Aggression: Forgotten Skeletons (pt. II)

In the second part (read the first part here) of the in-depth interview with Denis Barthe we discussed the recording "Forgotten Skeleton" and the following events: misfortune with Facemelt Records, line-up changes, an attempt to start everything from scratch with "The Full Treatment", demise of the band in the 80s. and short-lived reunion in the early 2000's. 

I have some questions about the second demo which was recorded with a girl called Sue Tierney…
She was an employee at the studio and she was very beautiful. We were very happy to be there. She was able to capture Aggression's sound a little bit better than what was done on our first demo. On our first demo, there was a lot of peaking in the maximum of the volume. Our output distorted slightly, but she was able to capture our energy and power. It was a more condensed and better listening experience. So Sue was great.

It's a bit unusual that a woman works in a studio as a sound engineer.
She definitely was even more overqualified to be working with us. It was a great day, and she was fantastic. A lot of the things were done in one take. I remember Gate doing all the drums in one take. And then bass and guitars — one or two takes. We took more time for vocals, and then more time for mixing, trying to get the right sound. I don't have that much recollection of the recording session. Except that Mike and Sue were great. We were playing really good. After the first demo, we started to practice for 10-12 hour a day. We were definitely playing very tight, very fast. Gate was turning into a machine at that point. The guy was just relentless. We needed to keep up. I also remember lowering my guitar pick gauge to very thin, to be able to go as fast as he was playing drums. Now I play with bigger picks. I play with a 1.14mm pick, but back then it was like a sheet of paper. It was a completely different technique. I think we recorded “Forsaken Survival”. Maybe “Beware of the Scarecrow”. I don't even remember. I think there were three or four songs. For years, people thought that we recorded "The Final Massacre" for that demo. We can't find a recording of it, and I don't remember. I wouldn't be surprised if we did, but I have no way of knowing if it truly happened or not. I would have to ask Burn or Dug or Botcher if they remember doing that song.

Okay. You already told me the story of your contract with Facemelt Records. What kind of a deal was that? Did they offer you an advance or something like that?
Scott Gibbons used to go to the University of Maine. He was a great guy. Big guy, almost my size, pretty much just as big as me. After Facemelt he had a long career in the music industry. He might still be in the music industry. Back then he was starting a brand new label. I'm pretty sure he did give us an advance that Johnny potentially had to repay. We had an advance, we had the cover design, we had the recording. There was a problem with the length of the record. I don't know why we just took a song out. I think Johnny's strategy was instead of us being one in a million on Metal Blades, Roadrunner, Music for Nation, or any of these labels, to be number one band on Facemelt Records. Brand new label, but with 100% focus on Aggression, versus being one in a million in another label with only 5-10% focus on us. I think Johnny, at that time, heard so many horror stories about bands getting ripped off by labels and not being supported, that he thought, "Let's try something different". The distribution would have been there, the record would have been out. It was not in the cards to happen. I wish the album would have come out on Facemelt. I think it would have made a difference in our career. There was a need for metal labels at the time. Look at all the labels that started around that time that are still in business these days. We had a record contract, we signed it. There was money involved, all the costs were covered for recording and all that. It was just an unfortunate outcome. But when you think about the reasoning behind it, it was really a good idea.

That album was prophetically called “Forgotten Skeleton”. Who came up with this title?
Me. I was a big fan of the Anvil album “Forged in Fire”. All my favorite songs on that album start with the letter F. We decided at that point that any future album after that would start with the letter F. No big reason, just why not. Same as Morbid Angel having all their albums in alphabetical order. But yeah, I think “Forgotten Skeleton” became almost poetic. Because the album was never released, it was a forgotten skeleton. But yeah, it was a little bit about skeleton in a closet, about people not knowing what everybody really is until you get to know them better. I think the idea behind the concept was persons did not know themselves. So they had a skeleton inside of them, but they didn't know it. It was a forgotten skeleton.

