Band with central Ohio roots revisits basics of heavy metal
Columbus Dispatch (subscription), OH - 9 minutes ago
... metal. Conte said his parents — who didn’t return a phone call to verify the details — raised him as a Jehovah’s Witness. ...
ROCK
Band with central Ohio roots revisits basics of heavy metal
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Aaron Beck
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Feedback blared from the amplifiers in the High Five Bar and Grill — an exclamation point made by Columbus band Teeth of the Hydra, the third of three metal bands to play in the Short North club one recent night.
Early Man guitarist Pete Macy, bespectacled with straight, black, shoulder-length hair, sat at the bar. On his back, a faded denim jacket with a likeness of operatic "black metal" singer King Diamond.
In his hand, a 24-ounce can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Onstage an hour before, Macy wielded a Jackson "flying-V," the quintessential heavy-metal guitar. To his left, singer-guitarist Mike Conte also played a flying-V.
Behind the duo was drummer Adam Bennati, sporting a long, curly mop-cut straight from the sleeve photos of any heavy-metal album circa 1982.
Dudes, it is 2005. What in the name of Judas Priest is going on? Can you longhairs be serious?
"No one’s ever asked us that, but we’ve heard people talking about it," said Macy, who recently joined Early Man for a national tour that goes to the West Coast and back before Christmas. "These two dudes, they are total metal heads. It isn’t a joke."
Self-help guru Robert Fulgham learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten.
Conte, who started Early Man two years ago in New York, learned everything he needed to know "with a Ride the Lightning tablature book from Kmart" and a guitar lesson from "a dude in an Iron Maiden cover band."
Judging from the sounds of Early Man’s debut, Closing In, Conte tells no lies. All 11 tracks crib from the galloping Maiden sound, the stripped-down thrash of Metallica and Black Sabbath’s guide to the dirge.
Conte, whose high, witchy voice evokes Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Halford, sings convincingly of paranoia, insanity, selfdestruction, death and war.
New York’s Matador Records released Closing In last month. The label isn’t known as a launchpad for heavy-metal bands. Marquee acts include aging record-store-clerk faves Pavement, Guided by Voices and Yo La Tengo — not bands that write Brain Sick, Death Is the Answer and War Eagle with a straight face.
For Matador president Chris Lombardi, all that mattered were the songs.
"What they’re doing is more interesting than the metal stuff out there," he said. "They write songs. It jibes with the metal I listened to — Motorhead, Black Sabbath, more of the classic hard-rock bands."
Lombardi said Conte and Bennati’s allegiance to classic metal-song structures sets them apart from today’s mainstream metal bands of men "grunting like goats" into microphones.
"How can you take any of the current metal bands for real?" he asked. "Some guys are wearing hockey masks. Ooooh, that’s scary.
"Early Man’s writing great songs, with great riffs. They’re just a great rock band. When they listen to AC/DC or Metallica or Motorhead, there are certain nuances that you take from any band. There’s nothing ironic about that."
Conte, 31, from Marion, and Bennati, 26, a Westerville native, played in various central Ohio rock bands in the late ’90s and early part of this century before getting together two years ago in New York.
Although Early Man’s ascent from New York clubs to national tours has been swift, Conte said he has spent his life trying to record Early Man’s new album.
In a chat from New York before Tuesday’s concert in Columbus, Conte said, "If people knew why it’s taken 31 years to get to this point they would know how real it is."
Only his grandmother, he promised, truly could appreciate his devotion to living and recording heavy metal.
Conte said his parents — who didn’t return a phone call to verify the details — raised him as a Jehovah’s Witness. They allowed some pop music in the house. Listening, however, to Osbourne wail about a "sabbath, bloody sabbath," and Megadeth warn of a "nuclear holocaust" was frowned upon.
"I was stuck with Hall & Oates and the Bible for 15 years," he said. "None of that spoke to me. I went full-on metal in my late teens."
He talked about visiting his grandmother and a young uncle in Dayton.
"He had a band, these 11-, 12-and 13-year-olds in his basement playing Pantera, Megadeth and Metallica songs.
"They’re the best band I’ve seen in my life to this day."
The kid band — Silence — affected Conte but perhaps it affected his grandmother more.
"I’d go there and she’d be wearing an AC/DC shirt," he said with a laugh.
"My parents said it was a crisis. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Until then I had a complex. . . . But seeing her get into this stuff, and she’s pushing 70? That was it."
His grandmother’s death four years ago fueled Conte’s fire.
"She was buried with an electric guitar. I think it was a Jackson."
Upon graduation from Marion High School, Conte moved to Columbus and played in various kinds of rock bands. After a dicey U.S. tour with one, Ambassador 990, he decided it was clean-slate time.
"I took my last 35 bucks or whatever it was and took a Greyhound to New York and moved in with a friend."
Living in a house with "artist and actor kids" in an "affordable" section of the New York borough of Queens, Conte wrote songs with a guitar, drum machine and a four-track recorder.
"I got back to what I knew — shredding," he said, referring to slang for playing electric guitar really, really fast.
The songs eventually became the album Closing In.
Early Man celebrated the release of Closing In in a packed Webster Hall (capacity 2,500) in New York.
Conte said he was delighted to hear a theater of people singing songs he wrote in a basement.
He has yet to hear any thoughts on Closing In from his parents.
"It’s too bad," Conte said. "they’re missing out on some seriously heavy jams."