Blood Duster – Jason P.C. Fuller

Melbourne’s grind/death/rock outfit Blood Duster have never been a band that lies to themselves. They’ve always been straight up about what they think, and are never afraid of a little controversy. Spending the last 20 years playing destructive live performances and releasing (sometimes) inappropriately titled albums half-filled with samples, the bands latest offering ‘KVLT’ is an unplayable record. Literally. With their most ridiculous publicity stunt to date, the band spent roughly $10,000 recording a new album only to destroy the master tapes, and scratch ‘KVLT’ into every single copy of their new, limited edition record.

To promote the release of their new, unplayable record ‘KVLT’ and their 5-track digital EP ‘SVCK’ on November 1st, long time bassist Jason P.C. Fuller had a chat to Metal Obsession about Bastardfest, their new releases and had a legendary rant about Soundwave.

Metal Obsession: You’ve been playing shows on the Australia-wide festival Bastardfest recently, and still have a couple of shows left. How have they been going?

Jason PC: Bastardfest shows have been going good, dude. Turnouts have been good, crowds have gone wild and we’re having heaps of fun. So yeah, we can’t complain!

Metal Obsession: With the exclusion of Blood Duster, who do you think are the biggest bastards on any of the Bastardfest shows?

Jason PC: Probably Fuck… I’m Dead.

Metal Obsession: Why those guys?

Jason PC: Because they’re just a bunch of fucking arrogant pricks. They play sober! How bullshit is that?! That’s acting like a child, that’s what that is.

Metal Obsession: Obviously, Blood Duster has been a very controversial band over the past 20 years, but it seems as if you’ve done your most controversial publicity stunt to date; spending thousands of dollars on recording an album only to destroy the masters and release a scratched vinyl of it. Has there been much interest from fans wanting to buy your new vinyl ‘KVLT’ though?

Jason PC: There has been tonnes, dude. It’s almost sold out and we’re still doing pre-orders! It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to buy the album, that’s not the intention of it. The intention of the album was to show people that, yeah we’ve made one, and no, you can’t hear it. But… people still want to buy it as an artefact of life or whatever, so good on ‘em!

Metal Obsession: Are you surprised that many people actually want to buy an album that they can’t hear?

Jason PC: Yeah I am, actually. It’s a huge surprise. If I had of known that people would have bought it, I would have pressed up heaps more… Actually, if I had of known, I probably still wouldn’t have pressed anymore than I did. [laughs]

Metal Obsession: So there is no chance of anymore copies being pressed?

Jason PC: Nope, no more copies will be pressed. It’s kind of funny, everybody thinks that it’s some sort of weird kind of cash grab that we’re after, and they’re saying that it’s such a crazy fucking idea and we’re such sellouts and blah, blah, blah… We’re not. We’re not selling t-shirts; we’ve even taken our t-shirts offline, because we don’t want your fucking money.

The music industry is fucking bullshit, y’know. People just lie to themselves every day. A band does something truly honest of them and there’s a backlash. But y’know… fuck ‘em.

Metal Obsession: Before you destroyed the mastering of the new record, how did you feel about the songs on it? Were you or any other band member unhappy with something about the album?

Jason PC: Not really. In the end, we were really happy. As you make any record, you have doubts. But with this record, we recorded the drums twice, because the first time we did it, I wasn’t really happy with the sound and stuff. We kind of toyed with it for a bit, then we’re like “Fuck it, let’s start again”. So we did. We got the drums sounding fucking sick. We culled the songs down to just the best songs, and by the time we got to that point, we’d already been through the decision, like “What are we doing this for? We’re putting so much effort into this.”

We feel as if people have just gotta take it, whether we would like them to or not, because that’s where we kind of decided “Fuck ‘em. Let’s just fucking destroy it. Let’s just keep the memory fucking golden, we all know what it is. So everyone else can suck it.”

Metal Obsession: So roughly how much money did you waste on recording this unplayable record?

Jason PC: Well, we did two drum sessions, so that’s a few hundred dollars a day. It’s kind of hard to describe because, do you include all the rehearsals that lead up to that? We’re not a big budget band, but we probably spent, including manufacturing, maybe $10,000?

As much as people say shit like it’s some kind of… marketing… whatever, they have to think about it. What are we actually marketing? We’ve got a product that you can’t sell! It’s fucking idiotic to think that we’re doing this for money. And anyone that says that is a fucking moron who should go and study some fucking economics. Because I can tell you, even if we had of released it as a proper record, we wouldn’t have made money. So now, we’ve actually just thrown that money, just pissed it up a wall basically.

[Watch Jason destroy the vinyl mastering below, and read the Blood Duster ‘KVLT’ press release here]

Metal Obsession: Compared to previous Blood Duster releases, what sort of sound can we expect from the five tracks you picked for the ‘SVCK’ EP that you’re also releasing?

