By SHAWN MACOMBER
Long before he founded long-running seminal Midwest death metal outfit Broken Hope or penned hellacious, high-velocity novels like Rabid Heart and The Armageddon Chord, Jeremy Wagner was a kid in a rural Illinois farmhouse full of books and records – but no cable TV.
“I think that being in the middle of the country and being isolated like that can bring out a connection to darkness in myriad ways,” Wagner, who made the jump from Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to Benchley’s Jaws circa age 6, tells RUE MORGUE. “I can’t fully express it in words, but growing up where I did, I saw shit that most kids couldn’t handle – being in farmland.”
Wagner’s mother, sensing a febrile imagination and sharing a love of genre, would pass all her Peter Straub and Stephen King books onto him. And though he would eventually write dark fiction of his own, an encounter with heavy metal landmarks “Ride the Lightning” and “Reign In Blood” shifted his gorehound compass needle toward a new true south (of heaven).
Well, sort of.
“You take this horror kid from the country, turn him on to metal music and a guitar, next thing you know he’s writing terrifying music and lyrics – that’s what happened to me in a nutshell,” Wagner says. “It all dovetailed quite nicely … taking that love of horror and weaving it into my music and lyrics. I was using ‘what I know’ in a new way: music!”
Wagner carries that darkness with him still and it is all over Permanent Dawn, the feral and imposing full-length debut from his reactivated and revamped grindcore supergroup Earthburner – an eleven song, twenty-one-minute ecstatic celebration of dissonance, disharmony and nightmare-tinged socially conscious lyricism featuring members of Broken Hope, new school heroes Sanguisugabogg, Gloryhole Guillotine and Napalm Death.
Wagner recently spoke to RUE MORGUE about Earthburner, his upcoming literary efforts and tours and what it takes to maintain longevity in extremity – for nearly forty years.
I love how vital and fresh this Earthburner record sounds. It’s incredible to me that decades in you’re still churning out some of the best metal around in more than one subgenre. Is that a mindset thing?
My personal mission is, I always want to be the heaviest, the most ferocious, yes, but also sound as amazing as possible on a sonic level – be it an album or live in concert. I’ve had that attitude since I started Broken Hope in 1988 … so I’ve been building that legacy for all these years and stayed on it. Same with Earthburner – same mindset and attitude since I first launched Earthburner in 2001. You just aim to deliver the best and be the best in every way, over and over and over. You stop doing that, you might as well hang it up.
You’ve got so many blood-drenched irons in the fire. I’m curious if there’s a specific gap in your interests or goals as an artist that Earthburner fills?
Earthburner satisfies my “grind tooth,” if you will. Musically, the inspiration for Earthburner has always been Terrorizer’s World Downfall – I make no bones about it. I’ll tell anyone who asks, straight up, that is the album that has had me wanting to do a grind record since 1989. It influenced some of my Broken Hope blast riffs, too, actually. But I really wanted to do something that was a nod to World Downfall and early Napalm Death along with some death metal breakdown riffs in the mix. The concept was to embrace old-school, pure grindcore blasting and super-heavy riffs with a punk attitude. That has remained consistent since I started Earthburner and this band is my outlet for those ideas.
Does your work as a musician inform your work as a writer and vice versa?
When I play extreme metal, it’s a helluva release – like hitting a punching bag and getting your hostility and your ideas out. It’s the same with writing dark fiction. And when I write novels and short stories and lyrics, I’m jamming music the entire time. There’s a really solid connection between my brand of extreme metal and my brand of dark fiction.
The lineup of Earthburner is the extreme metal equivalent of a drawing together of the realest of the real. What’s the vibe like within the band?
