CTTTOAFF 2012 WEST COAST TOUR.
6/21 Las Vegas,NV @ The Bunkhouse W/ RETOX
6/22 Los Angeles, CA @ Salvadoreño Bar
6/23 San Jose, CA @ Johnny Z’s Bar W/ Buried at Birth
6/24Oakland,CA @ Eli’s Mile High W/ Caulfield, Gravehill, D.I.S.
6/25 San Francisco, CA @ Sub-Mission W/ Caulfield
6/26 Sacramento,CA @ Oak Park Boiz House W/ Caulfield, Plague Widow
6/27 Portland,OR @ Laughing Horse Books W/ Elitist, Burials, Black hole of Calcutta, The Drip
6/28 Seattle, WA @ The Comet W/ Transient, The Drip,
6/29 Richland, WA @ Ray’s golden Lion W/ The Drip
6/30 Yakima, WA @ Bill’s place W/ The Drip
6/1 Boise,ID @ The Shredder W/ Coffin dust, Blood Freak
It has been a rather long while since I last heard a release as intense as Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire’s recent EP release, Visceral. Blending elements ranging from the most blasphemous war metal to classic grindcore, CTTTOAFF has created a sound that is at once crushing and intense. We talk to the band to find out more.
Read the interview here.
We wonder if he would like “Visceral” better. long songs or gtfo.
It’s always irritated me a little when someone says, “Oh, you like band X? Then you’ll definitely like band Y!” Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing about new bands and listening to new things, but why is it necessary to make that immediate comparison? If I already love the first band, the…
It’s 4:09 Mountain Standard time. We just rolled in from the first part of our 7 years of Disillusion tour. We are looking forward to visiting all of our friends in NYC, Ohio, Boston, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri.
Here is a summary of how things have been so far:
Day 1: Denver @ The Gypsy House Cafe
We played with Catheter, Laughing Dog, Aberrant, Royal Talons and itsforacop. All of the bands were fucking awesome. The Gypsy house basement is a weird place to play. The ceilings are really low and there is not a lot of space to see the bands really well because there is shit hanging from the ceilings. It looks like it would be a cool place to smoke opium every waking minute and drop out. Really comfortable chairs everywhere, dark, mellow hippy vibe, etc etc… It was nice visiting with Laughing Dog. Specifically Joe who has helped me out with New Mexico shows on a few occasions, and played on that NOISEEAR record Pyroclastic Annihilation, which is one of my favorite grindcore records ever.
Day 2: Driving
Day 3: El Paso, TX @ Sleepless Nights.
El Paso looks like a fucking warzone. The route that we took to get to our friends (Alison and Frank from Communion of Thieves) house went right past the highway exit to Juarez mexico. Pigs everywhere. Very intimidating. This is the first time i’ve ever seen the fence that separates the U.S. and Mexico. There were shirts, pants, dresses, etc… all along the barbed wire. It’s some real bleak shit to look at, especially if you’re from a place like Colorado where there isn’t anything like that at all. I feel for those people because I don’t really believe in borders between countries. This might come from some of the stories that the kids I teach at my “day job” have told me about crossing the borders with their families. The only justification I can think of is that it keeps the cartel out of the United States, which is some scary shit. The world is a fucked up place. I don’t have all of the answers but I can tell you that it is strange seeing something like this electirc, barbed wire fence, the government has put up to keep one group of people separated from the other.
We showed up to Frank and Alison from Communion of Thieves house. They made us some killer food and we sat around and burned. They told me stories of 10 year old’s selling pot with their mothers driving the car and all sorts of other crazy shit that they see every day. The show was a fucking rager. Kids were going crazy. They knew the lyrics to our songs, and were familiar with material as new as the split with Nesseria which is a very new experience for us. Usually on tour we are playing to people who are only slightly familiar with us. It felt nice. We met a lot of really cool people and had a great time. I can’t wait to go back.
Day 4: San Antonio, TX @ 1011
Arty from Colonia set us up with this show. Arty is a solid motherfucker. He taught me a new word in spanish-“Nescio” which he told me means that it basically means that you’re being a little shit, being difficult, that sort of thing. So all night we were calling each other Nescio. That shit was hilarious. We played with some super cool bands- The Skuds, Nuclear blast suntan, and Bomraw. Bomraw had to leave after they played so we didn’t really get to talk to them very much. But those other kids were awesome. Some of our friends from Ecocide (R.I.P.) showed up and it was nice to see them. After the show we went and partied a little bit with our Friend John that lives down there. Usually by the time we make it to San Antonio i’m either sick or feeling all fucked up from being on tour and living through a series of extreme up’s and down’s and not really in the mood to rage it. But we raged it this time and it was one of the best times i’ve had in San Antonio to date.
