The starting point and chapter of the book describes the 2022 “Resound Dark Triumphant” show, in which Immolation sold out New York's Irving Plaza as headliners, with the following illustrious New York-related bands - old and new - Demolition Hammer, Mortician, Black Anvil and Funeral Leech as supporting acts. This show was a triumph, especially after the corona pandemic. If you take it exactly, Immolation aren't from New York, but from Yonkers, a city of around 200,000 inhabitants that borders New York City to the south.
And so, in the following 19 chapters, the author chronologically describes the development of the band, starting from the beginnings in 1986 as Defcon (which was also new to me), then trading under the name Rigor Mortis, which eventually led to Immolation due to the similarity of names with another band. The socialization of the musicians was similar to that of millions of other metal listeners in other parts of the world at that time: Bands like Kiss or Def Leppard were at the beginning, then Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and finally Slayer. Tapetrading was the big thing back then, and so demo tapes were diligently sent and received all over the world.
Also very interesting is the description of how Immolation invited Morbid Angel from Florida for three gigs together in 1988, and how the morbid angels earned extra money in their younger years by painting the local mall. Where possible, the author also includes the voices of those involved at the time, in this case that of the vocalist at the time, David Vincent. This narrative style is one of the book's great strengths.
In the course of tape trading-times before the debut album more and more contacts were made, the band traveled to London, met Mick Harris from Napalm Death and Barney Greenway, at that time in Benediction. The hope of a record deal with the up-and-coming Earache label, which already had Morbid Angel under contract, did not materialize. The band also traveled to France, where they met Laurent Merle, who would sign them to his label Listenable Records years later, and stayed with him and his grandparents in the sleepy town of Le Portel near Calais. Afterwards, Immolation played a spontaneous short gig at the Gibus Club in Paris between the German thrashers Tankard and the long gone French death metal legend Massacra, which was met with euphoric reactions from the audience. Visits, which also included Will Rahmer from Mortician, also took place in Sweden, where Immolation met the still young guys from Dismember, Unleashed, Entombed and Nihilist in Stockholm and enjoyed the hospitality of their families (Fred Estby's mother probably served a full breakfast buffet every morning...). In the further course of the Swedish trip they also met Grave and Matti Kärki, who was still in Carbonized at that time.
In the metal genre, which was even more male-dominated than it is today, it becomes clear what an important role women already played at the time, both in general and specifically in the development of Immolamtion: be it Anne-Marie Bowman, who booked shows and whose house in Philadelphia often served as a venue for a horde of adolescent young people from the USA and all over the world ( Max Cavalera thanked her by mentioning the “Philly Death House” in the thanks list of the “Arise” album), Kim August, the editor of the “Ultimatum” fanzine, who made contacts for the band and was a kind of manager, or Robin Mazen, who accompanied the band and introduced them to Bill Taylor (ex-Angelcorpse / ex-Acheron / perdition Temple), who was Immolation's guitarist for more than a decade. By the way, August was a bass player with Derkéta for a short time in 1989, while Mazen has been a bass player there for a long time, more about this in the upcoming interview with Derkéta.
The biography describes two other exciting strands: on the one hand, how the band made it through the dry spell in the second half of the 90s, when (extreme) metal was no longer in fashion and a show consisting of Immolation, Incantation and Impaled is described, for which just 15 paying visitors turned up. Nowadays, hundreds of tickets would have been sold in no time with a line-up like that, with Incantation (whose frontman John Mc Entee also helped out live with Immolation at times) also being a band that was late to reap the rewards. On the other hand, technical progress and the fact that the band members now live hundreds of kilometers apart meant that the band reduced rehearsals and ended up only rehearsing together - if at all - before concerts. This only changed again with the arrival of new guitarist Alex Bouks in 2016, who is a long-time friend and acquaintance of the band.
