two go together?
If you’re going by stereotypes, no, but that’s why stereotypes are bad. Typically the pipe/cigar smoker is viewed as educated and an upper class individual, whereas the Metalhead is viewed as the uneducated lower class individual. You and I both know this is not the case at all. Now when I first got into pipes/cigars I thought I was one of a few Metalheads that actually enjoyed “the finer things in life,” but I quickly learned that there were a lot of individuals that smoked pipes/cigars that listened to all forms of Heavy Metal music.
That’s the nice thing about the hobby of pipes and cigars, most individuals don’t care about race, religion, political view etc. as we all have a common bond and that’s pipes and cigars. When individuals come together, say the doctor and the Metalhead, at the local cigar lounge, the two can always have an interesting conversation about the hobby even if they disagree about everything else in life. The hobby of pipes and cigars is open to anyone and everyone.
How did you get into smoking cigars? When did you add pipes to your routine?
I used to just smoke a few cigars on the back deck in the summer time. At the time I really wanted to take up pipe smoking, but like most I didn’t really know where to begin, and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on something that I may not enjoy. Cigars seemed like an easy first step. After I found myself enjoying cigars I decided to get more into the hobby, so I purchased a small humidor and things took off from there. I soon found myself with several humidors and about 300 cigars on hand.
After being into cigars for a while I decided it was time to try a pipe, so I went to my local tobacconist and picked up a basket pipe and a couple ounces of Lane RLP-6. For the first couple months I only smoked my pipe about 2-3 times a month, but as I got the hang of it more I decided to spend a bit more money on a nicer pipe. Of course just like the cigar hobby, my pipe hobby took off as well. I now have a very well stocked cellar of tobaccos and about 35 pipes. Needless to say I really enjoy my pipes and cigars and pretty much all my spare cash goes into the hobby. My wife always asks, “Don’t you have enough tobacco/cigars?” and my response is always “no.”
You run a YouTube channel with pipe and cigar videos. Where can we find it, and what is on it?
I post a variety of videos on my channel. I have a Sunday Evening Cigar series where I usually review cigars but also discuss cigar related topics, I have a Thursday Pipe Chat where I discuss a variety of pipe/tobacco topics and sometimes I do an occasional pipe tobacco review. I have also done videos on my sports teams, as well as videos where I discuss Heavy Metal music. I’m open to all subjects, but mainly keep it to pipes and cigars.
What do you like about making videos, and why did you pick that format over others?
I started out many years ago on Heavy Metal forums like Metal Rules, Encyclopedia Metallum, Roadrunner Records etc., and when I got serious about cigars I discovered the Cigar Geeks forum. I posted on that forum daily for a good 3 years straight, and there is a great group of individuals over there. As I had grown in my cigar hobby I decided to give pipe smoking a try as I had always wanted to smoke a pipe.
After beginning my adventure into pipes I discovered there was a community on YouTube. After seeing the interaction from people I decided to jump in and give it a go and make videos. As with most people my videos sucked at first, heck they probably still do, but it gave me a better interaction with individuals in the hobby. Forums can be useful, but many times people don’t get to detailed about a particular subject; where as with YouTube a person can spend 5, 10, 15 + minutes talking about a particular subject and provide more in depth information about something you want to know about.
With YouTube its more of a face to face type interaction as you are watching the individual demonstrate tips, tricks, how-tos etc. with the actual pipe and/or cigar, so as a visual learner it was ideal for me. For a long time I didn’t have anyone to sit back and enjoy a pipe or a cigar with either, so by watching YouTube Pipe Community (YTPC) videos I was able to simulate that experience even if it was only a one way conversation. I think that’s why a lot of us do it… to share a smoke with someone and to have some interaction that way.
What is the YouTube Pipe Community (YTPC) and how did you become part of it? What does it do, and how can people find out more?
YouTube is full of different communities that cover topics from Guns/Self Defense, Bushcraft, Gamers, etc., and if you’re interested in a particular hobby then chances are there is a community for it on YouTube. YT has a strong pipe/cigar community that’s been around for a long time. I’ve been a part of the YTPC for four years now, and it was going strong when I joined. It’s basically a community of individuals that post pipe and/or cigar related videos, and create dialog with individuals based off those videos.
Its similar to a forum, but the dialog is generated from the videos. Sometimes instead of just typing out a text reply to the video, individuals will make a video response and post a video that will respond to the topic mentioned in a video by another person. Within the community you will find people that post tobacco and pipe reviews, cigar reviews, how to videos related to pipes and/or cigars, and sometimes people just create ramble videos.
