The True King of Death Metal- Q & A with Deceased’s King Fowley

Deceased have finally put out the long-awaited record, “Surreal Overdose” earlier this summer. Before that however, Reviewfix.com had conducted and interview with King Fowley, mastermind of the legendary act. The interview nearly got lost in the process, so it is just as long-awaited as the new album. King Fowley talks about the history of Deceased, his passion for music, and his undeniable lust for life and love of all things.

Review Fix: For starters can you give us the origins of Deceased? How did you get into playing in bands in the first place?

King Fowley: I always wanted to be in a band when I was a kid. Like most people who got into bands did, the first thing band wise I did was a band called Slack Tyde. Me and my buddy Bill who was my KISS buddy in elementary school, we put this band together and we did one show when we were 12 years old in Savannah Georgia – he moved there and I took the bus down from Atlanta with these other guys and we did the show. It was 1981, so I was about 12-almost 13 years old and I was into KISS and Aerosmith, so we did KISS’ “Love Gun,” “Train Kept Rolling” – the Aerosmith version and we wanted to do some radio hits at the time so we did “Rock and Roll Fantasy” by Bad Company, we did “You May Be Right,” by Billy Joel you know, stuff like that. We even did “My Sherona” from The Knack.

He lived in Savannah and I lived in Virginia, so it was hard to keep a band going so after that I was in a band with my friend Marcel-whom I went to school with in the seventh or eighth grade, we got into Black Sabbath we’d go see “The Mob Rules” tour and stuff like that- he was the drummer. I was the singer. So I said “I’m gonna buy a bass and then we can start looking for guitar players.” We did. For a while, he got caught up with some girl and he started getting into heavy drugs and I was getting into the music more than anything so he kind of stayed for a little while and we started picking up guys that are friends of mine, Doug Sadler and Mark Adams. We started hanging out, going to parties, he went to school with a girl I used to date and we said, “Hey, let’s form a band lets do some heavy stuff.” The heavy stuff at the time was Venom, Raven, Mercyful Fate-the early bands. We wanted to do stuff like that and make it heavier and faster and then of course Slayer and all that stuff came into it and then Voivod came into it and it started to get weirder and weirder . Of course back then we were all drug heads so were smoking pot and doing acid, PCP and were just making this twisted fucking band and we said “Let’s call it Deceased.”

We went through a bunch of other names, Madd Butcher, Evil Axe – how dumb is that? Then came Deceased and we were all really happy with that and it just took off. We had our name, we were doing our own thing, we had our own sound because we were into everything from thrash to speed metal to heavy metal to punk rock to Queensryche so we were everything and it gave us our own sound from the get-go.

Review Fix: What was the scene like then?

Fowley: There was no scene. There was nothing I remember being the only guy around with long hair. If people knew anything it would be the mainstream stuff. The heaviest thing they would play would be (Iron) Maiden or (Judas) Priest and that would be only in the arenas. If you wanted to go to a show, you’d have to go see some bands like Y&T in DC. I remember my mom would drive us down with 15 of my friends in the car and not all of them were into the music a lot of them went just to go and that really alienated us, but as far as the underground, which at the time was Motorhead and the Ramones, there were no bands. I remember At War being the only band that came out of Virginia as far as I can remember and they were from Virginia Beach, which was about three or four hours away from me. I was in Arlington, which is closer to DC. We built up a scene as Deceased by playing beer parties to basement parties and small clubs. We’d have parties at my house and stuff and we just kind of grew up together and formed this little legion of Virginia ‘bangers and bands would pop up like Abominog, Morticious, Morbius, and then there were bands like bay area Metallica like Medusa and Silence. It was good times. It grew but there was nothing when we started.

Review Fix: How do you feel about this uprising of new thrash metal bands?

Fowley: A lot of it comes off as phony or gimmicky and that hurts because I grew up with heavy metal; these people I feel are just going to use it to come and go and it’s kind of tacky to me. Playing thrash, good thrash is something I love, some of these bands will play beats I like or the speed I like, but its not coming from the heart and you can tell the song writing’s half assed and a lot of it- everything in music these days is. You’ve gotta have the best band logo and a cool band picture. Everyone spends so much time on the band except the music and that’s to me what hurts the most. The music means nothing while the music industry means so much to people, but the music itself is piss poor. Some people tell me “you’re stuck in the ’80s. blah blah blah,” No. I’d love to like everything that comes out and I love to love everything, but there’s so little of it that’s any good. There’s no time no preparation, no professionalism put into music and this retro-thrash and stuff these bands are taking names off of old albums here’s “Darkness Descends” or here’s “Bonded By Blood” or here’s “Raging Violence” whatever the band of the week is with the “old-school thrash album from the ’80s” title and you see them and they’re lousy, they’re just absolutely lousy, most of them. It’s a shame because I want to like them, but its the god’s honest truth.

