Monday 22 April 2013

DAMAD & KARST


A double whammy post for you here, Damad were a band from Savannah, Georgia in the U.S. that existed from 1994 - 2000 after they split up 3 members went on to form Kylesa, Unfortunately Damad and founding Kylesa member bassist Brian Duke died from an epeleptic seizure during the recording of Kylesas debut album and now  Philip Cope is the only remaining Kylesa member formerly with Damad.Vocalist and provider of artwork for Some of Damad and both of Kart's releases Victoria Scalisi and drummer Scott Duke went on to form Karst. Right that's the Kylesa connection dealt with onto Damad... So Damad had a very unique sound for the time, super heavy sludgy guitars mixed with a touch of industrial, and a big heaping of fat metal riffage, some spoken political samples and electronic noises add this Victoria's fucking brutal vocals and you had one serious wall of noise, though never quite reaching any serious "Fast" tempos their fanbase was mainly based in the political/crusty punk scene and along with Neurosis in my opinion are pretty much resposible for the sound that would later be known as Post Metal. Not that it's all just sheer noise there are some great structures and riffs plus some more "gentle" passages where Victoria is almost singing however if you're not familiar with the band i can assure you they are not an easy listen however if you have an ear for the more original and unique end of heavy music then this is definitely for you and the influence of Damad can be heavily felt in the early Kylesa recordings in fact when i heard Kylesa's first album i was convinced that they had just changed the name! Laura Pleasants of Kylesa and Victoria Scalisi being in my opinion the most BRUTAL female vocalists in heavy music!

So this is not quite a complete Damad discography I have been unable to obtain their "Dam Ol' Flag" EP their demo cassette or their Plus Equals Minus cassette (however i think 2 tracks off this were used on the "Rewind" 7" which is contained here) So here's what you get The First link DAMAD EP's contains their side of a split EP With In/Humanity, "Rewind/Manmade" 7" the "Centric" EP Their 3 Tracks from their Split CD with Meatjack and their track from the "Destroying Southern Tradition" Comp EP I have also uploaded first album "Rise And Fall" and 2nd and final album "Burning Cold". The Damad side of the Meatjack split and both albums are taken from my own CD's and are the usual 320kbps quality, the ep's and the comp track are from decent quality vinyl rips.All of these are great recordings theres not one bad track amongst them theres some great ideas and enough original and fuck off heavy riffage to satisfy any fan of heavy music!

DAMAD EP'sMediafire

RISE AND FALLMediafire

BURNING COLDMediafire


So onto Karst... Karst as I've said were formed after Damad split and only released an EP and one album, both of which are not that far removed from what Damad were doing Victoria's vocals are still as brutal as they ever were except I would say whilst Karst are still heavy as shit their guitars are not quite as downtuned and sludgy as Damad's were and there's a slight upshift in tempo's as well making them a little more frantic and less of a bulldozer of sound like Damad overall there's a slightly more hardcore feel to the music (When i say hardcore think of the more original bands like Dead and Gone, Born Against, Econochrist etc) but overall i could not see anyone who liked Damad not liking Karst.
So I have uploaded both the "Receive the Void" EP and the "Vision Of Insane Hope" album for you both at 320kbps from my own CD's which is everything they did. 

RECEIVE THE VOID EPMediafire

VISON OF INSANE HOPEMediafire

I don't know what Victoria Scalisi is up to these days I think she still does artwork for bands and i think some a member of Damad or karst may have been in Baroness but if anyone knows feel free to comment! In the meantime enjoy a double dose of some really original musical brutality!