Those are simply the individual talking into the camera as if they were sitting next to an individual and sharing a pipe and/or cigar with them. There are a lot of people that don’t have the opportunity to have a smoking buddy, so many of us can simulate that by watching the ramble type videos and pretend we are hanging out with said individual. Those types of video’s aren’t for everyone, but some people really enjoy them.
Anyone can join the community, all you have to do is post videos. There are no requirements to join other than to just start posting videos. What kind of videos is up to the individual. For lack of a better term, the community is filled with many “lurkers,” which are individuals that watch the YTPC videos, but don’t actually post videos themselves. Some comment on the videos and some don’t, but they watch to gain knowledge when it comes to pipe/cigar related topics.
Really that’s the whole idea behind the community, to help educate other pipe/cigar smokers with tips/tricks and how to information. For example how to pack a pipe, how to properly light a cigar etc. I started out as a lurker, and began watching how to videos before buying my first pipe. I then continued to watch and found that the community was full of a lot of great people. After watching for about five months I decided to give it a go and post a video. It was really weird just talking into a camera all by myself, but the community was very welcoming.
In the past four years I’ve made some good friends, and have had the pleasure of going to pipe/cigar related events where I’ve been able to meet up with other individuals from the YTPC in person. A lot of us will from time to time talk via Skype or Google+ Hangouts, and via a phone app called Voxer. I regularly talk via Voxer with individuals from Australia, Great Britain, and all across the the US who are a part of the YTPC. So it really is a community that goes beyond just posting how to videos etc.
When did you get into heavy metal? What attracted you to it, and what were your favorites? Do you have a “top ten”?
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest when the Grunge/Alternative Rock scene broke open it was easy to get into bands like Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Mud Honey, Soundgarden, etc. After a few years it was clear to me that the scene was dying, and the new bands that were coming out were very stale and provided nothing new. As the casual Hard Rock and Heavy Metal listener I expanded on the Heavy Metal side and I became a huge fan of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath in the mid 90s.
I then got into the Nu-Metal scene, but realized fairly quickly that there was heavier stuff that was better. By the end of the 90s I was getting into more Thrash, outside the Big Four, and into Death Metal and even some Black Metal. As time passed I really came to enjoy the old school Death Metal and Thrash Metal that I missed in the 80s as a young kid and while I was listening to Grunge/Alternative in the early 90s.
Now days I find myself mainly listening to the Traditional Heavy Metal like Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, along with the old school Death Metal bands, Death, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Deicide, Malevolent Creation, and Thrash Metal bands like Overkill, Testament, Exodus, etc. outside the Big Four. I enjoy all varieties of Metal though as you can find me listening to Progressive Metal, Power Metal, Doom, Folk Metal, Black Metal etc. I enjoy all of the sub-genres.
What do you look for in a cigar or pipe tobacco blend? Are some better than others? Are there others you “just like”?
When it comes to cigars I like anything from Mild up to Full bodied, though if I’m having a Full bodied cigar I need to go slow and make sure I have a nice meal before hand otherwise I’ll feel the nicotine punch. I prefer a nice Mild-Medium cigar in the morning with a nice cup of coffee, and in the evening I prefer a nice Medium-Full cigar with a nice ale or some whiskey. My favorite brand of cigar is Romeo Y Julieta, and of those lines I really like the Reserva Real and the classic 1875 line.
As for pipe tobacco, I started off with aromatics like many do. I still enjoy an aromatic from time to time, and if I do have an aromatic its usually in the morning with a cup of coffee. As I got more into pipes I really found that I enjoy English/Balkan blends the most. Typically anything with Latakia, Turkish/Oriental, Virginia and Perique will be a favorite of mine. Looking back on most of my favorite blends, they all have those components to them. I also find that I really enjoy McClelland tobaccos. Not saying they’re better than brands like MacBaren, Cornell & Diehl etc., but I find I really enjoy a lot of the McClelland blends.
What should people know before getting into cigar/pipe smoking? What about before they start listening to heavy metal?
With pipes/cigars… just know that its going to be expensive, especially cigars. A nice cigar here runs $5-9 so the cost can definitely add up. The higher end premium cigars range from $10-15+ so its not cheap at all. That doesn’t include accessories like humidors etc. With pipes and pipe tobacco its not as bad as you can get away with an inexpensive corn cob pipe (which are really good smoking pipes) and some inexpensive bulk blends. Though you can find yourself spending hundreds of dollars on some very nice pipes too, so it can be very costly as well. Then adding tobacco to your tobacco cellar will generate an expense as well. Either way you’re going to be spending some hard earned cash. How far into the hobby you want to go will determine how much money you’re going to invest in the hobby.