Review Fix: You play drums for Deceased and in the early days, you played drums and sang simultaneously. How did you start doing that?

Fowley: Yes, well originally for Deceased, I played bass and sang. First I sang then I played drums and decided I should sing because nobody else wanted to sing. Up till 2000 I played drums and sang at every live show and record we ever did. I decided after I’ve been in October 31 for five years and playing live just singing for that band that I was tired of it. I said “I want to get out and front Deceased. I want to just sing.” So I started doing that and then I had some health problems I had a stroke and some blood clot issues. After I had a stroke my left side was screwed up for a long while I had a lot of nerve damage in my left side and I’m left handed of all things so playing drums was a mother fucker. So I did what I had to do. I wish I started the band in the ’80s singing. Just singing. I love playing the drums. Even the record we did that I didn’t do drums on, that was “As The Weird Travel On,” I wrote all the drum parts and showed it to the drummer at the time, Dave Castillo. It was interesting, playing fast stuff like “Blueprints For Madness” live super-hyper fast songs with 15 riffs and just singing over ’em screaming my guts out and sometimes playing with other bands I was helping out at the time like “Abominog” and my other band “Doomstone,” playing back to back to back shows in 2 hours in little underground clubs where it was like 316 degrees in there. Fun times. That’s what I love doing. That’s how I love to spend my weekends.

Review Fix: What was your first kit?

Fowley: My very first kit was a kit I actually found. I found a floor tom, a snare, snare stand, a cymbal and a cymbal stand in my younger brother’s closet. I don’t know where this thing came from. This thing was a Mickey-Mouse bullshit thing from Toys R Us and I took the floor tom and turned it and made it a bass drum and got a foot pedal to it. I found the snare, I found a tom. I had a friend named Jay C- he was some religious freak that walked the streets that I just knew from drug buddies that gave me a floor tom that had looked like it had spikes nailed to it. And we started putting out rehearsals like that I had one cymbal- that was my hi-hat that was my everything. The first real kit I had I believe that was a Tama and I believe I traded my bass cab for it- my Marshall bass stack for a drum set from this guy Brian Anderson that actually recorded our demo “The Evil Side of Religion” it was like a double bass, four mounted toms- I don’t even remember- a snare, a couple of cymbals and hi-hats that’s all it was. By the time I had quit everything, I was starting to get off of drugs my mom said “You get off that shit, I’ll buy you a kit.” and it was beautiful. She bought me a 12-piece Ludwig double bass. I can’t remember what it’s called, but that’s the one you see in a lot of pictures. It was a nice silver drum set and I ended up putting stickers all over it.

Review Fix: What were your main influences growing up?

Fowley: As a kid, learning the ropes as a tiny kid my first favorite band was The Beatles. I love The Beatles. I love the songs, I love the hooks, I love the music in all. The music in itself seemed to work for them. Kiss was my favorite influence as a kid. So over the top, so crazy. Loved the music. Loved the hooks in that too. It was kind of like The Beatles on fire. That got me into more stuff I love. Black Sabbath kicked my ass for many years. I used to be known as “the Sabbath Head.” Maiden, of course. All the legends. Then you get to the stuff like Voivod – they’re just so unique in their own way. I can’t say some of these bands if I can’t say Slayer and Anthrax, especially when “Fistful of Metal” came out. Old Accept. Main influences would be Beatles,Kiss, Sabbath, Maiden, Ramones, Voivod, Pat Benetar – hows that? (laughs) Big respect for that lady.

Review Fix: What was the experience like for the first tour?

Fowley: Growing up for a long time we always played sporadic weekend gigs for the longest of times. We really didn’t tour for the longest of time. We were a band for about 15 years before we did a full tour. That was the “Contamination” tour. It was us and Origin and Cephallic Carnage, Exhumed and Mortician played some shows. And Dillinger Escape Plan played some shows. I think they even played some shows on that and we went out with them for about a week or two weeks. It was a very short tour. That was the hardest part of Deceased for the longest time the guitar players couldn’t get out of work. We were always ready to roll, but they couldn’t get out of work, so we would only do weekend gigs over and over. So for many years we played weekend after weekend but we never stayed on the road. That really was kind of fucked up. Playing with that lineup, that was as far as we could go. We just couldn’t go on tour. I’d have loved to have done it but we couldn’t and it is what it is.

Review Fix: Where did the concept for “Fearless Undead Machines” come from?

