DogAndPanda: trouble.htm

I Psalm 9 - "We just played to the walls forever."

I Like many bands on their debut albums in the early 1980s, Trouble knew the first rule of I freaking out young metal heads: no band pictures; instead, creepy but somewhat rough I illustration and a band name that only hinted at... trouble. A sense of mystery ensues, H fueled by lack of press, and in Trouble's case, frightening fire and brimstone lyrics of a I sword-wielding Christian bent. But the mystique crumbles without music to back it up, and I on that front, Trouble delivered, turning in a white-knuckle display of nerves-frayed doom, I its particular quake not felt since early Sabbath, or perhaps, in trace elements, through the I work of Angel Witch and most quantifiably, Witchfinder General.

I Conspicuously though, these were Americans, working in a hippie-hazed and enigmati-

I cally Beatles-crazed vacuum out in Chicago. And with Eric Wagner howling in pain tales of I Christian retribution over rumbling sheets of doom, Trouble had on their hands a record I

I that was instantly and universally hailed as a foreboding force of metal, something rough H and unhewn to the point of feeling unbridled, as if Trouble were a mere conduit for a greate

I force, one that synergistically and potently emerged through a melding of electricity and 1

I God-awfulness.

I Into the harrowing music at hand, opener "The Tempter" was most definitely a sledge of

I might, as was the more rock n' rollsy "Assassin" and the venomous "Bastards Will Pay,"

I perhaps the album's biggest anthem. Toward the end, "Psalm 9" turned into a confused,

I erstwhile title track when the band decided to do a second self-titled album in 1990. All

"Well, over the years, everybody found out that I was The Tempter," laughs Eric, look-i ing back. "I just have a way of talking people into things and getting my way sometimes ■ (laughs). But no, like 1 said, just like everybody else, when metal first started back then, : like Metal For Muthas, Angel Witch... everything was really gothic and doomy and 1 I would get my lyrics out of Bible too. But 1 thought in the early days 1 was maybe a little

J blunt with stuff and as I got older and more experienced writing lyrics 1 just tried to become a little more poetic. I started reading books by William Blake, Rimbaud, Baudelaire. I was big into The Doors and Morrison, and that's where 1 got those references from, from I reading books on Morrison. He was reading that stuff, so was like, let's check that out." I We actually got together, I think it was in 79,' explains guitarist Rick Wartell, charting

the path to the legendary sessions for the record in California, "and we played only maybe one or two shows a year, and we would practice for five nights a week, like all the time. We never missed practice. We just played to the walls forever. So we actually had that record and the second one pretty much written at that point. So it was just a matter of which I songs we wanted to put on what record. The trip up to L.A. was an experience, these young kids going out there in a van we bought (laughs), and we were hauling our equipment in a U-Haul which ended up rolling over on the highway, which ended up laying all over the middle of the road. It was pretty close; we ended up sliding off the road and hitting a guard > rail, just missing going over the edge of the road by about a foot. And just a note on L.A. -l Brian Slagel put us up in the Tropicana Hotel, which was pretty cool. It was a big suite and

there were all these rock bands staying there. So it gave us a taste of what was really going JH I on out there..."

I told, the album surged then skulked almost catatonically, before energy built for another

I attack, the canny sequencing making for a metal trip with huge stakes - an eternity of bliss

I or of damnation.

"I was brought up Catholic" sighs Eric, in closing, again grasping with his strange, metaphysical lyrics. "But you have to remember, back then in the early '80s, all the metal was kind of Satanic, and 1 didn't get into that vibe. And these people were talking about God too, and the Devil, and cut your mom's throat out and shove her heart up her butt. So as far as writing lyrics, 1 wasn't trying to save anybody, but just explore my life. Because you ' don't understand when you're 20 years old; you don't know what's going on. You're doing acid and stuff, so you're kind of like, what is the meaning of life? And 1 thought some of those subjects were cool too. I mean, the Satanic stuff wasn't totally new either. You look at Lucifer's Friend's first album, those lyrics could have been written by Slayer or Witch-finder General. So I think it was more Metal Blade trying to be cute or something, with everything being called black metal, why not call us white metal, which is a bunch of crap. . We were just five dudes playing heavy fuckiri music. I was learning how to write lyrics. I had 'The Tempter' which I thought was cool, but 1 wasn't preaching like Stryper or any-I thing. So why did we get all the shit? I mean did Slayer believe in the devil and have black masses and stuff? Whatever."

