A SEDIMENTAL JOURNEY
LEE DORRIAN-FRONTED SUPERGROUP SEPTIC TANK ARE FIRED UP BY THE IMMEDIACY OF 80S HARDCORE PUNK. SO WHY DID IT TAKE THEM 25 YEARS TO RECORD THEIR DEBUT ALBUM?
On the surface, it seems quite ridiculous. A band with a history clocking back almost 25 years has its debut album only released this year with the sole previous discography entry being a seven-inch that was limited to 900 copies and released exclusively in Japan. However, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous when it’s revealed that the band in question, Septic Tank, consists of vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Gary ‘Gaz’ Jennings, bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Jaime ‘Gomez’ Arellano – all recognisable extreme music stalwarts.
Lee, Gaz and Scott played in Cathedral together. Lee heads up Rise Above Records and presently sings in With The Dead, and has also appeared with drone/doom supergroup Teeth Of Lions
Rule The Divine. Gaz slings helpings of trad doom in
Death Penalty. Scott grinds it out with the legendary
Repulsion and sang on the last album by Japan’s serial killer-obsessed rockers, Church Of Misery. Before becoming an in-demand producer, Gomez thumped tubs for various death and black metal outfits and the 70s rock-inspired Messenger. Now, he twiddles knobs for the likes of Paradise Lost and Orange Goblin. Dudes have been busy. But now they’ve found time to get back to their roots and barrel through terse blasts of powerful hardcore punk firmly entrenched in the early 80s.
“I guess it started in 1994 and was all based around Cathedral,” says Lee of the band’s origins. “We were going through drummers and didn’t have a stable line-up. Barry Stern [ex-Trouble] was with us for a short period of time and we were rehearsing for a UK tour and European festival shows when we had a bit of spare time. The first or second gig of the tour was in StokeOn-Trent, which, of course, is home to Discharge, so we thought it’d be cool to play a few covers as tribute to them. We had so much fun doing them that we played them at the festivals, too. After the tour, we had one last rehearsal with Scott and Barry before they went back to Chicago, where they both lived at the time, and I just said, ‘Why don’t we do more stuff like that?’”
“I’m sure it was something we’d talked about because when I joined Cathedral in 1993, we bonded over bands like Septic Death, Crude SS, Larm, Siege and so on,” continues Scott. “Those seeds were already planted. Cathedral were at a rehearsal studio in London and Barry was so professional that, when he came in, he nailed everything on the first try. We had six hours of time booked, but we were done in 90 minutes, so we started throwing down these heavy-duty punk blasts. I think we wrote and recorded 14 songs in an afternoon.”
Following this, Septic Tank went into hibernation for 18 years. Logistics forced Scott out of Cathedral for 17 years. Barry’s playing was impacted by hip trouble (he tragically passed away in 2005 due to complications after hip replacement surgery) and the original session disappeared into the ether when it was discovered that Gaz had left his recording device on pause. It wasn’t until 2012, when Cathedral were recording their final album, The Last Spire, with Gomez in the producer’s chair, that the idea of paying tribute to their old influences and favourites came up again. The album was completed with time to spare, so they wrote and recorded four songs in six hours – this time remembering to record it. That session begat Septic Tank, the aforementioned Japaneseonly seven-inch.
“It was a similar situation,” remembers Lee. “We had the time, Scott was there, we were in Gomez’s recording studio and he played drums. So we seized the opportunity.”
“While recording the last Cathedral album, the guys were talking about doing it again,” says Gomez about how he came to be involved. “They asked me if I wanted to play drums and of course I said yes. I hadn’t played super-fast stuff for a while and with this music you have to play hard, so it took me a while to shake off the rust. The technique was still there, but my stamina wasn’t and recording ruined my body for a week.”
“With age, rust forms while you’re sleeping, so there’s always a little rust,” laughs Scott.
“For Gomez to be blasting away for two minutes solid is an arduous task. It took a little while to get dialled in; he’s a great drummer, but he hadn’t done a lot of this sort of thing. He was learning as we went along.”
The following year, in May 2013, the quartet convened to play a single show in support of Repulsion’s UK debut, after which Septic Tank was put on hold yet again. This time, however, the hiatus wasn’t as protracted as Gaz, Scott and Lee kept the band in the back of their brains, recording suitable riffs on their phones and jotting down lyrics that could be belted out in hardcore’s screamed staccato style. In early 2017, Black Sabbath were playing their final show in Birmingham, an event Scott planned on witnessing. Lee proposed that the bassist come over a few days early to rekindle the band and belt out an album. The result, Rotting Civilisation, was captured quickly so as to maintain the raw spirit and, as Scott describes, “that hurried feel and the sound of guys who aren’t super-great at their instruments. It’s not intentionally sloppy, but it’s raw and you can’t fake raw.”
“Gaz and I would write a couple of things here and there, so when we went into the studio, we had skeletons for about half the songs,” says Lee of the album. “We came up with another 12 or so in the studio. We don’t really need to give it much mental effort because the stuff comes out really easy. I don’t know what it would be like if we pondered it or spent too much time working on it. The beauty is that all of these styles of riffs and the mentality of this band are in us instinctively from when we were younger and it clicks when we come together. We wouldn’t want to fuck with it too much; I like that it’s fresh and has an instant energy.”
As direct and immediate as Rotting Civilisation is, it’s also an insightful tutorial into the underbelly of 80s hardcore punk played by gents with loads of playing experience and an intimate knowledge of the style. If there are familiar riffs in any of the album’s 17 songs, you’re not hearing things.
“It’s more like picking bands to reference for parts,” replies Lee when asked if the writing process boils down to ‘pick a band, write a song like that band’, “Taking bits and parts of DRI, COC, Minor Threat, G.I.S.M., Motörhead, even 7 Seconds, all those bands come in as reference points and what makes it easy is we’re not pretending we’re trying to be original. What stands out for us are the lyrics because
I’m not trying to copy anyone’s style. There are messages in the lyrics, but they’re my messages.”
“It’s not quite that intentional,” adds Scott about the writing process. “The intent is there to sound similar to bands like Motörhead, Slaughter, Hellhammer and so on, but it’s not 100% ‘Let’s rip off this or that song.’ It’s more doing something in tribute and things came together so quickly because we have great chemistry.”
As you might imagine for a band with an integral member living 5,400 miles away and in another country, getting together for weekly rehearsals and shows on the toilet circuit aren’t on the cards. Still, plans for a Japanese tour are in the works, as is another album.
“And hopefully,” laughs Gomez, “it’ll take less than 20 years to do the second album, but as long as we’re having a good time there’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep going. A lot of it comes down to the fact we really like what we’re doing, the way the album came out, and that we have fun doing it,” he continues. “There’s a nice chemistry in the band, everyone is very professional, there’s no ego, no bullshit. It’s a really pleasant experience.”
“It’s funny because Septic Tank is three of four Cathedral members, but it doesn’t sound anything like Cathedral. It sounds more like the bands we were in before Cathedral,” laughs Scott. “It’s just a fun way to get together and play and pay respect to our influences.”
ROTTING CIVILISATION IS RELEASED ON APRIL 13 VIA RISE ABOVE
"WERE NOT PRETENDING WE'RE TRYING TO BE ORIGINAL"
LEE DORRIAN SETS COURSE FOR THE SOURCE