MERCILESS DEATH
DAN HOLDER
We are a thrash/death metal band from Santa Clarita California, with all sorts of old school influences of thrash, speed, power, death, black and doom, we play an early form of extreme metal going back to the mid to late 80's. Our sound is rooted in early extreme thrash with small bursts of first and second wave death and black metal ideas...
You could say yes, it was between Merciless Onslaught and Merciless Death and everyone knows what we chose, its hilarious to me no one has ever noticed Merciless Onslaught is a Metal Church instrumental off the self titled first album, so back when I was young in high school and obsessed with metal that was old and dated and hard to find at the time I wanted to start my band and name it after something that obviously was sick as fuck and inspired me greatly, this was way before there were a million thrash bands named after thrash albums, so at the time it wasn't such a generic thing to do, nowadays its ridiculous, but our name fits us very well.
Interesting, I haven't been asked this before, well I myself have never been a huge fan of the vocals, though I find it interesting some people say it almost sounds black metal and yeah in a weird way they are right, musically I like it, I think it is well written and for the most part well played, a couple solos could have been played better but for the most part it came out solid, and Im proud that we were all of 19 years old, self taught, saved what money we could from our jobs and paid for it ourselves and recorded it on Saturdays when we had the money, to think it went well enough to eventually have Ed Repka's art on the cover and good reviews across the globe, its fucking sick man!
Well the first one we did ourselves, we had been playing in Hollywood and L.A. for a while with a pretty decent reception and starting to have loyalty with fans, people started to ask about our music and we had the demo, which Metal Blade Records said no thanks to in 2004, along with a couple others, so I said lets just do it ourselves, fuck em!
The first release basically got the attention of labels and shit like that, Heavy Artillery had us do the Speed Kills Compilation and they were impressed with how we handled what we did on there, timely and professional, so they offered the album deal, long story short we signed the deal, and so they re-released it on their label with the new art by Ed Repka, we didn't sign some dumbass deal, we had an attorney, he laughed at the first contract and told them re-write it, the second one was better, but they still decided not to pay us what we were supposed to get in the end knowing we couldn't afford to go through all the legal bullshit.
They contacted us through our myspace page, and I started to talk to them, they offered a track on the Speed Kills compilation and were happy so we went from there...
Basically we recorded the tracks and they put it out, they were happy with how we handled it so it led to our main deal, its also funny to think that the one band they had a problem with and took too long to get their shit done would get further than most did...
Now its a NEGATIVE, now don't get me wrong there are some good ones, like the ones that we have been playing with for many years (Sakrificer, Execution, FBF, Witchhaven, Warbringer, Unholy Lust though they are more black death I guess) and they didn't start a year ago and claim to worship thrash forever...
Its so sad to me how its changed, a lot of kids now just click click click, on the internet, don't own a single album but oh man they know so much more about this music than anyone, hahaha.....everything has a positive and negative though and at the end of the day I think its badass that you can go to a metal show and kids are into the real shit rather than nu metal or some stupid gimmick... if it didn't happen we wouldn't have been able to see a lot of these older bands play again so that is a POSITIVE.
For starters, anything from back in the glory years of extreme metal, when the race for fastest and heaviest was in full effect! to be more specific: Celtic Frost, big one, on this last album, alot of people say they hear kreator in our early stuff, I can see that, I was way into their first couple albums then, still am, on this latest record Napalm Death with harmony corruption, so fucking heavy! others are obviously early slayer, Possessed, VENOM!!!! Death, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Sepultura, to be honest, the thank list in Realm of Terror pretty much sums it up, True Extreme Metal!!!
He was really sick with some sort of illness which I couldn't tell you the exact name, he eventually returned to good health, though he didn't come back it was too much to get back to where he was, now he does video and film projects and stuff like that.
Dan Holder and Merciless Death in action... (Photo Omar Cruz)
What's the highlight of your career?
Man, so many things really, just putting out these three albums and having people actually check them out and care is so special, but ultimately, its that feeling I've had maybe 3 or 4 times, when we were headlining or main support at the knitting factory and a couple other places, when you look out and feel that amount of energy and see that many faces and people just going crazy because of something you are doing, its fucking wild, especially now, we were so fucking high and on a good one throughout all of that, it was just a natural progression, now that the heads are somewhat out of the clouds it's a little eye opening, haha.
haha, Honestly it's been a mixed bag, almost everyone who has bought the CD has said it sounds great and kicks ass, a lot of people who downloaded it didn't like it so much, that's ok, too heavy I guess, haha.
I fucking love our new record, it's the spawn of extreme metal albums such as misanthropy and harmony corruption, those two really inspired it. I think a lot of people just don't get it or can't get into it, too bad, I love it and the lyrics and album cover I'm sure put off a few people, good stuff!!!
It's funny now but, back in maybe 2008 or so, we went and played in Portland with Witchaven, the car we took broke down and Henry and the guys were nice enough to let us cram in the back of their van, its sucked but I know it sucked way worse for them so thank you guys, anyway, 9 or 10 people in there, everyone parting and smoking and what not, I woke up in the middle of the night to Andy screaming "This is it man nice knowing you!" and we just hear dirt and skidding, everyone in the van is asleep and we are flying off the side of the road, we started screaming and Henry woke up and got back on the road, everyone was quiet for a while and then laughter broke out. It was pretty crazy!!!
One time we played in Brooklyn and smoked out the second floor of the club, it was right next door to the police department we had no clue standing outside blazing earlier in the day...
Thank you man for the interview and just want to say I really hope everyone who cares will check out our new album and spin it a couple times before saying I don't like this! eh just kidding...thank you very much, thank you for the support, We hope to actually have merch soon here, and anyone who wants to order our new CD can do so through our facebook page, send us a private message, the album is also available for download on amazon and iTunes...
True Extreme Metal!
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