COHEED AND CAMBRIA
Coheed’s skinsman is fascinated by the man behind that infamous hockey mask…
Someone took Friday The 13th a little too seriously. Nothing will save him.
“I RAKE MY LEAVES WEARING A JASON VOORHEES MASK”
WHEN DID THIS FRIDAY THE 13TH OBSESSION START, JOSH?
“My parents were pretty liberal, letting me watch Friday The 13th when I was five years old – the only rule was I had to cover my eyes when nudity appeared, but they had no problem with guys getting split in half with a machete. We would even watch horror movies with my grandparents because the big franchise horrors were so popular when I was growing up. I was borderline obsessed with Jason [Voorhees, lead character] and I collected masks before we had the internet so I did a lot of legwork to find and save up for them. Some were limited editions they don’t make anymore. When I was 13 years old I got in trouble for something I can’t remember and my parents threw away all my masks. I’m still pissed about it to this day because I haven’t replaced some of them.”
WHAT MADE YOU INTERESTED IN JASON IN PARTICULAR?
“Something resonated with me because I got picked on a lot in middle school; it’s not hard to draw a correlation between this miserable school life of the cool kids smacking you around and this character that goes around killing the cool kids. I don’t know how sick this makes me but I’m always rooting for Jason – he’s the anti-hero’s hero. He was human at first because he bleeds when he’s hit with a machete – you see he has a bathroom and he eats food – he was just a feral human raised in the woods. I prefer the supernatural Jason from Part 6 onwards, though; he was unbeatable and 100% undead. It’s so far beyond just movies to me – this collection is about being a kid again, the enchanting mystery of my youth and rewatching them is still a very powerful and visceral experience for me.”
DO YOU FIND ANY USES FOR YOUR MEMORABILIA?
“I bring out my favourite waist-up bust of Jason from Part 7 and fit a mask on it for parties – it’s so expertly painted and it’s the coolest-looking Jason to me. I love putting all my hockey masks in my trees in the garden every Halloween, too – my friends come over and try them out. I wear my masks when I rake my leaves so my neighbours must think I’m downright mad. When my step-daughter has sleepovers, I dress in full [Halloween character] Michael Myers garb with a kitchen knife and I’ll happily stand in the closet for half an hour waiting for someone to open it so I scare the shit out of them!”
WOULD YOU SURVIVE IN A JASON MOVIE YOURSELF?
“With my advanced Jason knowledge, I’d probably make it all the way to the end if not survive the whole thing. I always imagine one day there’ll be a gameshow when I’m an old man where I can finally use all this seemingly useless knowledge of Jason.
I have studied the movies without even realising it; I watched them every single day as a kid. Whenever I talk to diehard fans, there’s a mutual respect there because there’s so much Jason lore to learn. Horror movies don’t scare me but I don’t look at that as a failure of the movies. Maybe if they scared me I wouldn’t have liked them so much.”
ON A SCALE OF 1-10, HOW METAL IS OWNING A FRIDAY THE 13TH HOARD?
“In Josh Eppard’s book, the hoard is a solid 9.5: this is pretty metal! One of the coolest things about being a musician is running into so many other horror movie fans; even Coheed’s singer, Claudio Sanchez, collects movie memorabilia, too.”
THE COLOR BEFORE THE SUN: DECONSTRUCTED IS OUT NOW VIA 300 ENTERTAINMENT