Hell Bent For Letters: An Interview with Bloodhag, Pioneers of Intelligent Metal

Sci-fi geeks are often obnoxious in their pristine, bookish, overwhelmingly meticulous nature. Metalheads are the antithesis: rowdy, haggard, and often appearing to lumber mindlessly through life with music as its only real pursuit. Seattle's Bloodhag, however, is the perfect marriage of all likeable between the two. Part thrash, part librarian, and completely awesome, Bloodhag represents a common ground between the desire to learn and the longing to just rock the hell out. Aimed at improving literacy and intelligence within the music community through "edu-core," their signature style, Bloodhag delivers fierce metal songs that detail the biographies of various notable science fiction authors.

KPSU embraced the opportunity to meet with the band (Prof Jake Stratton, vocals; D.r J. Mc Nulty, guitar; Zach Orgel, bass; and Brent Carpenter, drums) before they donned their crisp suits and ties and took the Ash Street's stage by a ferocious metal storm.

MF: You've been together since the 1996. Did you ever have any doubts that it would last this long?

Jake: I think the reason we've lasted so long is that we never really gave ourselves any sort of timeline.

Jeff: I never thought it would last this long but I knew we wouldn't run out of ideas. I mean, when Zach joined the band he made a list of maybe 70 authors. And those were only [authors] we knew we wanted to talk about.

Jake: We're always going to have options. I figure that if you're going to have a band like ours, a theme band, then you have to stick to that theme the whole time. If you want to do something other than that theme you just break up and start another band. This is really a labor of love amongst friends. It's not about "making it" as a band. Since we didn't have that in mind it allowed us to keep going and eventually get to this point where we are making it.

MF: How do authors –those still living, that is, respond to being profiled in a Bloodhag song?

Jake: The ones we've talked to have responded pretty well. A lot of them don't have a reference to this type of music or pop music at all. I met Octavia Butler when she came up to Seattle for a reading—the late, great Octavia Butler, I should say, rest in peace. She was doing a reading so I went up and introduced myself, told her we were a band who writes songs about science fiction authors and wrote a song about her. I gave her a cd to sign and our Gorgeous Ladies of Writing 7", which is an all-female author 7", and she just looked at me like I was going to stab her. She thought I was crazy and her handler had to explain to her that it was a cool thing and it was okay. I didn't get more than a "Mmhmm," and that was it. We met William Gibson also, and took up a copy of our last cd, which has his song on it. We gave it to him, explained what we did, and he looked and the cd for a while and said "Wow, you've got a song about Neil Stevenson." Then he autographed the cd and handed it back to us! We had to tell him, "No, this is for you." He took it and said that it was "an extraordinarily unusual thing for someone to do." I thought that was good. If he thought we were wasting our time then I don't know…

MF: Besides the Olivia Butler response, have you encountered any negative reactions, like someone not wanting to be written about?

Jake: In our earliest days we were in contact with several fan sites and there were a few who took umbrage with some of my lyrics. But I have to say that in early days I had music more opinion in the stuff.

Jeff: Less facts, more fun.

Jake: I was writing about people I was familiar with so I had strong opinions about their work. Now I do serious research about every author and it's really more about getting as many facts about them in the song.

Brent: And tongue twisters!

Jake: Yeah I always make sure I'm singing something it's next to impossible to say but can somehow be spit out in death metal.

MF: Awesome. In hopes of letting them know the impact their work had on people, which deceased science fiction author would each of you pick to showcase your music to?

Brent: Kurt Vonnegut.

Jake: He's alive! He's still alive.

MF: Whoops!

Brent: I don't think he'd like the music, but Phillip K. Dick.

Jeff: Isaac Asimov

Zach: Wells.

Jeff: HP Lovecraft, just so I can hang out with that freak!

Jake: If you start bringing dead sci-fi authors to life then there's no end to who I want to meet.

Zach: We've met a lot already though, really.

Jeff: I know for a fact that Ian Banks would probably dig the whole thing.

MF: The word is out, pretty much.

Jeff: Little by little, the sci-fi world is learning about us.

Zach: We played the Nebula Awards, so they were exposed to us there.

Jake: Every time we meet an author it's a HUGE thrill for Bloodhag. Famous bands, yeah whatever. But authors…

MF: How do you feel in general about the people who have no idea what you are about and randomly happen to see you play? What is the general reaction of these people, surprise? Excitement?