Jason PC: They take influences from all of our albums, actually. There’s one sort of rock one, then we’ve got a couple of the really fast ones that highlight Dave Haley playing drums for Blood Duster for the first time. One of them is called ‘Symmes’sTheoryOfConcentricSpheresandPolarVoids’, which is about a Jules Verne inspired story. Y’know, the one about a guy who thought that there were worlds inside of the Earth, and if someone just gave him enough supplies, he could go and prove it. It’s the normal, absurd Blood Duster stuff.

Metal Obsession: So you’ve made an album strictly for yourselves to hear and not the fans. But will there ever be another full album recorded that the fans will actually be able to hear?

Jason PC: Yeah, of course. I view every album as a statement or as a piece in time of what it should be. We’ve got no intentions of stopping or not recording ever again. It’s just that this album is a new experience for us. Most bands have never had this experience; where they’ve had to feel the loss and regret of destroying the master tapes. But we’ve done everything else, so why wouldn’t we want to feel this at least once? Why wouldn’t any band want to feel this just once? At least have that sense of moral.

It’s like; you get to experience the death of a loved one without the loved one actually being dead. That’s how we feel, like, we’re never going to hear our work again, and I think people need to appreciate the sacrifice that was made just for the sake of it.

Metal Obsession: Out of all the funny samples you have used in your records, what one is your favourite?

Jason PC: Fuck, I dunno. I guess my favourite one is one from the new EP. It’s not particularly dirty or anything, but it just fitted in really well. You’ll have to check it out.

Metal Obsession: What does it say?

Jason PC: It just basically says that “It was heavy, man.” Some things like that just work!

Metal Obsession: You’re also a producer. Are there any releases from local bands coming out soon that you produced?

Jason PC: I produced the new album by The Kill. It’s fucking brutal! They’ve got a Slayer cover on there, and it’s just like, full grind/blast version. That band is taking grindcore in Australia up another notch, and it’s a really fucking good record. If I was doing a full grindcore band, that’s the record I would like to make. It’s really fucking good. Also, the new King Parrot album I gave a helping hand in as well, that’s also really fucking good. They’re all good friends of ours too, our old drummer Rizzo is in the band so, they’re connected well to Blood Duster. Even if they weren’t connected with us, it’d still be a fucking good record.

Metal Obsession: I was reading a discussion last night about an Australian music festival and if we could run one the size of Soundwave, or atleast one that would get a few thousand attenders in each city. Do you think it could work?

Jason PC: Everyone says stuff like “IT’LL NEVER WORK!” and you know why? It’s because Australians have a low opinion of themselves. I’ve seen Australian bands compete on the world stage. Like, I’ve stood at the fucking Maryland Deathfest around fucking 10,000 people or something, and I’ve seen fuckin’ Australian bands compete head-to-head with American bands, like, bands that I grew up listening to. I can tell you that Australian bands are just as good, if not, fuckin’ better and more professional than these American bands.

So if you put them on a festival like Soundwave, then that gives Australian festival-goers a chance to see these bands head-to-head, they just assume that Australian bands aren’t worthy. When you create that fucking thing, or just reinforce some kind of stupid fucking ideal, then you’re doing Australia really bad service, and I think that Soundwave should be kicked in the fucking face because of it. It’s just creating a whole new fucking wave of bullshit that Australians have to fucking deal with, y’know?

Half the bands that are playing Soundwave shouldn’t be on the fucking festival! They’re shit! The bands that are there, lots of those bands couldn’t pull 400 heads to a gig. But they’ll put them on Soundwave, and everyone will be like “Oh yeah, they’re okay. They must be good because they’re on the fucking festival.” They’re not. They’re shit, it’s being fed to you and you’re accepting it. Fuckin’, Psycroptic could pull 400-500 people to a gig. Put them on instead! It’s just ridiculous. I think that these people are taking a shit on the scene, and everyone is standing there fucking eating it like its fucking ice-cream.

And the other thing is, Australian bands won’t speak up about it, because they’re petrified that one day Soundwave might change their mind about Australian bands, and they don’t want to be seen as the guys who bitched about Soundwave, because then their band will never get to play. Just stand up and have some fucking balls! Who gives a fuck if they don’t let your band play?! They’re gonna let another Aussie band play, and that’ll be fucking good for fucking Australian metal. If you want fucking Australian metal to be fucking true and if you want to be honest about Australian metal, then go fucking stand up and say something. Everyone is just too fucking piss weak.

Metal Obsession: I couldn’t agree with you anymore, dude. Well said. Is there anything else that you would like to say to finish this interview?

Jason PC: I would just like to say that our unplayable album is out on November the 1^st. If you want to see the video of us destroying the masters, just check out the YouTube link. If you want to support a band that does really stupid shit, just buy the download of our ‘SVCK’ EP, also out on November the 1^st. Hopefully everyone likes it… and regrets that they’ll never get to hear the full album.

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