Deceased Fearless Undead Machines

Deceased playing 'Fearless Undead Machines' in full at Saint Vitus one-off

You guys are reissuing three records and one of them, the one that’s coming out that we’re doing this interview for, is you’re reissuing Fearless Undead Machines. Do you have any particular memories of that record?

Every record has its own memories and its own special place in my heart. The thing I remember most about that record, and I always tend to say this, is that it was the album that kind of changed us. I mean, basically when we started the band in 1985 it was me and a guy named Doug and we were buddies, we were stoners and fucking young kids out to take on the world and teen angst and all that stuff. We were just out to write the fastest, craziest, over the top weirdest songs you could write. For the most part they were basically simplistic EP songs.

Those came out on demos in ’86 ’88 ’89. Evil Side of Religion, Birth by Radiation, and Nuclear Exorcist. In 1990 we were asked to sign to Relapse Records. We were the first band to ever sign to that label. We went in and we did Luck of the Corpse. At that time, Doug was kind of on his way out of the band. He started seeing the world differently than me. He kind of wanted to do his own thing. He ended up leaving the band.

[…] I’ve always said to myself when I write these songs I don’t want any happy endings ever in our songs. I want there always to be a fork in the road. I want there always to be a twist inside of a twist inside of a twist. I like to sometimes be the narrator of the tragedy and sometimes I like to be the tragedy. I like to set myself up. Which is another reason I like Fearless a lot, because it’s kind of where I started the finding that voice. You’re living that tale, you’re living that horror. You can actually, I think, feel it coming from the voice out of the record. You start to feel that death metal. You start to feel that surge. That bad karma.

The above quotes are from a 2016 interview our metal sister site Invisible Oranges did with King Fowley, vocalist and founder of Virginia death metal band Deceased, around the time they reissued some of their classic albums on Relapse (which they were the first band to sign to), including 1997’s Fearless Undead Machines. That’s the album that Deceased will be performing in full at their Brooklyn one-off on December 1 at Saint Vitus. That show will be opened by Sloth Herder, Anthropic and Sadistic Vision. Tickets are on sale.

If you haven’t listened to Fearless Undead Machines in a while (or ever), it holds up super well. The “epic” side is balanced out perfectly by the raw, thrashy side, and King Fowley sounds as superbly evil as you could ask for. Listen to the whole thing below.