DEATH'S HEAD QUARTET

It was probably the sixth track on that tape which cemented Siege’s reputation–“Grim Reaper” a long, slow metallic dirge with reverbed-out shrieking vocals and sax, gut-wrenching guitar and bass. “Grim Reaper” gave the finger to the rule of “shorter and faster” that dictated so much of that era’s music, and the punk fans flipped out.
It is drummer Rob Williams’ desire to take the musical style of “Grim Reaper” to its extreme and beyond, that is the driving force behind the Death’s Head Quartet.

Seth Putnam didn’t expect to become a cult figure in music when he started a joke band that intended to play the stupidest, worst music ever. He even gave it the most offensive name he could come up with: Anal Cunt. However unlikely, the band caught on, and now blast-beats and jokey thrash cover songs are everywhere. Many albums, world tours and urban legends later, Seth channels his famous aggression in a more artistic vein with the Death’s Head Quartet, producing a stream of growls, shrieks, gurgles and coughs and a punishing low-end rumble. It is Seth’s opinion that you need to use your own physical force in order to create true noise music. Anyone, Seth says, can do it by pressing a button.

Alto sax player Jim Hobbs is a critically-acclaimed member of Boston’s “Freedom Jazz” ensemble, Fully Celebrated Orchestra. Nightstick fans will remember him from his appearance on the “Ultimatum” CD. Seth sat in with FCO on occasion. He and Jim created dialogs of sax and vocal gibberish that people are still talking about. One night Seth used a trumpet mute instead of a mic, and they say you could hear him screaming across the street from the club, even over the traffic. This was the formation of the Quartet’s free-jazz element.

Guitarist Chris Joyce rounds out the band. A longtime fixture of the Weymouth Rock contigent, he was a member of the Nothings. He experienced a personal rebirth when he discovered avant-garde guitar. In the Quartet he supplies sheets of noise that wrestle with Seth’s bass as a canvas for Jim’s sax work. Behind it all, Rob stakes out territory somewhere between Keith Moon and Tom Surgal.

April 9, 2001, the Death’s Head Quartet entered the studio to record their debut CD. This album captures 74 minutes of the early intensity of the group, live and improvised. The Quartet plays its’ guts out--with tracks ranging in length from 6 to over 30 minutes, nothing is held back. Uncompromised, uninhibited, harsh, challenging. The meeting of free jazz and grindcore, a metallic Sun Ra.