And what about the recording of this album? Some sources like Metal Archives mentioned that Sue Tierney also produced that record.
I don't even remember where we recorded it. It's probably the same team again with Mike Amstead and all that. But I just remember that we were able to play really fast and really tight. We were getting better and better and better at what we do. When I went back in 2003, 2002, I went back to Johnny Hart's apartment in Montreal and listened to the album for the first time since the 80s. And I couldn't believe how fast and precise and aggressive it was. I think it would have made a significant contribution to the metal world if it would have been released in 1986. Because a lot of stuff on there is a little bit avant-garde. There's a lot of things, especially “The Final Massacre”, which was tuned in Drop B, which was really unusual at that time. So it's kind of like never seen before. You had people like Venom who did Drop D and all that. But with Drop B we were pretty much first. So it does really bring out the more death metal sounding for that period of time. And the only reason we did the Drop B is because one time my guitar string broke and it dropped by itself in Drop B and I didn't have money to change it. So I just kept playing like that for a few days and then I started writing riffs with the string being completely low. We had to lock the whammy bar system. So every time we played that song in concert, we had to unlock the system, drop the string to B, and then relock it. I think “Forgotten Skeleton” had many good songs. I love “Kachina Dolls” as an example. It's a song that people don't mention too often. So yeah, there's a lot of good moments on that album. Something you can be proud of.

Do you remember any technical issues or some arguments in the studio about arrangements?
I think everything went pretty smoothly until they could fit the record on a vinyl. But from the recording... I mean, for “The Full Treatment”, we had a ton of studio issues. But I don't remember anything not working for “Forgotten Skeleton”. No equipment break, no fire, no too much alcohol, drugs consumption. We were pretty focused. Johnny was making sure that we were professional and I think we delivered the good on that record.

Speaking about interesting songs on this record, I want to ask about that strange word in the song “Demolition”. There are some screaming “Rawtomhato pokay”. What does this mean? Does it have a meaning at all?
It has no meaning at all. Like pretty much anything we do. We used to play cover songs. We used to play Destruction, Celtic Frost, Hellhammer, Exodus, Metallica, Slayer, you name it. And our singer, Botcher, would never ever learn the lyrics of the song. So he would just make sounds that sounded like the song. He's saying nothing, right? It's so heavy and people didn't know. But then he would be saying “Circle of the Tyrants”. So he would do the chorus properly. So then I said to him, if you're going to do the entire song, why don't you just go like “Rawtomhato pokay”? So then everybody started laughing in the jam space and then started to say “Rawtomhato pokay”. Which is really “Circle of the Tyrants”. Sometimes we were more punks than punks. We just do whatever we want. So that's what “Rawtomhato pokay” is. It's really like “Circle of the Tyrants” in gibberish. It means completely nothing.

You know, it sounds to me like some Indian war cry, something like that.
Now we have t-shirts with that saying. And people sing it along with us. But yeah, it just means that we're too lazy to learn the lyrics and sing them properly.

But why didn't you try to release the album independently on some different label? Maybe some Attic Records in Canada or, I don't know, somewhere else?
Facemelt Records never went bankrupt, I thought. They more just never happened. What happened with “Forgotten Skeleton”, I think Scott Gibbons was like, ”It's too much trouble working with bands and things like that, so I don't want to do it”. So then we had a fallout at the same time. At that point, we were getting super excited and super impatient for no reason. Just being young and stupid, right? We started to question Johnny's decision because the label couldn't print the record. That's exactly what we thought. “Why don't you go to Roadrunner, or Attic, or Viper?” There were so many different labels at the time. There was a waiting period. And then other labels started to talk to us and say like, “We'll sign you and we'll get you on”. We were saying no, and then eventually we said yes to Banzai Records. They approached us with a bunch of money and we decided to go with them. The problem was, that Johnny and Facemelt owned the recordings of “Forgotten Skeleton}. So that's why we went into the Victor's studio in Montreal and recorded “The Full Treatment”. But as soon as Johnny left, the professionalism left with him, then it was just a complete circus. If you listen to “The Full Treatment” compared to “Forgotten Skeleton”, you can tell that the performance is a lot more loose, not as tight. And everything that could go wrong for the recording of “The Full Treatment” went wrong. “Forgotten Skeleton” was way more precise, focused, professional. I remember Monte Connor at Roadrunner telling me that it's crazy that all that happened because after that he got the position at the A&R position at Roadracer Records, and the two bands that he wanted to sign were Annihilator and Aggression. And by the time he approached Aggression, we were already almost split up. Some of us were in jail, some of us had dependency, substance abuse, you name it. We were not able to function. So that's kind of what happened. But yeah, I think if “Forgotten Skeleton” would have been released in 1986, probably the Aggression brand would probably be more better known out there.