Day 5/6:Austin, TX @ 1808
We Arrived in Austin at the 1808. It’s in a real shitty part of town that reminded us of where I used to live/where we used to practice. People smoking crack out & shooting up in the open, gang members hanging out, mean mugging you, this kind of shit. The dude who owns the club kept saying “Tell everyone, this is a black only bar.” I didn’t really know how to respond to that. Maybe something along the lines of “Hey, thanks a bunch for letting the rest of us races in and taking our money for this week only.” We played with Mutilation Rites, All Pigs Must die, Early Graves, A Storm of Light, Boars, The Dead See, The Atlas Moth, Vestiges, Kill The Client, Speedwolf, Sky Burial, and Illustrations. This was the first time I saw Vestiges, Illustrations and A Storm of Light. They all blew my fucking mind. All of the other bands were killer as well. The only shitty thing was that there were 3 stages so everyone was kind of competing with one another for a crowd. Lame. The show was great, it was nice visiting with all of the musicians and people we know from Austin. Probably our best Austin show to date and our second SXSW show. We had some transmission problems and a second flat tire while we were there so we ended up missing our Arlington show. We were supposed to play at the Annex again with Dead in the Dirt and Heartless last minute but that didn’t end up happening because we had another show obligation that overlapped and ended up falling through. So we just hung out with Mark and Josh from The Dead See/Boars and a bunch of their friends. We drank a bunch and then partcipated in a “fry party” where we ate a bunch of amazing fried food that Mark’s room mate made, effectively taking about 5 years off of each of our lives. It was a great time and our best experience in Austin to date.
Day 7: Dallas, TX @ Queen City Tattoo.
We played with Baring Teeth, Kill The Client, Tyrannosorceress, and Akkolyte. All of the bands were fucking awesome. We had not been to Dallas in about 5 years. The last time we played a club where someone the week prior had gotten stabbed by some white supremacists. No one came. It was really shitty. This time was much better. We stayed with some family and then got up early the next day to make the 14 hour drive back to Denver. This was probably the best tour of Texas we have ever had. We’re looking forward to the second leg of this tour that starts in Omaha, Nebraska.
The rest of the tour is as follows:
March
23rd-Omaha,NE @ West Wing
24th-Dekalb, IL @ 7th St. Space W/ SICK/TIRED
25th-Jackson, MI @ Bird Alley W/ Sender Receiver, Bruxism, Scum, Isenblast, Discerned, Hedorah
26th-NYC@ Lit Lounge w/SEA OF BONES, The Year is One, Radiation Black Body, Head Snatcher
27th-Queens, NY@ 90-10 Merrick blvd W/ SEA OF BONES
28th-Boston, MA@ O’briens pub W/ SEA OF BONES, IN THE SHIT
29th-Brooklyn, NY @ St. Vitus BarW/SEA OF BONES, The Communion, Amputee, Scowl
30th-Columbus, OH@ The Summit
31st-Peoria, IL @ The Brass Rail
April
1st-Kansas City, MO @ Asshole Castle
Thanks for reading. Only doing what you love is fucking real.
Ethan/CTTTOAFF
These are some pictures of the 4X12 guitar cab that Tom from Sea of Bones/Mammoth Guitar cabs built me. It has 4 Electroharmonix speakers in it and sounds like a beast. There is so much bass in it that I have to put a rubber mat on the top of the cab when I am stacking another 4X12 on top of it so that it does not rattle off. The cool thing is that it somehow also has really good mid/high range capabilities. It makes my sound grittier but this doesn’t mean there is a decrease in clarity at all. This thing has enhanced my sound to the point where i’m not sure how I ever lived without it. I plan on selling all of my other cabinets and just playing through mammoth cabs from now on. Their overall construction is really solid as well. This may have something to do with how Tom is a carpenter by trade.