Jake: I think random bar patrons really like the music above all.

Jeff: They dig the metal.

Jake: And it depends on how drunk they are whether or not they realize that the thing we've been talking about the whole time is real. A lot of people think we're joking the whole time.

Zach: I also get a lot of times when people totally don't know us at all and we get onstage and they think, "Oh, it's going to be another emo band." And are really really surprised when we start playing. I've had a guy come up to me when I was playing one of our old cds in the store we used to own and say, "Cool music, what is it?" When I said, "My band," he looked at me and said, "No, it's not, but I like the music!" (Laughs)

MF: You have a rule that fans can bring in a 300-word essay to your shows in exchange for admission…

Jake: I've recently amended the essay rule to try to keep out of trouble with club owners because most of the time they ware not aware that we do it. The deal is now that if you bring us an essay on a science fiction author then we will give you the door cover equivalent off in merchandise. Say you pay $6 to get in the door, then you give the essay to us and we'll give you a $6 credit toward merchandise. I want everybody who's reading this to know that's the rule. We'll probably go broke from this now! (Laughs)

Zach: It's really only happened 3 times.

Jake: Twice in Portland! We love playing in Portland. It's a smart crowd, people are fun, and we get a lot of girls here, which is always cool. Well, we don't "get" the girls, but they do come to the show. (laughs)

Jake: Bloodhag doesn't get girls, we get conversations.

MF: You were voted the best metal act in the Seattle Weekly.

Jake: The Seattle Weekly has yearly awards and we were nominated to Best Metal category. This is our second year and I'm not sure if we won or not. I like to say that we're hoping to be the Susan Lucci in that we get nominated every year but never win.

MF: How does it feel that not just your music, but also your message is being recognized and celebrated by such a well-known publication with a really widespread audience?

Jeff: It's incredible. You see people you don't even know walking down the street in random cities wearing Bloodhag t-shirts.

Jake: We're a good common ground for the rock n' roll crowd and the literary circle. A Bloodhag show is a venue where the nerdy literary set can be comfortable in a rock n' roll club because this is their turf.

Brent: And we'll stick up for them, against the rock n' rollers.

Jake: We're here for the pro-literates. Not for the people who just figured out that we stole a Pantera riff. But if those people are open to learning to read and increase their literacy then we're there for them.

Zach: I think most of the hardcore kids, and punk and crusty and metal kids are actually pretty smart and they read a lot. That's why they like Bloodhag.

Jeff: There's a tendency to downplay rockers and hipsters as doofuses but the fact is that most of the people that we hang out with are very well read and literate.

Jake: When we started out we didn't really have an idea that we'd play for all-ages crowds and play for young people. The general idea was that people are out at rock shows, and they are full-grown adults and sometimes maybe the last thing they read was in high school, under duress. When you're forced to read something it often leaves a bad taste in your mouth. We're trying to get those people back into the habit of reading in general. And, well, we do this by throwing books at them. It seems to work.

MF: Have you guys had any memorable book throwing experiences? Injuries, or people getting really mad?

Jeff: The very first book that Jake threw out at the first show we ever played hit Brent's girlfriend right in the nose and clocked her so hard. She was a total trooper. I can't believe she didn't start crying or anything because he hit her right in the face. Ever since then it's been the tallest, biggest guy in the room or the cutest, shortest, smallest girl in the room. He always nailed the wrong person, or the right person, depending on how you look at it.

Jake: In Vancouver one time, we were playing onstage and I watched this guy come off the beer line, which was 20 minutes long, with two beers. We threw a book at him and it knocked both beers out of his hand. He just looked at us, then looked at his hands, looked at the beer, and looked at me. I could tell that he was trying to decide if he was going to rush the stage and try to pull my head off. He just got back into the line, I never heard from him again. One time I nailed this huge dude, he was 6'5 and I hit him in the face. He got all pissed and started yelling at me on the stage. Afterward, he wouldn't accept my apology, and the huge dude just kept saying "YOU MARKED MY FACE!" And there was just a little, tiny mark there. I've nailed girls in the face and had them come up with trickles of blood running down their face and say all excitedly, "I caught a book!"

MF: The people who are aware of you guys know to expect it.

Jake: Yeah, it's like, "Get your hands up and get ready!"

Brent: And we've done it at every show we've ever played. It's a lot of books.

MF: That must be a lot of books. Where do you buy them?

