30 Years Ago: REPULSION release Horrified

Daily Noise - / 2019

30 Years Ago: REPULSION release Horrified

A few weeks ago I received a copy of the rough mix of REPULSIONS's "Slaughter Of The Innocent" LP (thanks Mitch) and it's so mindblowingly excellent I thought I'd tell you about it, OK? REPULSION, as all Death conoisseurs should know, are based in Michigan and were formeerly known as GENOCIDE. This LP captures them at their very best, raging through 18 tracks of blistering V.O.D.M. (Violence Orientated Death Metal) that are faster than almost anything you'll ever hear. "Stench Of Burning Death", "Decomposed", "Maggots In Your Coffin"....oh, it's ALL too much!!

Pheonix Militia #7, 1987

Horrified, the death metal / grindcore ultra classic, was originally recorded in June 1986 at Larry Hennessee's Silver Tortoise Soundlab in Ann Arbor and released on cassette as Slaughter of the Innocent. Some of the songs can be traced back to at least October 1985 when REPULSION were known as GENOCIDE.

We sent an unmixed demo of the album to every known Metal label of the day. We received several rejection letters from labels saying it was not what they were looking for. I can't really blame them. I think the most extreme Metal record at the time was probably SODOM "In The Sign Of Evil" and even they were starting to refine their sound.

Scott Carlson / Repulsion interview, Voices from the Darkside

Three years later the recording was remixed (March 1989) and re-released by Necrosis Records, a new Earache imprint formed by Jeff Walker and Bill Steer of CARCASS, on this day in 1989.

Those guys wrote a letter to Aaron because at that point I was so sick of the band that I had turned all the mail answering things to Aaron so he was handling all that stuff and somebody I believe it was Jeff Walker dropped us a line asking if we wanted to release the record on Earache and a lot of boring details and blah blah blah and it came out.

Scott Carlson / Repulsion interview, Voices from the Darkside

I drew the original illustration. I believe Jeff Walker is the artist who did the cover, even though he didn't take credit for it. It looks like he just took a Xerox of the sticker and blew it up and painted over it. I don't think he realized my idea was for it to be a burned-up kid, and he made it look like a rotten, green zombie. [Laughs] I took it mostly from a comic book called Twisted Tales, you know, I just redid it and changed a few things. There was a story in a Twisted Tales comic book about a burned-up kid who comes back from the dead on Halloween and goes trick-or-treating.

Scott Carlson / Repulsion interview, Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces
Twisted Tales #1, 1982

...the master recordings for that record, some of the songs are recorded over used tape that was used a car dealer ship, a radio commercial you know so the guy just kinda screw us around like didn't take us seriously and we ended up with something... at the time we thought was subpar but looking back on it now... the impact it had on the underground scene and stuff, we're pretty proud of it at this point.

Scott Carlson / Repulsion interview, Voices from the Darkside

Gear used by REPULSION at the time:

Drums (Dave "Grave" Hollingshead): Tama Rockstar

Guitar (Matt Olivo): Vantage Flying V with DiMarzio Power Plus pickup, Marshall Mark II 100-watt head, 4x12 cabinet, original Ibanez Tube Screamer

Guitar (Aaron Freeman): Sunn Beta Lead 100-watt head, homemade 4x12 cabinet, Gibson Flying V, Boss Super OverDrive

Bass (Scott Carlson): Squier P Bass, Acoustic bass head

...everyday that we practiced and wrote a new song, we were really touching on an area that nobody had ever gone onto in Rock'n'Roll before even if I know there was some bands at the same time doing some similar things but there was only a few, literally a few handful of people in the whole world that were doing music like that and that was so exciting and such a rush and something I'll never never ever forget.

Matt Olivo / Repulsion interview, Voices from the Darkside