Christine Makowsk
Audio By Carbonatix
In this day and age of social media saturation, it’s nearly impossible for new bands to maintain a veil of obscurity and “underground” clout without being captured by streaming platforms or other online coverage – the cyber equivalent of yesteryear’s tape trading and mail-order fanzines.
But that’s exactly what Denver trio deadgods has done since getting together last June.
“We hate the fucking internet,” says drummer Shane Johnson.
“The internet is a lawless wasteland,” adds guitarist/vocalist Collin McGukin. “Keeping track of the social media and even creating the social media is like, ‘Holy fuck, we have to take like a whole day to do this.'”
But the World Wide Web’s reach is inescapable, and deadgods does currently have an Instagram account and YouTube channel. While the group’s songs can’t be found anywhere else right now, that’ll soon change when its debut EP, Catacombs, drops on Thursday, August 31, on Spotify and Bandcamp.
“We decided to have a roll-out approach. We’re not going to make stickers or do anything but have an online presence” initially, explains McGukin. “When it’s time to release the EP, we’ll have everything roll out [online] on the same day.”
Until then, McGukin says the best way to hear deadgods and the latest material is in person. The band is playing an EP-release show at the Crypt the same night as the Catacombs release. Only Echoes, Limbwrecker and Old Deer are also on the bill.
By playing as many shows as possible locally, the stage is where deadgods have made a name for themselves. And Catacombs, recorded with Austin Minney of Only Echoes at All Aces Studios, reflects the same energy of the band’s live set.
“We all said, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it live,'” McGukin says of the recording process.
There were no click tracks or pre-recorded guitar parts to fumble with and cue. Instead, Johnson “laid down the drums to Collin playing through the headphones,” he explains.
“We don’t really want to deal with the whole click-track thing, and we know our songs pretty well,” adds Johnson. “We wanted it to be more of a live feel for our debut, more grindy.”
Putting together Catacombs was more about “having fun” than “being polished,” according to McGukin, whose own DIY background stems from the hardcore and metal scene in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. “That’s really what it boils down to,” he says, adding that the band is also busy working on a full-length that will take advantage of proper studio techniques and not sound like another live album.
With only Instagram clips of previous gigs to go off of, hearing and dissecting what deadgods does best is also a bit of a mystery. But what those snippets show is a band that takes a unique approach to extreme music by mixing blackened tech-death drumming, sludgy guitars, doom-laden bass lines and a spastic barrage of vocals.
Some fans have taken to calling it “blackened death sludge,” Johnson says, but the three varied musicians “don’t identify with one genre.” For the record, “post-metal” is the subgenre tag that best describes what deadgods is doing.
“There’s a solid mix of musical influence in there with most of our music,” says bassist Ian Gray, who regularly listens to UK dub and breakbeat music from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“There’s no firm vision for where the band is going. It’s simply the sum of its parts,” he continues. “The three of us each come at this from very different perspectives.”
Gray, the final piece of deadgods, had been asked to round out the group after McGukin watched him belt out a Tool song during a karaoke night at Clancy’s Irish Pub.
“I was like, ‘This is my guy,'” he recalls.
McGukin and Johnson had teamed up not long before then, when Johnson, looking to get his ear pierced, stopped by a tattoo shop where McGukin was working and noticed that metal music filled the space. “When I walked into the tattoo shop, I heard some heavy music playing, and I was asking around a little bit, like, ‘Do you play music, man?'” explains Johnson, who previously played in local death- and thrash-metal bands Intestinal Ouroboros and FUBAR.
After being a member of Denver metal group Burial Rites, McGukin, an admirer of sludge acts such as SUMAC and Cult of Luna, admitted to Johnson that he’d “given up” on the idea of starting a band at that point.
“Well, we should change that,” is all Johnson had to say, and the two newfound friends and future bandmates exchanged numbers and made plans to get together sometime to jam.
“Most people are so flaky,” Johnson says. “I was like, ‘Okay, this may or may not work out.’ But it just kicked off from there. After the first session, we were like, ‘Damn, we should keep doing this. This is fucking fun.'”
And it’s worked out well. McGukin’s distorted, blues-based riffs coat Johnson’s technical drumming in a sonic wave of fuzz, while Gray’s spacy bass melodies pair well with both, in a way that doesn’t sound forced or disjointed.
“A lot of what we write right now is sort of an amalgam of different influences at the same time,” Gray explains, “so it’s turning into something that is slowly becoming more post-metal and psychedelic and out of left field.”
But sharing the music live is still the band’s goal more than anything else, Johnson says. All that other shameless self-promotion online and merch stuff can wait.
“We’re just going to start playing shows, and if people like it, we’ll just go from there,” he explains.
“And if they don’t like it,” McGukin adds, “we’re just going to keep playing shows.”
deadgods, 8 p.m. Thursday, August 31, the Crypt, 1618 East 17th Avenue. Tickets are $12 cash only at the door.