37 comments:

  1. I lived in Savannah when Damad was still around. The last I heard about Victoria other than the Karst recordings and the Damad reunion in 2006 at the Jinx (formerly the Velvet Elvis), she and Damad/Karst's drummer (Scott Cooper I think is his name) settled down and had kids. How true that is, I don't know, but I found that out from a Youtube post from one of the former members of Seeds of Confusion. I was at a Kylesa show at the Dollhouse in Savannah last year, and I found out that Philip Cope's first band was a band that some friends of mine were in--Momento Mori. He left before recording their tape "Starve" back in '92. They definitely had more of a punk-metal sound compared to Damad, but I'm surprised that I didn't wear the tape out! Another band from that time I really dug was Clownknife. HOLY SHIT were they heavy! Unfortunately I never got my hands on their tape and can't find anything online, but several friends of mine had it. I was at their farewell show at the Velvet Elvis in '94 right before they moved to Phoenix, and the set started off without a guitarist. The bassist played all that, and it was some of the heaviest sludge I've ever heard. I had some scars from that pit! \m/

    BTW--if you want to see a young Laura Pleasants, check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXP3r7mFZz4
    She was in the background of the interview my friend Steve from Vibrations of Doom did with Jerry Only and Michale Graves from the Misfits. She also made her first-ever onstage appearance when they called women up to the stage to sing along with "She". She and her friends rode with us to the show. She looked nothing like she does now--she had really short hair and wore spikes.

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    1. Hey I Misanthrope, Thanks for your VERY informative comment I wish more people would share their stories on here, I know Momento Mori from their split EP w/ Kylesa but had no idea about Philip Cope having been a member of the band never heard or heard of Clownknife though but i will keep my eyes peeled when I'm surfing! as for Laura in the Misfits vid well she looks VERY different and hey we were all young once right? :-) thanks again and please keep coming back to the blog.

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    2. thanks for this!

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    3. Just found a Clownknife live video from '94. https://youtu.be/6vj8nabgwZA

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    4. Just found a Clownknife live video from '94. https://youtu.be/6vj8nabgwZA

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  2. victoria is still a bad ass you just have to know where to find her.

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  3. thanks for the uploads, btw. i'm too lazy to rip this stuff, but you have my blessing to spread it like, whatever.

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  4. oh wait - i can straighten this out for ya - Karst was started by Victoria Scalisi (Vocals) Scott Cooper (Drums) Mauro Vidulich (Bass) and some fuckwit guitar player who vanished. the band immediately recorded the masterpiece that is receive the void and was rolling along nicely until Mauro died right in the middle of writing Vision. Matt Maggioni (Baroness, Unpersons) was added on Bass to finish the recording and live shows. A second guitarist was also added (Cullen Barnard) because the original fuckwit guitarist had become completely useless outside of writing the music, so someone needed to keep things sounding tight until the wheels fell off completely because fuckwit guitarist couldn't deal with being part of Karst without Mauro.

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  5. oh one more thing - that's a different momento mori... mOmento mori was phillip / mEmento mori is on the split with kylesa. it's in the details.

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    1. hey anonymous ok thanks for the info i assume you were involved in these bands somehow?? unfortunately i can only go by what scant info i find on the net so thanks for commenting It's weird this post has been up for 18 months and i'm only hearing this now but thank you for your permission to share this stuff as most of it is out of print and hard to find I had to do a lot of ebaying to gather some of it.

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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  6. i think the most important thing to take away is that Victoria Scalisi can still kick anyone's ass on or off the stage.

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  7. oh yah, one last thing. yr missing a few things from the Damad EP's and compilations department asides from dam ol flag... there's a deep six comp with a live recording, a hater of god box set comp, a females in extreme metal comp on Dwell Records, a profane existence compilation (but that's the same recording as on burning cold i think) a few other knick knacks like a track from a passive fist compilation... there's probably more stuff than that I just can't think of it right now. the two tracks from the plus equals minus cassette made it onto recordings as well, btw. i just have to think really really hard to figure out where. or go crate digging. neither of which i'm up for right now, soz!

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    1. Hey anonymous thanks again Discogs is my holy temple of worship i use it for everything i put on here along with my own knowledge, the Damad track on "aftermath" (Profane Existence) is indeed from "Burning Cold" I know about the track on "Deadly Sins" 7" comp box set but was never able to source it and I never bother with live tracks as my opinion is what's the point unless you were at the show? Personally tho anonymous I'd like to take this conversation off the blog you can contact me on davealba71@gmail.com or friend me on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DaveBallantyne1971 I'd be interested to hear more about who you are and your involvement with Damad & Karst? This post was more about the sharing of the main body of work however if i could have sourced the other tracks i would have I did have a CD rip of the Plus = Minus cassette but it got lost somewhere over the years, anyway get in touch dude I'd like to chat more about all this,

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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  8. Does anyone know where to find a copy of Momento Mori - starve? I had their tape along time ago, would love to hear them again.