Martin Popoff, 2006 ^^^^ ^^^fl

I The Skull - "Suicide and death and drugs"

Trouble followed up their ground-breaking debut album a year later with a record | I that is looked upon as perhaps the doomiest and darkest and sludgiest of the I band's bleak and parched catalogue. Congruent with this surrender to anguish r was a new boominess to Jeff "Oly" Olsen's drum sound, which allowed the latent I groove of the bands chug to really sink in.

I Plus, when guitarist Rick Wartell opines that the band "wanted to be as heavy as I Black Sabbath with the double guitars of Judas Priest," you really have to tip your % I hat to The Skull for taking Trouble there. The twin leads of Wartell and Bruce I Franklin come at you in waves, especially on classic opener "Pray For The Dead," J I which closes with one of the key arch-Trouble moments of the whole catalogue, I Eric making his solemn exhortation over heaving axe howlings as inspiring as I those all over Priest's Sad Wings Of Destiny. "Well, Bruce is really clean," laughs

Wartell, contrasting the two guitar styles. "He's super clean; the guy is phenom-I enal. He's got a real Ritchie Blackmore feel to him, a real heavy blues feel; he's aweS I some, a great riffer and a great songwriter. And I'm more like a Michael Schenker,

but just not as good as Michael Schenker. I play more in his style, but I'm kind of 1

sloppy, more raw."

s Songs like "The Wish," "Wickedness Of Man" and the closing title track almost blended into each other, some of the creeping paces paving the way for the rise of I the slow-motion British doom boom of the mid-^c90s, with Paradise Lost, Anath-.-ema and My Dying Bride trying to capture the fatal majesty of a Trouble fully.ijitp

r"" ..." ,

"Most of those songs were already written when we did the first record," explains Rick, with respect to The Skull's torturedl^ssons. "But a lot of lyrics weren't finished at that point; it was basically Eric that needed to get to work on that stuff. And just from being with Eric and talking tcUiim over the years, from ■ what I understand, that was the most depressing time in his life, when he wrote the lyrics to that album. And it kind of shows. When you listen closely to what's I going on in there, he sings a lot about suicide and death and drugs. There were I just a lot of bad things he was going through." jj

"I was working in this kind of rock shop thing," says Eric, asked abour|j|e cover I art, the most frightening and ghoulishly psychedelic of the band's canon^j|nd I the manager of it started helping us with our merchandise. We'd sell t-shirtsahd m stuff out of there, and his brother painted it. He actually did the first two. I don't\ I know where the first one is, but I have The Skull, the painting, hanging in my little place that I hang out in downstairs."

Trouble's oppressive, aggressive and vengeful Christian themes continued

unabated within the context of this territory-establishing second record. "As

I've said, a lot of metal bands were singing about Satan and that kind of crap," , |

argues Eric. "But I,grew up Catholic and stuf^so I wasn't into that end of it. I

mean, even though I really went along Mtn'eye*rybody else,* I just wasn't*"pro' I

that. I don't know wh^t the big deal is anyway, you know? Actually I probably

said just as many Satans as they did, but you know, irf a different way. I wasn't' , Jfl

out there trying to save anybody. I was just exploring my life",**» .. " I

Essentially not much has changed with respect to Eric's unique, acidic, acrimonious world view over the past 25 years of dishing the doom. "I get turned off by a lot of things," says Eric, world weariness in his voice, "especially these born again- f ers. They think they're right. Me, you know, I'm standing there... I got long hair, I'm wearing a cross, hey man, rock ^cn' roll, the devil. And I'm like, hey buddy, you f just did it right there. You are passing judgment on me. So right now you are just I full of shit, so get out of here. So I'm turned off by all that. I don't really believe in religion. It's a hard question, I think you just try to do what's right, you know? 1 People are human and I'm the same way. I've done things I regret, stupid things I've done after drinking a bottle of Jack or whatever. But you just know what's right or wrong. I don't believe in religions because I don't believe everybody can be right. There is only one way. But I do believe there has to be something better than this, because otherwise there'd be no purpose for us being here, going through all this misery, the pain, the suffering, and money, people dying, people J getting killed and the drugs. I don't believe we're just put into a box then in the .

ground, done. Otherwise, I see no point."

Martin Popoff, 2006

DogAndPanda: trouble.htm

trouble.htm

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