A recurring aspect mentioned by external interviewees, musician friends etc. is the unbelievable friendliness and down-to-earth attitude of the musicians, who never appear arrogant towards the smallest unknown support band and help out with technology and material. The guys around the core team Ross Dolan and Robert "Bob" Vigna don't conform to any other clichés either, no drug excesses, rather good food is high on the agenda. Here too, as mentioned in the book, the band was a role model, so to speak: such nice, authentic people producing such heavy, evil music. This becomes even more amusing when the band knocks on the door of producer Paul Orofino, who has had no contact with death metal to date and fears before the first meeting that these “strange guys” who make such infernal noise would surely wreck his studio. As it turned out, they were the nicest people ever, Orofino still produces the band's albums to this day and is something of a fatherly friend to the band.
The help of numerous appreciative colleagues is mentioned, especially that of Cannibal Corpse, who often took Immolation on tour. The band also received help in the form of attention from Slipknot and especially their member Mick Thomson, who is such a big Immolation supporter that he even got a “Dawn of Possession” tattoo and brought the band increased attention by taking advantage of Slipknot's high popularity and often praising the band in interviews etc. The band even made it into a video game, in “ECWHardcore Revolution”, which was released in 2000 for various consoles such as Sony PlayStation or Nintendo 64, the digital image of wrestler Ball Mahoney (who sadly passed away in 2016) shows an Immolation shirt, which the real Ball Mahoney often wore during his fights.
Apart from that, the book offers some funny anecdotes like the “intrusion” into the backstage area of Megadeth's Dave Mustain to do certain things or the lack of knowledge about the tuning of the guitars (“How do you tune?” “We tune to Bob” ). Or did you know that that the reference for the sampled kick drum on "Close to a world belief" came from the megasellers rock band Heart? The description of the band's dangerous concert tour through Ukraine, where corruption was flourishing at the time and the band was constantly stopped by police officers in their van to pay “road tolls”, is also very interesting, but the band managed to get away with a trick using the word “embassy”.
The situation caused by corona pandemic also showed the constructive spirit of the band: when all live activities were canceled and thus probably the most important source of income for a band these days, the men around Vigna and Dolan did not bury their heads in the sand, but expanded the online store, renovated their houses or caught up on educational qualifications. The song “Apostle” from the last album is about the killings of serial murderer David Berkowitz, besser known as "Son of Sam", which Dolan also dealt with as part of his final thesis in criminology based on the book “The Ulrimate Evil”, written by journalist Terry Maury. These killings took place in Yonkers, so the thoughts of writing about these cases were always there, it just took decades. By the way, it should be noted that nicer and more harmless people also came from Yonkers, such as Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.
The idea of “six degrees of separation”, which is also mentioned in the book, is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As if to confirm this, many people in and around Immolation also meet sooner or later in various contexts; in addition to foreign bands, the Who's Who of US death metal is also mentioned in various contexts, bands such as the aforementioned Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse, Goreaphobia, Nile, Vile, Angelcorpse, Acheron, Obituary, Catastophic, Six Feet Under (with whom Immolation went on tour at the time of the release of the “Haunted” debut and whose tour bus cost them dearly), Malevolent Creation, Cephalic Carnage, Impaled, Brutal Truth, Autopsy and rather less well-known bands like Prime Evil and Dr. Shrinker. There is also mention of a Dutch Maurice who knows a lot about filming, is that Maurice Swinkels from Legion of the Damned (which in turn would speak for the “Six degrees of separation”)?
The lack of great success in terms of commercial goals may also be due to the fact that Immolation may have been a tad “too good”: with their often swirling, dissonant sound and thoughtful lyrics, which dealt often with the negative effects of religion in general and Christianity in particular (the band members come from Catholic homes), Immolation are more “thinking man's death metal”.
All in all a must-read for fans of the band, but also for all people out there who have even the slightest interest in more extreme metal and can warm up to interesting band biographies! So let's hope for a twelfth album soon and many more years with this awesome band!
