...in order to make the record in the first place,my mother helped us get along for $5000,so we had forty hours to studio time to do the whole thing and then we recorded it and pressed it and everything was done with our $5000 budget!That's all we had.We were kids.We were nineteen and we weren't like Van Halen who were also nineteen and had millions of dollars to put out a record.
Paul Kratky / Slauter Xstroyes interview, Steel Conjuring #2, 1998
SLAUTER XSTROYES released their debut album, Winter Kill, on this day in 1985. The record was self-financed and self-released, only 500 copies pressed.
From the beginning while being with NAJ I didn't want to play copy songs.When we started NAJ we started by writing songs which was my salvation because I could never learn how to play cover songs and I mean,I could play the rhythm of most songs but I couldn't play the solo of the song.The reason I'm saying all these is because the difference between our band and other bands was that from the beginning our band played our songs.We were playing live with bands that were playing 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' and we came out into a song called 'Metal's No Sin' [...] People liked the music in 'Winterkill' although I think that the drummer in 'Winterkill' was loose and the band was loose and the sound loose!But for some reason people like that album and that's all that matters!
Paul Kratky / Slauter Xstroyes interview, Steel Conjuring #2, 1998
The band formed in 1979 as NAJ and split in the late Eighties. Material for a second was recorded but remained unreleased until 1998 when Dennis Bergeron's Monster Records / Rockadrome released Free the Beast.
We should have let Dennis and Phil put out Winter Kill in 1985 but that's when the to many chiefs and not enough Indians thing kicked in. Some people in the band thought Dennis and Phil were shrewd business men trying to take our work instead of seeing them for what that were "kids that loved Slauter and wanted to put out records". My vote was to let them put it out and if we didn't like the way they handled it drive over to their house and beat them up. Ha. We were all kids except one of us, the new guy and the contract didn't say anything about money so how could it be good for us to sign so it never happened... Fuck money. Work for that, play music for love and hope for money. The first record never really came out till 1998 and now the second in 1999. And Dennis put them out, go figure. If it wasn't for Dennis and Phil hardly anyone outside of Chicago would have ever heard Slauter.
Paul Kratky / Slauter Xstroyes interview, Iron Pages, 1999