Vore and Curse of the Gravehammer

The mighty Vore has been unleashing their skullcrushing brand of death metal and doom since the 90′s, annihilating everything in their path along the way.  They’ve opened for legends such as Halford, Morbid Angel, and Cannibal Corpse, presented memorable sets guaranteed to blast out the eardrums of the uninitiated.   These Ozark based dudes have recently presented their fifth magnum opus onto an unsuspecting world at large, a smashing collection of sonic terror entitled Gravehammer.   Unsigned since 1994 and damn proud of it, Vore has amassed a rabid underground following and continue to gain new headbanging converts.  In this interview, we discuss Vore’s musical legacy, an encounter with Rob Halford, the curse of the Gravehammer, BEER, and many other metal as hell topics…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Vore, and how long the band has been together.
I am Page Townsley, guitarist and vocalist for Vore. The band was formed in June of 1994. The other members of Vore are Remy Cameron (drums) and Jeremy Partin (bass).

Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
We’re based out of Fayetteville Arkansas, which is located in the northwestern corner of the state in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. The Fayetteville metal scene is alive and well at the moment. We’ll get medium sized acts coming through here from time to time and those shows usually do well. Skeletonwitch came through here recently and drew a big Monday night crowd of close to 300 which was killer. Origin was here in the summer and drew 200. The local band shows vary depending on frequency. A few years ago a local venue started having weekly metal nights that did really well and then three other local clubs decided they wanted to have a metal night too to try and cash in and that killed the scene for awhile. You can’t have a metal night every night here, but doing a metal show every week or every couple weeks seems to keep the local metal interest active and healthy. There are definitely some good local metal bands like Hymns, (who play extreme black metal with full corpse paint) and some younger developing bands like Oracle and Abacinated. Just a little ways south of us in Ft. Smith there are some extreme bands like Macrocosm and Angelflesh. I know some of these bands have demos recorded but I’m not sure if they’ve released them. Deadbird is from Fayetteville as well, but I’m not sure what they’re up to these days. They haven’t played here in awhile.

How frustrating has it been to wait five years to release a new album? Why the long wait?
Yeah, it’s been a real bitch. There’s really no single reason it has taken so long. It’s more like a multitude of reasons ganged up and clamped chains on us. Shit happens, life happens and sometimes you can’t influence or control certain situations. Much of it was financial. Being an independent band means you pay for everything and we owed a good chunk of money after we released Maleficus which took us a couple years to pay off. Then we re-released our first two albums (Lord Of Storms and Dead Kings Eyes) on one digipack and went back in the hole a bit there. We experienced some delays during the new recording as well. We had some equipment malfunctions in the studio that pushed Gravehammer back several months. Among them were Remy’s drums falling out of the back of his truck into the middle of the street and getting hit by cars, my guitar pre-amp frying and a critical recording pre-amp malfunctioning that had to be sent off to the shop. We almost named this album “Curse of The Gravehammer”.

Is there any story or concept behind the CD title Gravehammer?
There’s not really any specific concept behind the album title. The name just kind of manifested itself in my brain one day. It’s a heavy sounding title. A hammer is a devastating weapon and the grave has all sorts of connotations attached to it. It’s a great representation of the material on the new album and Vore in general.

Select two songs from Gravehammer and what inspired the lyrics.
With the song “Doomwhore”, we were inspired by Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” about a Mt. Everest climbing disaster in the nineties. Everest is no environment for human beings to survive in. There are really horrible things that can happen to you up there besides the obvious freezing to death, asphyxiating or falling. In Tibet, the people worship the mountain as their holy mother. Being into mythology, I took that idea and personified her into a sinister deity, captivating men’s hearts and luring them to their potential deaths with visions of glory, which isn’t too far from the truth in some ways.

“Progeny Of The Leviathans” was inspired by a series of paintings by an 19th century American artist named Thomas Cole called “The Course Of Empire”. The five painting series depicts the growth of a civilization from the savage state to the height of its achievement and ultimately its destruction. Every empire that rises falls and many great civilizations have disappeared throughout history. The lyrics are about the descendants of a once great empire which has fallen into complacency and corruption. Ancestral memories awaken within them and they attempt to restore their world to its former glory but destroy it instead.