The vibe is fun and loose. With Broken Hope, it’s always business and – though it’s fun in its own way – it’s more straight-forward and not so easy to get everyone together. Earthburner is just bursting with enthusiasm and about having a blast. Of course, (Broken Hope/Earthburner drummer) Mike (Miczek) is as close to me as a brother. We’ve done so much together and I’m always in awe of him and his talent. Tyler (Affinito; Wagner’s stepson) is a sick bassist. He’s got this old soul thing going on. Which is to say, he’s young but he’s into all the bands that I grew up with and inspired me. Tyler also turns me on to extreme metal bands I’d never heard. I first heard of Sanguisugabogg and 200 Stab Wounds and other big bands now before they even had albums out thanks to Tyler. It’s also just really freaking cool for me to jam with my stepson like this. It’s also an honor to work with Devin (Swank; Sanguisugabogg) – he’s a workhorse, he’s a professional, he’s a kind and awesome human and he’s a sick vocalist. Being in a band with him is the best.
Then there’s pinch-me guest spots on Permanent Dawn like Ross Dolan of Immolation, who I’ve been friends with since we were teenagers. He’s on a song called “Necrodisiac.” Then I hit up my pal, Jake Cannavale of Vixen Maw. And then there’s my longtime pal and hero Mitch Harris of Napalm Death and Righteous Pigs infamy. I always liked Mitch’s high-pitched screams and vocals and thought it would be cool to have him guest on a song. When Mitch showed up to the studio, he had ideas for every song! So, we just let him roll with it. His contributions and ideas were so good that we kept it. In the liner notes, I put Mitch down as an honorary member of the band and we want him on every Earthburner album. Mitch, unfortunately, has limited availability to play with us live, but sometimes he will if he can. No matter what, we want Mitch with us any way possible. He really helped “level up” our album!
While you’ve written some very memorable and vivid horror lyrics for Broken Hope, I understand Devin wrote the lyrics for Permanent Dawn. As a bandmate and writer, can you speak to the concept of the record, which seems timely and terrifying in its own way?
Devin will say most of our lyrics pertain to the fall of mankind and religious hypocrisy but songs like “Hunger Pains” are closely related to horror with themes pertaining to cannibalism and “Slaves to the Screen” loosely takes inspiration from John Carpenter’s “They Live” with lyrics about people of our earth are just consumers and slaves to whatever drug, wardrobe or junk food the world seems to push onto us. It’s all bleak and terrifying across the board.
Well, on that note … what else is coming up in the rest of the Wagner-verse?
There are two new books, which I’m very excited about. The first one, coming out in August, is titled Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef. This was a different book for me to write as it’s not a horror novel, it’s a memoir I co-wrote with legendary chef Curtis Duffy. We follow his path from his grim and brutal childhood under the roof of a bike gang leader father, his growing devotion to his culinary craft and his tenacity in clinging to the idea that he could make something of himself despite the self-doubt that has dogged him from his earliest years. Through Curtis’s eyes, we see what it took to survive being raised under the roof of his savage father, how he coped with the tragic deaths of his parents in a murder-suicide that still haunts him, how he became a world-class chef – and the toll that dedication took on marriage and family life – and how he navigates all of the dramas that play out behind the swinging door to the kitchen and all of the elation experienced from achieving monumental goals, making dreams come true and the joy of learning from people at the very top of their profession. The second book, Wretch, comes out in October. It’s a fucked up, dark crime/splatterpunk tale that takes place in Chicago.
Besides that, I have two documentaries that I wrote and produced: One on adult film legend Peter North and the other, again, on Chef Curtis Duffy. I’m also working on what will be my most epic novel – it spans decades, from World War II to present day – then there’s a couple more memoirs I’m doing. I’d also like to release a short-story collection in the next year or so … I have ideas for a hundred more books, just not enough time! Lots of horror is coming outta this kid, I can assure you of that!
Permanent Dawn is out now. Catch Earthburner on the grindcore-short Midwest Facelift tour April 25-28 with Ran Thru, Ringworm and others. For more information, follow the band on Instagram.
*Book purchases made through any included links will directly benefit independent book shops and may result in compensation for Rue Morgue.