Fowley: That was something I had in my mind back to our demo days. It was just an idea I had about the very generic tale of radiation zombies coming for the world, horror movies that I loved growing up you know, Dawn of the Dead, Zombie, The Gates of Hell, Zombie movies of the late ’80s and the early ’70s, which is something I wanted to do from one mans point of view, then as I got a little older I realized I was getting more intelligent, so I was adding my own little sidebars to it coming across the people who knew the zombies were more advanced and they knew how to beat all this and they were ready for it, and the turn of the tale where they weren’t ready for it and the evil zombies get their way in the end. It was just years and years and after we did the demo which would’ve been the fourth demo in 1990 we were gonna be taking along with that those were like concept demos. I put it aside and we wanted to do some more work so we did some albums like ”Luck of the Corpse.” We wanted to do some songs that were part of that that were from our first demo we liked taking the concept. Then we did “the Blueprints For Madness” then when it came time for the third record we said “lets go back and do the concept from the first demo.” Tthat became “Fearless Undead Machines.”

Review Fix: You managed a record label called “With Your Teeth” Records. What was that like?

Fowley: It wasn’t much. The extra spending money went to it. I put out a couple of bands that I was friends with like “Manog” and “Morbius.” But I saved my money. We were able to record a few albums. We didn’t have money to put them on CD or vinyl so we put them on cassette. We did a couple of seven inches. We did “Abominog” in a friend’s basement on an eight-track. It was literally nothing it was just a little label I did. The label I do now, Old Metal Records is a lot more detailed. I put out old bands records on CDs and these classic heavy metal sounding bands I like, that’s really fun. I’ve been doing that about 15 years now.

Review Fix: How is your relationship with Wes Bonscoter?

Fowley: Never had a good relationship with him. I liked the things that he did with “Blueprints for Madness.” That was an idea I had and he nailed it and I was very happy with it. By the time we got to “Fearless” he was very popular and he became cocky and was very unprofessional in my opinion . He did not paint what I wanted for “Fearless Undead Machines” at all. He could not paint it at all and I would tell that to his face he could not paint what I wanted at all. He came up with something much more generic with zombies in front of a factory, the thing I wanted he could not do.

Review Fix: How do you feel about being the first band on Relapse Records after all these years?

Fowley: It’s odd. Me and Matt go way back he used to send me these papers with pictures of Deceased on them back when he lived in Colorado. He said, “One day I’m going to start a record label and you guys are going to be on it.” I didn’t expect him to actually do it, but he did. We did the “Luck of the Corpse” album, we were being pressed on CD and Vinyl, we were off running. Me and Matt were close, me and Bill are still close. I see him on Facebook sometimes, but me and Matt don’t talk anymore. He totally changed. I understand he’s got to run a business, but friends are friends. But it was odd. It was odd doing our thing with Relapse and being one of the first bands, people always say, “Oh you were the first band on Relapse.” it was kind of weird. We spent 12 years there, probably about four years past what we should have.

Review Fix: How is your other project, October 31?

Fowley: It’s doing good were working on our new record. We haven’t played much. We did a few shows in October we did this festival called “Defenders of the Old” that we put together with Blood Feast and Tyrant from California and Sentinel Beast. It was a good time. Me and Brian – the guitarist for that band, we started the band in ’95, we love that stuff. I think we’re an incredible live band. It’s fun its different. Its odd. And yet it’s traditional as hell. In that sense we are stuck in the ’80s. He called me up out of the blue and said, “I’d like to talk to King.” I said “This is him” and he said “I want to talk to you about my band, I want to play with you.” It was called “Overlord” at the time. They had a demo called “Dahmer’s Diner” (laughs). We were talking and he said “who do you listen to?” and I said “Abominog, Uriah Heap, stuff like that” and he said “I love that stuff too!” So I started talking him how I’d love to be in a band like that like the old days. So I said “we’ve got to get together and just jam I’ve got a couple of buddies you could come down and jam.” So he came down and we jammed and we wrote three songs the first time we jammed. We recorded a demo. I called it “October 31”. We had a “warlord” cover, a “Jag Panzer” cover, and three originals. Then we put a demo out and everybody loved it. Next thing you know I’m getting offers to put out albums. Next thing you know we’ve got an album out called “The Fire Awaits You.” Next thing you know we put out our own little EP because people demanded more music. So I’m like “Holy shit this took off!” Next thing you know Metal Blade called and they wanted to sign the band. We actually signed to Metal Blade and they re-released out third album “Meet Thy Maker” and the second album “Visions of the End” as a two on one CD. We were going to do a new record with them and then we ran into a bunch of tax problems with them or something with that recording. This is the weirdest thing. Two of the biggest metal record labels and I’ve tore up both of their contracts! Boy, I’m trying hard to get popular aren’t I? (laughs)

Review Fix: How is the new album coming?

