Fatal Strategies – Details, episodes & analysis

Don’t worry, I’m not going to be getting too “creative” with the audio on the actual podcast episodes.

The first actual episode should be up next week…

Music credits:

* Blind Idiot God, “747”

* Terminal Sound System, “Gridlike”

* Dreams of the Drowned, “Midnattskogens Sorte Kjerne (Dødheimsgard cover)”

* Zweizz & Joey Hopkins, “No Clue”

The podcast returns with a special international roundtable edition focusing on Mr. Bungle and their relationship with the metal genre. Appropriately enough, my guests are both distinguished scholars in the burgeoning field of “Bungle Studies”:

* Dr. Sam Thomas, a professor of English at Durham University in the UK and author of a forthcoming paper (”Unsentimental Education: Mr. Bungle, Metal Music, and the Recording of The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny”) in The Journal of Popular Culture; and

* Luis Misiara, an independent researcher (and veteran of the infamous Web of Mimicry forums) from São Paulo, Brazil, who has put together a series of in-depth interviews with guitarist Trey Spruance.

The discussion here is based partly on the above-mentioned sources (see below for links) as well as a two-part essay on Mr. Bungle and metal that yours truly wrote for Veil of Sound in 2024 (ditto). But none of this is required reading in order to listen to the show, so fear not.

LINKS

* Luis Misiara, “A chat with Trey Spruance — 05/09/2017”

* Luis Misiara, “What’s he building in there? — New intel on Trey Spruance’s current affairs” (2022)

* Dr. Sam Thomas: Durham University | Instagram

* My two-fer on Mr. Bungle for Veil of Sound: Part 1 | Part 2

* Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age (which includes a couple of chapters on Mr. Bungle)

* The Who Cares Anyway Podcast (whose episodes include an interview with Spruance as well as a recent interview with percussionist William Winant)

MUSIC CREDITS

* Mr. Bungle, “Grizzly Adams” (1986/2020)

* Miguel Angel Olivares Avendaño, “Carousel” (8-bit version)

* Mr. Bungle, “Raping Your Mind” (1986/2020)

* Sequoia Sounds, “Quote Unquote” (piano cover)

* Mr. Bungle, “Sudden Death” (2020/1986)

French-born, Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist Camille Giraudeau joins the podcast once again, this time to update us on some of what he’s been up to since the recording of our first interview (which took me absurdly long to publish). We hear about the making of Doedsmaghird’s Omniverse Consciousness and Stagnant Waters’ Rifts, both of which came out in 2024, along with a (verbal) sneak preview of Eki Aum, a new project involving Camille and ex-DHG frontman Aldrahn. We also veer off into more philosophical/conceptual matters, including some discussion of “thinking man’s metal,” the “Black Wizards trope,” and the role of chaos versus order and tradition in metal. Finally, we hear some deep Norwegian metal intel that Camille gathered on his recent trip to Scandinavia, including some interesting bits and pieces involving Thorns, Ved Buens Ende, Mr. Bungle, and (of course) Dødheimsgard.Music credits:

* Dreams of the Drowned, “They Poisoned the Waters”

* Stagnant Waters, “Black Fields (C)”

* Stagnant Waters, “Split and Split (A)”

* Doedsmaghird, “Endeavour”

* Stagnant Waters, “Rifts (A)”

* Dreams of the Drowned, “Dream III”

My guest on Episode 4 is Camille Giraudeau, a French-born, Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist who has been a key player in the international avant-garde metal landscape for the past two decades.

Camille’s projects as bandleader (or co-leader) include Dreams of the Drowned, Stagnant Waters (alongside previous FS guest Svein Egil Hatlevik), and Smohalla, though he has also lent his talents to a range of other bands including the UK-based Void (on their 2023 album Jadjow), the current touring lineup of Dødheimsgard, and DHG spinoff Doedsmaghird (see last year’s excellent Omniverse Consciousness). On top of all that, he’s also a tireless enthusiast of not just extreme and avant-garde metal, but also post-punk, goth, and hardcore, all of which have influenced his own music in one way or another.

In this interview, we delve into the concept of “grey metal,” to borrow a term that appears in one of Dreams of the Drowned’s promotional blurbs. We also talk about his initiation into underground metal—from Disco Volante to Jester Records, Ved Buens Ende to Dodheimsgard—and then from there into metal-adjacent acts such as Killing Joke and Blind Idiot God. Toward the end, we hear a little bit about the MySpace era and the (virtual) community of bands/projects that grew out of it, along with some discussion of the pros and cons of working as a one-man band à la Dreams of the Drowned.

Show motes, links, and music credits:

My guest on this episode is Andy Hawkins, guitarist and primary composer for the legendary instrumental trio Blind Idiot God.

We talk about how he developed his distinctive guitar sound and how that process was shaped by the particular context in which he likes to operate (i.e., a live band performing together in a room, sans overdubbing).We also talk about his relation to metal and hear about what happened when BIG seemingly went AWOL in the 1990s and part of the 2000s. Toward the end, we get some updates on a few new recordings that are in the works—not only a new, still-untitled BIG album (their first since 2015’s Before Ever After) but also some things to look forward to from his ambient/improv project Azonic and a quintet, Downriver, that features Hawkins alongside a pedal-steel guitarist (!).

Links, show notes, and music credits:

My guest on this episode is Svein Egil Hatlevik—founding member of Fleurety (“the Steely Dan of post-Norwegian black metal”), ex-member of Dødheimsgard, current member of Stagnant Waters, and sole member of Zweizz.

Here, we talk about everything from coming of age (and forming Fleurety) in the early ‘90s and prank calling Helvete (the infamous black metal record store in Oslo) to collaborating via the internet and making music at his computer (as Zweizz). We also talk about AI-generated music, his contributions to DHG’s classic 666 International album, and his take on the meaning of “true black metal.”

In this, the debut episode of Fatal Strategies, I talk to Skye Klein, the multi-instrumentalist behind Terminal Sound System and A Beautiful Machine (among other solo projects) as well as one-half of the long-defunct Relapse Records industrial/sludge/noise duo HALO.

Here, we talk about the evolution of his music over the past 25 years and how this has coincided with changes in technology—from 4-tracks to digital audio workstations, and from the days of MP3.com (and self-released CDRs) to the current “Bandcamp era.” We also talk about some of the thematic influences on the more recent Terminal Sound System—“this combination of spirituality, futurism, and New Age-ness [that’s] all very futurist and optimistic and looking towards a shiny future which somehow got corrupted at some point.”

LINKS

* antisound.net (Skye Klein’s website, with links to his various projects and related social media pages, etc.)

* Bandcamp links: HALO (also here) | Terminal Sound System | A Beautiful Machine

* 2013 interview with Skye Klein at Bass Vulgaris (archived)

* Another interview, this one from 2020 and focusing on A Beautiful Machine

* My 2003 interview with Justin Broadrick (referred to in the episode)

MUSIC CREDITS

All tracks by Terminal Sound System:

* “Whine”

* “Gridlike”

* “Clip Incident”

* “Mi Clatter”

* “To the Sun”

* “Stat”

* “Oceans”