What could one expect from a live Vore show?
Imagine being run over by a tank. Then a steamroller. Then having what’s left of you eaten by ravenous animals. We’ve got two full stacks of tube powered death on stage plus a massive bass rig. We sometimes get sound guys shaking their heads at us because we bring so much gear for a three piece, but the way we see it, if you’re going to war bring big guns. We don’t want you to hear Vore, we want you to fucking feel it! We usually bring smoke and lights for atmosphere. We’re active on stage and bring a lot of energy to the performance. We definitely make it as much of a production as possible and play every show as if it were our last.

What was it like opening for the legendary Morbid Angel and did you get to hang out with them at all?
It was cool. It was a several years ago, back on their Gateways tour. Vore has always held its own in front of the big crowds that the bands like Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse draw. People always think we are a part of the tour package. We’ve been lucky to have been able to play with several metal legends. We didn’t really hang out with Morbid Angel. I shot the shit with Erik Rutan for awhile, that was about it.

How did you wind up opening for Halford and did you get to meet him? What was that experience like?
We were invited to play a fest in Oklahoma City back in 2000 that Halford and Pissing Razors were headlining. It was Halford’s second show of his tour in support of the first solo album he did under the name Halford. I saw him standing outside of his tour bus early in the afternoon and I went up and talked to him. I’m often wary of meeting famous musicians because I’m afraid that if they’re dicks it’ll taint my enjoyment of their music but I couldn’t resist the temptation to meet Rob Halford and it turned out that he was a super nice dude . I was doing a metal radio show at the time and got him to do a drop for me to use on the show. The name of my radio show was The Weekly Beating and when I told him that he laughed out loud. He thought it was a great name and we talked about some of the people we both knew in the metal radio world.

Has Vore ever played in the Los Angeles area or plan to do so in the future?
We’ve never played in L.A. but we’d very much like to. We don’t have any concrete plans at this time, but we’re planning to do some shows out west in 2012 that could potentially include L.A. We have a lot of friends out there and it would be great to get there and do some shows where the metal is!

Who did the very killer cover artwork for Gravehammer and how much input did you have on it?
Our cover art was done by the artist Daarken (www.daarken.com). We wanted to have powerful artwork for Gravehammer so we spent a lot of time perusing the interwebs looking for an exceptional artist that would be interested in working with us. We really dug Daarken’s style and felt what he was doing in his medium was a good reflection of the imagery we create in ours so we commissioned him to do the cover. We gave him a basic idea of what we wanted and he came up with the rest. It’s eye catching and we’re very happy with it. It’s the first thing people notice, which is what we were shooting for. I grew up in the days when you’d buy an album just because the cover looked awesome and that’s something we’re losing as music moves into the all-digital realm: The tactile sensation of sniffing around the record store and finding stuff that just looks bad ass.

What is your beer of choice and why?
Damn, that is a hard question! Free beer usually tastes best. If I’m buying, I prefer more of the craft and microbrew beers. While in Chicago last October and I tried some beers by a brewery in that area called 3 Floyds that were phenomenal, though I can’t get any of those around here unfortunately. I think for an all around favorite though I’d have to go with Bass. It has a good taste to it and it even goes down well if it happens to be a little bit on the warm side. Jeremy likes Dead Guy Ale and Remy is good with whatever beer is in front of him at that particular moment because it’s there.

When you look back on the earlier Vore releases, what do you think of them now?
If I only knew then what I know now! Our philosophy has been that every album needs to be better than the one before it, so naturally there are things I would change, some I wish came across better and maybe a couple that make me cringe a little, but I stand behind the material on them. I still think all those songs are solid. If I could go back and change anything it would be the production stuff, particularly on the early discs.

Are you or any of the other members involved with any other bands or projects outside of Vore?
Nope, Vore is the only thing any of us has going at the moment. There’s not an exclusivity clause in the band or anything though. If someone wanted to do a side-project they’re welcome too, as long as it doesn’t interfere with any Vore plans.

What’s up next for Vore in the New Year?
Promote the new album, do more shows and start writing for Vore album #5. We have some plans to do some shows across the south with Hod and Blaspherian in late January or February. We don’t have those dates nailed down yet.

Any messages for metal heads here in the Los Angeles area?
Check us out at www.vore.org and order a copy of Gravehammer! Like us on Facebook or whatever. Tell all your friends how that awesome band Vore kicked your ass, ruined your hearing and drank all your beer!

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions!
Thank you Ken! We really appreciate the interview and the chance to expose Vore at Highwire Daze!

(Interview by Kenneth Morton)

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