Day 8: Omaha, NE @ West Wing
West wing is a party house. We played in the basement with a band called Vickers. They were some experimental warmetal stuff. There wasn’t any guitar it was just vocals, drums, and some sort of kvlt keytar that the dude used, that made really low distorted bass frequencies. It was really intense. I think that they burned some meat before they played, so it smelled like shit. I heard that one of those dudes used to be in Wasteoid. The show was good and people seemed to enjoy it. I smoked some hash with a friend of ours named Alex out of a really fancy/borderline makes you feel like a crack smoker, pipe. We stayed at a friend’s house and got up early the next morning and drove to Ogalala(sp?) to get another tire because we did not have a spare from the 2 flats we had before. We ended up having a tire almost blow out on us on the way to get a tire, so we had to get 2. In the meantime we walked around and got stared at by the locals.
Day 9: Dekalb, IL @ 7th St. Space
We played with Sick/tired and minimum wage assassins. There was another band whose name I cannot remember. It was a fun show. It was nice to see those dudes in sick/tired. I traded them for a copy of their latest 12” that i’m super stoked about.
Day 10: Jackson, MI @ Bird Alley
We played with Bruxism, Hedorah, Sender Receiver, and another band that Maxwell from sender is in that I can’t remember the name of. We also played with a blackmetal band that left after they played. We ended up missing bruxism because the show was dragging on super late and we had a 12 hour drive ahead of us. I felt really shitty about that. Hedorah were fucking awesome. They were like some grindcore with incantation tendencies. I really enjoyed them. A friend of ours named Becky was living at Bird Alley so it was nice to see her. There was a house on fire a few blocks away that we took pictures of. It was nice to visit with friends and play to some new people.
Day 11/12:
NYC @ Lit Lounge/Lucky Chengs
This is our first day with Sea of Bones. We have been friends with them for a super long time and love to hang out with them. We play with them every time we go out to the east coast. The Guitar player/singer Tom builds custom guitar Cabinets under the name MAMMOTH custom cabs. He ended up building a 4X12 for me that I got to use for the first time for this lit lounge show. I was super stoked for that. (The cab rules so much that i’m going to have another one build and completely revamp what i’ve been playing through. (I’ll write a review of it later for any gear nerds that are interested.) We played with Radiation blackbody, headsnatcher and The year is one. Sea of Bones played some new material that pretty much crushes all US doom metal bands in about 8 minutes. Total fucking sonic devestation. I don’t just say this because they are our friends, their music is a total doom metal assault. They just recorded so be on the look out for that. We hung out with Justin from Mutilation Rites and sampled some fine NYC cuisine. We also ended up crashing at his place after going out to some bars until about 4 in the morning. Super hammered. J.P. and Tom slept in the vans. I guess they had to get up and move the van 3 times because of street sweeping/meters in the city. We got up, and drove to the neighborhood of the next we were playing in Manhattan. It took about 3 hours to find a parking spot in front of the venue. We played at a place called Lucky Cheng’s, which is a transgender bar/restaurant in Manhattan but they do shows in the basement. The club owner wanted the show over by 11:30 so we showed up at 5:00 for load in. No one showed up until 6:30. We played with a bunch of metalcore bands and some other shit that really fucking sucked. The best way I can describe it is “soft” metalcore which sounds really fucking funny. All of the bands had things like managers but had never toured or even recorded a record. All of their “managers” kept talking to us about how much they could help us if we just put them in contact with Prosthetic. They would book us in super cool places like Allentown, PA. Which we have played. And it is not fucking cool at all. The venue he wanted to book us at has a shitty pizza parlor and a huge stage inside of a huge venue that we (at this stage in our career) could not fill. Along with a shitty basement venue that no one goes to. What a fucking joke. So, after the 7th, yes 7th local band played Sea of Bones set up to go on at 11:00. They got to play for 3 and a half minutes before the owner of the bar made the show stop. We never got to play. Which is fine since most of the locals left anyway after they were done playing. I just wish that we had not stayed on the same city block for 6 hours, wasting our time. It was also nice to listen to the cool local bands blame the “faggots” for the show ending. Not the promoter for his poor planning. Tom called out one of the local bands for being homophobic and they got all scared. It was hilarious. We drove to Tom’s house in the deep woods of Connecticut and stayed the night there. Where he lives is very similar to the atmosphere in Lars Von Trier’s film, Antichrist.