Fowley: It’s coming along great. It’s very vicious. There’s a lot of energy. Very energetic. A lot of power in it and energy I’m very proud of it. I’ve been listening to this for the past four days mixing it for the internet. It’s great. It’s long overdue, but its coming along great. Kevin, the engineer is a good friend of ours. He’s helped out tremendously. Everybody played tremendously, especially our new guitarist, Shane. This is his first album in the studio. Everything’s great. I’m very happy with the way my drums came out. I haven’t played drums on an album since 2000’s Supernatural Addiction. I’m ready to get it out there and play it live. Another thing about this one is that this is very old material. A lot of these songs were written five, six years ago and a lot of things have happened in those five, six years. We had one guitarist leave the band literally overnight. I guess he lost his way. I don’t know what to say about that. Mike retired from playing live in 2006. The last album we recorded was in 2005. So you’re looking at five years with this thing, too. A lot of these songs are so old and we’ve tried to get this thing out so many times. We’re ready to get done with this album and get on with the next album.

Review Fix: Who did the artwork?

Fowley: It’s a guy named Raoul Gonzalez. He’s from Spain. He did a fantastic job. I love it so much. I love the art. It’s one of my favorite artworks we’ve ever had. He really worked with us, adapted and was very cool. The opposite of Wes Bonscoter.

Review Fix: What band would you like to tour with the most?

Fowley: If I could tour with any band I wanted, I’d love to tour with Iron Maiden. In reality, I’d love to tour with Voivod. Anybody that does there thing and has a good time I’d love to go out with. I think Voivod would be the perfect package. Of course there’s my friends Napalm Death and I’d love to go out with Entombed, they’re good friends of ours. Empetaigo I’d love to see come back or see if Replusion could stick around. We’ve been talking with Absu. Me and Russ (Abbott) have been talking for awhile about a Deceased/Absu full tour. Or half a tour or something. That’d be neat to do. Especially since Matt from Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is in the band. We toured with them on the west coast and he’s a good friend of mine. Y’know, just something cool.

Review Fix: As a horror movie buff, what are your top five horror movies?

Fowley: Horror movies ever? I’d say Phantasm, The Exorcist, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, Burt Offerings, Black Christmas – the original. I love so many different horror movies for so many different reasons, but those stick out off the top of my head. Those are the ones I’ve seen dance around my brain the most. I love Phantasm. That’s probably my favorite.

Review Fix: You have a very large collection of things that you keep in a storage room. Tell me about that.

Fowley: I love collecting stuff. I love things. They make me happy. I love collecting movies. They’re my beer. They’re my cigarettes. I don’t smoke or do any of that crap so any extra money I have goes to my collections. Anything from a Happy Days thing or a KISS lunchbox or lamp to a Get Smart lunchbox. Something nostalgic that brings me back to my childhood. It’s just fun stuff that keeps me happy. It brings the frown upside down.

Review Fix: What is you’re favorite item in your collection?

Fowley: I don’t know. I have so many things that I love, probably my KISS pinball machine. That’s one of the bigger items in my collection, one of the more expensive ones. I guess because when I was a kid I always wanted a KISS pinball machine, and now I do. Another one is my juke-box my mom gave me. She passed away soon after she gave it to me. She gave me an old vinyl ’45 juke-box one Christmas, that means the world to me.

Review Fix: How do you feel about being a band that is still active after 25 years?

Fowley: It’s fun. It’s neat. I feel fortunate, lucky. We started this band to have fun, make music and it was neat. Then we got signed and it was like “Oh wow, now somebody’s gonna pay to let us record!” And we didn’t have the money to record so that was great. Then they started putting it on vinyl and then people started buying it. And you’re like, “Wow, somebody likes us.” Then it gets to playing live and all of a sudden people are patting you on the back and stuff that was cool too. Then as the years start building up you start building respect, that’s neat too. Then it became 10 years and then 15 years and people are coming up to us going “Hey King, I can’t believe you’ve been at it so long and it’s still great.” And we’ve always done it our way. We’re never going to be “rich and famous rock stars”, we’re never going to be featured in the world’s biggest magazine, and we don’t care. Now I’m looking at the last album from five years ago and it’s still good. I’m still impressed with what we’re doing and if other people like it too then great if not and it stops there, then oh well because we never wrote anything for anyone but ourselves. With all the lineup changes and health changes, it’s very fortunate. In my opinion it’s healthy. I’ve got 25 more years in me. I’m ready to be the Death Metal Dewey Cox.