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    1. sorry anon I can't help if any readers can feel free to use the comments here.

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    2. I still have Momento Mori's Starve on cassette - surprised it still plays! Unfortunately I lost the artwork since I let a friend borrow it. I sent a message to their former drummer Josh Wendelkin on Facebook a few years ago to see if I could post mp3s of it online. I never heard back from him, though. He went to high school with me, and I think he has a studio in Arizona now. I still occasionally talk to their former singer Robert Abernathy. He was also in Damad and now has a project on SoundCloud called The Pipes of Drone. Anyway, email me at imisanthropeofficial@gmail.com if you want me to rip you a copy of it. Really awesome punk metal!

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  10. Great uploads man, been looking everywhere for these albums!! Thanks a bunch! Is there a possibility to obtain a lossless rip from your CDs?

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    1. Hi Romastion, No sorry I'm afraid my computer does not recognise or accept any kind of FLAC file the CD rips are at 320kbps with music recorded as cheaply as this was at the time I doubt flac would reveal any better frequencies or quality.Thanks for the comment.

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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  12. Not sure why it's not posting under I, Misanthrope - doesn't matter. Anyway, Victoria and Scott have a new band, and I see they played some shows in Savannah, even one with Black Tusk. I haven't heard them yet, but here's a link to their Facebook - https://m.facebook.com/LIES-in-STONE-1814614632099605/

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    1. Thanks for the heads up on that chris I will check that out I love victorias work as a vocalist and an artist sorry I took so long to reply,

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    2. Even more good news about Victoria - check this out! This was last weekend. http://m.connectsavannah.com/savannah/the-return-of-damad/Content?oid=3753426

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    3. So I think that and Cope's other projects explain Kylesa's hiatus.

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  13. Got the Dam Ol' Flag 7" off of Discogs,and just converted it to MP3 so I can play it on my phone. Kicks ass \m/ So glad they reunited and are playing shows again!

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    1. .Hey cheris... Any chance of sharing that Dam' Ol Flag 7"?
      Love to hear it! my email adress is davealba71@gmail.com

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    2. Sure thing - let me know what you think about it. It's a bit different from the band they became

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  14. My band played with Damad at a skatepark in Athens, GA back in the late 90s. They were amazing. Victoria's vocals were brutal (and doing so while very pregnant). When we played Savannah, a few of them came out to see us which was awesome. Saw them the following year at ABC No Rio in NYC. Great band with a pretty perfect catalog of records. I'll be seeing them next month at St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn with Starkweather. Their first show up here in 18 years.

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    1. Hey Jeff that show you played with Damad sounds way cool! What was your band? And yeah the back catalog is Impressive if small I don't know why anyone hasn't compiled all the comp tracks and Ep's together in one package! Thanks for the comment

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    2. I read a recent interview with Philip Cope where he said they would be doing that soon \m/

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    3. So I found out why they had to cancel the NYC show last month. Please read and help Victoria out any way you can - https://www.gofundme.com/help-support-victoria?rcid=53e80d9568d5459b8b8fcfe86d192cf0

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    4. Hi Chris yeah I have done it was all over facebook tragic isn't it i hope she gets better soon. thanks for commenting ,

      Cheers,

      Dave B.

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    5. I hope so too. I know she went through treatment and everything, and I think they said she's doing better. I hate to see anyone go through that. But like everything else, I believe Victoria will kick its ass \m/

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    6. I hope so too. I know she went through treatment and everything, and I think they said she's doing better. I hate to see anyone go through that. But like everything else, I believe Victoria will kick its ass \m/

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  15. Just heard Victoria passed away last night :( Thank you so much for your awesome music - you will be sorely missed! http://www.revolvermag.com/music/victoria-scalisi-sludge-band-damad-dead-after-battle-cancer/23598

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