Jake: Well, for a long time we just bought them everywhere, but now we are unofficially sponsored by Half Price Books. The Seattle chapter, anyway.

Jeff: [Jake] works for Half Price Books so now it's sort of become our thing.

Jake: But it is because of Bloodhag that I got the job.

Jeff: Its true, Bloodhag gets you jobs!

MF: Do you have any die-hard fans that do crazy things at your shows or follow you around when you tour?

Jake: This guy once was just taking a lot of pictures of me. When we got offstage he kept walking by and putting his arm in front of me and taking a picture. I kept thinking, "What are you doing? This is the 45 th picture you've taken of me!"

Jake: My buddy Jason Fisher, the "Boston Bison"...

Zach: He's great; he always comes to our shows in a shirt and tie. A lot of our recurring fans are not extroverts. They show up, but they're not there to make a scene.

Jeff: We have the same 7 fans in LA every time we play. It's just always the same 7 people whether other people or no one else even shows up.

MF: Bloodhag published a collaborative book, Mecca Mettle, alongside Thomas Disch. How many of you guys were already writers?

Jake: Jeff has been a poet for a long time, and plans to publish chapbooks.

Zach: I used to write a column, a conspiracy theory column.

Jake: I've always been an artist, like a comic book artist, but never did any real writing.

Brent: I am mostly the lyrical writer but I've been dabbling in stories.

MF: Tell me about Mecca Mettle.

Jeff: The book is a very rare item. Once it's gone its gone.

Jake: And we're so stoked because this guy Tim Kirk, this Nebula Award-winning artist, did the illustrations and he did little pseudo portraits of us and sample drawings from our stories.

Jeff: To have our stories be illustrated by this guy is just such an honor.

Jake: We want to keep doing this collaboration of split books with authors. It's just a lot of fun. And the people from Payseur & Schmidt are very heavily involved in the science fiction community and in the music community in Seattle so they have all kinds of plans to keep releasing avant-garde sci-fi.

MF: So you definitely have aspirations for continuing with books.

Brent: We think it's a great side avenue to explore. We played the Nebula Awards in Seattle, and that was a big deal. We went up and partied with a bunch of publishers and literary agents. Since we were rubbing elbows with these people after a Bloodhag show, we figured we might as well at least get to know them.

MF: You often do library tours. How does random library staff react if they don't know your music and you come in and play a show?

Jake: Usually they are warned.

Zach: We did one around the country and got written up in the ALA and the Young Adult Library Association had a video of our first library tour in Washington. It was their number one recommended educational supplement for 6 months.

Jake: The libraries who put in a little energy definitely get a lot of return for their money.

Zach: In Tumwater we had 50+ people there and it was the largest group they've had at the library ever. And the one in Seattle, at the university branch, there were like 100 kids there.

Jeff: It was off the hook

Jake: When a librarian sees more than 25 people starting at something in a library they're pretty excited. (Laughs) Which is sad.

Zach: We've done a lot in Tumwater, the Timberland Regional Library District. Christine, the librarian, really likes us. We were playing and she said to us " See those kids? They are only ever in here to steal cds." And they were all jazzed.

Jake: I think some kids are really hesitant to come to the library to come see us because they don't want to have any common ground between them and the authority figures, the librarians.

Jeff: I don't think they want to if their parents want them to.

Jake: But we've gotten a lot of responses. And I've got to be honest, we've also had library shows when only 7 people showed up and nobody liked it and it was just a bust. You take the good with the bad though.

Zach: There was one when we were pretty clear when we booked it that it was for young adults. They billed it as [ages] 5-8, so there was a bunch of little kids there with their parents. You can give a little kid earplugs and just 'cause we jump around they like it, but I don't know that their parents did.

Jeff: It's just not for little kids.

MF: Do you think there's a reason that certain cities, like Portland and San Francisco, as you mentioned, are more receptive to the band?

Zach: Portland is obvious because it's a book town.

Jake: San Francisco too, it's an area where there are a lot of intellectuals. We have a really warm reception there because San Francisco is a real metal town. That's where Metallica is from, that's where thrash metal is from. I think the fact that thrash and extreme metal has been so intense there for so long is that a lot of metal bands there have great chops but also a great sense of humor. They have been around it all their life and they are steeped in this. They are willing to allow a band like Bloodhag to get over because a lot of metal heads take metal very seriously and some think that we're making fun of metal. We're not making fun of metal. I think that anybody who doesn't have a sense of humor about what they're doing is missing out.