Heavy Metal carries a bad stereotype, and the music is viewed by many as a guy standing there screaming into the microphone while the band plays unorganized loud music. Now in some cases that may be true, depends on who you’re listening to, but the professional Metal bands are actually very talented musicians with many playing at a high level. Though most people can’t get past the loud noise. Then there is the typical images of hate and satanism.
Now some bands have this image or have lyrics about these types of messages, but not all bands are that way. There are plenty of Metal bands that sing about a positive message. Its up to the listener to decide their preference. For someone that wants to explore Heavy Metal… go for it! You have to look past the stereotypes. There are all kinds of sub-genre’s of Metal so while one genre may not fit your style another might. Sometimes it takes time to really wrap your head around what you’re listening to as well.
For example the first time I listened to Mercyful Fate (King Diamond), his falsetto singing really threw me off and I was like, “What the heck is this?” I wasn’t ready for it, so I put the album on the shelf for about a year. When I came back to it I was blown away by what i was listening to. Now Mercyful Fate and King Diamond are two of my favorite bands. Sometimes you just need to recognize you’re not ready for something, and instead of just dismissing it, come back to it at a later time. Your outlook may change.
Is there a “generation gap” between older pipe smokers and younger ones regarding the video format? Are there any newer formats that bridge the gap?
The forums are most likely to bridge the gap, because unless an individual shares information about themselves you don’t really know the age of the different individuals. As for YouTube, there are many older pipe smokers that make YouTube videos. It’s not just a young pipe smokers format.
The individuals in the YTPC don’t care if an individual is in their early 20s and just picked up a pipe, or if they’re in their 60s and have been smoking a pipe for 40 years. Everyone interacts with everyone. It’s a great community full of helpful information and individuals that love to share their thoughts on the hobby.
How do you make your videos? About how long does each one take? Does it require special equipment, software or a studio?
I keep it real simple as i do it for fun. If it gets to detailed it becomes a chore and then it’s not fun anymore. When I was doing my Thursday Pipe Chat and my Sunday Evening Cigar series on a weekly basis with editing, I was spending a lot of time on my computer (hours). Now I just use my cell phone which records in HD quality. If I do any editing it can take a little bit of time, but I don’t do that much anymore as I prefer to just click record and stop and then upload. It’s so much more easier. Is the video quality lower?… that’s for the viewer to decide.
If people are interested in what they read here about you, where do they go to find out more and stay on top of your latest doings?
I still chat on the Cigar Geeks forum from time to time, but not as much anymore. I chat on the Pipes Magazine forum on a regular basis currently and of course I’m still making videos for my YouTube channel. I can’t see how anyone would want to keep up with me, as I don’t find myself that entertaining, but if they really want to then the best place is my YouTube channel.
Hollywood Food Store
1660 Westheimer Rd # A, Houston, TX 77006
(713) 528-3234
For those who have known Houston over the past 30 years, the Hollywood Food Store at Westheimer and Dunlavy is an institution. At the heart of the Montrose District, it offers imported cigarettes and alcohol to late-night revelers. Located right next to Shaw’s tattoo studio, it is situated in the epicenter of rebellious cool, at least for 1980s kids in the days before every conformist counter-worker had double sleeves.
Little-known to many is that it is also one of the older pipe stores in this city of millions. For years, this location was where downtown workers and city residents stopped to get Galoises, 555 Specials, John Players, Dunhills and a variety of pipe tobaccos and hand-rolling supplies. Unlike just about anywhere else, you can find not just Drum and Bali Shag on the shelves, but Carter Hall and Prince Albert as well as a dozen glass display containers of house blends (most likely Lane Limited varieties).
Hollywood also sells pipe supplies and now Chinese pipes for those who want to launch into this experience at low investment. While most of the tobacco action in this sprawl of suburbs takes place in the outer rings, and many of us avoid the pretentious pipe shop in the tourist village, Hollywood has serviced pipe, cigar and cigarette smokers for generations with its wide selection and sobriety-optional service.
A typical night out in the 1980s involved heading downtown from the outer edges where comfortable suburbs held the daytime stability and nighttime frustrations of the working drudges, hitting Sound Exchange to see if any new metal was in the stacks, stopping at Hollywood for smokes and beers, then sneaking those into Numbers or The Abyss to see a show and maybe score drugs in the feces-festooned restrooms (to this day, there are probably Houstonians who have acid flashbacks any time a sewer pipe explodes). Over the years, and very few upgrades, Hollywood has continued this mission with an unassuming but vital presence for the pipe smoking community in this Southern/Midwestern city.