Day 13:
Boston/Allston, MA @ Obriens Pub
We played with In the Shit, Hirudinea and some other bands. I wish I could remember their names because a couple of them were bad ass. One of the other bands whose name I also can’t remember were really funny. They were kind of a hardcore band, and while they were playing, their girlfriends were on stage with them, as well as some of their friends with ltowels over their heads and shit repping them. It was so fucking funny. I could barely contain myself. After the show, Harlan went to go hang out with some friends of his and J.P., Nicole, and myself stayed at this dude Jacobs house that we know. Jacob is from Denver, along with his cousin Auggie.*
*I would like to preface this story by apologizing to Jacob right off of the bat and let him know that we really do appreciate his hospitality. And that I throughly enjoyed catching up with him during this visit. However,
Jacob lives in a house full of what could be considered “hippy” artists. There are pieces of art painted with black light paint all over the walls of the place we are staying. Such inspirational quotes as “My mind is just a jelly fish, floating in my head.” We walked upstairs and started playing this thing called a Hapi drum. this thing creates the most pleasant drone tone of your life. It’s fucking impossible not to be happy while playing this thing. You can play a fake one online:
http://www.hapitones.com/play-hapi-slim-drum-g-major.html
So, we are playing this thing for about an hour laughing and have a great time when this dog runs upstairs and pukes in the middle of our Hapi circle I guess you could call it. The owner of the dog just kind of kicked the puke up with a piece of newspaper and didn’t bother to do much else. We drank a couple of beers, and ate a few granola bars supplied by Jacob and then started to find our individual corners of the room to sleep. it turns out that every corner of the room has a giant pile of dogshit in it. Which made me wonder why the owner of the dog even bothered to pick up the puke from earlier. Anyway, I curled up in between a couple of piles of shit with the hapi drum. The windows were open all night so we all woke up feeling like shit. But I woke up playing the Hapi drum so that was alright. Then we went to Duncan Donuts and used their bathroom before locating Harlan who had disappeared after the show.
Day 14:
Brooklyn, NY@ St. Vitus
We met Sea of Bones at the bar. St. Vitus is a super cool place. Hung out with Mutilation Rites, saw and hung out with the dudes from The Communion, and had a great time. We also got to place with a band called Amputee that had the singer of Doomsday Machine Schematic on vocals, who we met many years ago. It was a really fun show.
Day 15:
Columbus, OH @ The Summit
There was a tornado down the road from the venue we were playing and I thought we were going to die. There was no basement and it was one of those moments where you really regret being on tour and not at home. But you know, whatever. I guess we didn’t die. The promoter, Ebony was really nice and did a good job of taking care of us. We played with Bastards and a bunch of metalcore bands. I don’t remember any of their names and i’m sure that they don’t remember ours. It was our weirdest show in Columbus yet. But some of the people that usually come to see us made it down. We also got to hang out with those dudes from Imbroglio. We made fun of some shitty bands and did shots of whiskey. It ruled. We stayed at Jared, the drummer of Bastards house. The next morning we woke up and had a band fight. Then we got over it and moved on to the next city.
Day 16:
Peoria, Il @ The Brass Rail
We played with a band called Gas up Yer Hearse and some other cool bands. We also played with a death metal band who kept telling the other bands that if they didn’t watch their set, that they would not watch theirs either. The promoter of the bar, Derek got us super hammered and was really good to us. Solid dude.
Day 17:
Kansas City, MO @ Asshole Castle
We played with Canyons and some other cool KC bands. Our buddy David and Bobby from Canyons set the show up for us. They were telling us that another house venue up the street got robbed, and some other people got killed at another venue house or some crazy shit. The show was awesome. I had to hang my microphone from a nail in the ceiling because there were no mic stands and face a brick wall and the kids were going crazy, knocking me into the wall and pitting. It ruled. It was a hot and humid basement with lots of energy and a killer way to end the tour. Then we drove back to Denver the land of work and sadness.
Thanks a bunch if you came out to any of these shows. Pictures and stuff will be posted soon. Thank you for reading.
// Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire —Teeth & Hair
A crimson pool dries in the
Palms of my hands 1,000
Sleepless nights, 26
Worrisome years I’ve
Bared my teeth
And sunk them into the
Flesh of my enemy
Faith in myself runs red
Human memory decays
Under a blanket of smoke
Freedom in isolation
Remove the eyes and withdraw
Isolate remove the human flesh
And disappearSong was a major inspiration for my recent art project looking at teeth and hair as artifacts of human identity