Jeff: Plus we sort of lucked out in San Francisco. There was this huge scene going on right when we started touring and we got in with two or three of those really good bands from there and ever since then we've been accepted.

MF: Have you guys encountered any "edu-core" wannabes? Are there people who seem obviously influenced by Bloodhag?

Jake: We've had people ask.

Jeff: There was a band here from Portland, a one man band thing called Chlamydia that's all about diseases and it's rhymecore. He wanted to put the edu-core logo, the Northwest Edu-Core on it. There's also an east coast band called Harry and the Potters, I think from Boston or Philly, who dress like Harry Potter and sing songs about "What if Harry Potter was in love with Hermione?" and stuff like that. They play libraries too. A part of me feels a little bit ripped off by that, but at the same time it's cool that someone else is out there trying to bring that to the kids.

Jake: And the idea of educational songs is not a new idea; we didn't invent it. But we did pretty much come up with the idea as doing it as the only thing that we do.

Jeff: We're a big fan of shtick.

Jake: One idea that I had was to get a lot of edu-core bands under different subjects together to form a college curriculum. You pay your money, you get a full college education.

Jeff: I really want to get a math-rock band called the Pythagorists.

Brent: And you'd put up a big chalkboard behind you.

Jake: More edu-core bands! Bring 'em on, talk to us….

Zach: There's never a question about what our songs are about, and really, that's kind of liberating. We know what the songs are going to be about. We pick an author, Jake does a bunch of research…

Jake: Having a predetermined subject material is both freeing and confining. We are so specific, which doesn't allow the person listening to our music to interpret it in any other way that how we are presenting it. With other bands people can say, "Oh that song got me through a tough time in my life," but the guy who wrote the song is like, "One day I came home, I tripped over my dog, and then my dinner was cold, so I wrote this song." Somebody else reads so much into it that he projects what he wants into that song and we don't allow that. You receive what we give to you and that's it. You don't get to interpret is some other way. Unless you think we're sexy, and then you can interpret it any way you like. (Laughs)

MF: Have you ever thought about touring outside of the United States?

Jake: Every day. I heard we'd do really well in Germany.

Jeff: I want to play England because we speak English and we talk a lot about English authors. There's also a lot of sci-fi nerds in England. I want to play Japan.

Jeff: 2007 is when we'll tour Europe.

MF: Is that definitive?

Jake: It's a goal, but sure.

Brent: We've met a lot of our goals. We played the Nebula Awards, what's left…WorldCom?

Zach: Mine is opening for Gwar. It still hasn't happened yet.

Jeff: We opened for the Melvins and the Accused though. And we are on the label I always wanted Bloodhag to be on. I can't believe that actually happened.

MF: How did signing with Alternative Tentacles come about?

Jake: During our last tour we were on a bill with a band called Ludicra, who's on A.T. We had really bad car trouble on the way down and ended up having to cancel most of the dates. We rented a van just so we could make the S. F. show, and it just happened that Jello Biafra was at the show. I managed to hit him in the head with a book, the last book I threw of the night, and he came up and talked to me.

Jeff: And then the show that we pretty much got the green light on last year was my birthday.

Jake: When Jello and the Melvins came though town he was nice enough to put us on the bill for that. And that really gave us a boost locally and introduced us to a bunch of people who only go out to the big name shows.

MF: Your new album is called Hell Bent For Letters. What can we anticipate hearing on the new album…any specific subjects you can divulge?

Jeff: James Blish, Ann McCaffrey, Douglas Adams…and Franz Kafka finally made it on the list.

Zach: This one's not thematic

Jake: Our LPs are always just a bunch of random authors and our EPs are usually themes.

MF: What next? Anything new beyond releasing the album?

Jeff: We have a new record we're working on right now called Reading Rainbow Bridge.

Jake: Its all young adult science fiction and fantasy authors. Then this European tour you talked us into.

Brent: Then maybe a dvd, because we have a lot of live stuff we've been compiling over the years. We might try to put all that together.

Jake: This is a long-term goal, inspired by the new album Reading Rainbow Bridge, but I want us to be the new hosts of Reading Rainbow. (Laughs) I swear to god, we're really good with kids!

Bloodhag will be back in Portland in July!
Until then, check out their website!