And why did Burn and Botcher quit after “Forgotten Skeleton”?
Burn at the time had a really good girlfriend and I could tell that he was getting pressure from her about jamming. Burn was the heart and soul of Aggression. He was very important to making sure that me and Gate kept focused, and once he was gone Gate was completely lost and then he started to just make a lot of bad decisions. Without Burn Gate completely went off-rail. But yeah, we kicked Burn out which is probably beside our separation from Johnny Hart the second worst thing we have done. I think with Botcher it was a different thing. I think there was a combination of him not paying for the jam space and contributing with money and also being late for rehearsal and not learning lyrics. The guy was so talented that he could never practice, come to a show and be the star of the night with zero effort and that was very frustrating to us. Not that we were jealous that he was able to do that but just be with us, do the work with us as a team. Burn and Botcher were both very crucial for Aggression and their departure was like a downward spiral for the band. You know I'm listening to what Burn was doing on “Forgotten Skeleton” and a lot of guitar that he does is amazing. And Botcher's delivery was so perfect for Aggression. He had the right voice. I guess we just kind of like fell apart at that time and we were like young guys and a lot of bad decisions were made at that time.

Cactus Pete

Botcher was replaced with Cactus Pete, and I think that his voice was a bit hardcore-ish for your type of music. Could you tell me about this guy?
He was definitely a rebel. Cactus Pete at the time kind of took over Burn and Butcher's role into one because he used to be a sound man. He's a real professional guy, great vocalist, he was a better singer than Botcher. He had a better vocal abilities but I don't know if he had the same stage presence like Botcher had. Botcher was kind of like an instigator, he could make people break tables and chairs at the bars and stab each. Cactus Pete had a different approach to things but I worked really well with him writing songs and things like that. I wish we would have continued. I think that people at the time only saw a glimpse of the talent that Cactus Pete was able to do and I think it would have been nice to see if we would have kept Burn and then Cactus Pete would have been coming in and the five of us see what we could have done. I think at the time the transition from Butcher to Cactus Pete was kind of necessary and I really enjoyed working with him and his personality. He's so much more professional and together than the rest of Agression was that without him there would have been no “The Full Treatment” at all. He was a true team member, friend, brother and a hard worker.

And why didn't you replace Burn with another guitarist?
I don't know. I'm a huge Van Halen fan and I always liked that four-piece with one guitar. Voivod was like that as well and I liked that dynamic and I just wanted to see what we could achieve as a four-piece. The good thing about Aggression right now is because I'm singing and playing guitar and writing the songs. I don't need to show the songs to other people as it takes much time. So I think we decided to stay as a four-piece just to be more efficient and just for the challenge to play by myself. And we definitely wanted to go more into an extreme like grind- and hardcore way anyway, so I think Dug and Gate were making enough noise that we probably didn't need a second guitar player.

Speaking about your second album, it was recorded with a folk musician Reginald Guay. So why did you decide to get him as a producer at all?
To this day I have no idea. I mean, it could not have been a worse possible selection. And trust me, Reginald Guay is an amazing musician. I love his band Garolou, I listen to that French-Canadian music a lot. It's pretty much one of my favorite bands from Quebec. But when we started playing, he was like, “What the hell is going on? I'd never heard such a wall of noise”. And it started like one of the 17,000 problems we had recording “The Full Treatment”. The guy was awesome, but it was wrong choice. It's like Taylor Swift produced a new Cannibal Corpse. Reginald did like everything was overpowering the board, distorted all over the place. The mixing is completely off. And we had a ton of problems. During the first take of guitar my amp caught on fire in the studio. And it was so critical to my sound. And then I was off from that. A lot, way too much beer, way too much tequila, Jack Daniels. We were hammered the entire session. I remember Benzai Record gave us $50,000 to record this album. And I'm pretty sure 25,000 went to party. There was like 20, 25, 30 people in the studio when we were recording. Imagine the drummer doing his job and people walking by, taking a cigarette from his pack and falling. The “Forgotten Skeleton” recording session was so professional and “The Full Treatment” was complete chaos. Everything went wrong. When we left the studio, they sent another $5,000 bill of damages we did to the studio when we recorded. And through that, Cactus Pete was trying to be professional. You know, me and Gate, we were too much partying at that time to be able to focus. And you can tell like the performance is not as good. All the guitar solos on the album were done one night, between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. And I have no recollection at all of me doing the solos. When I'm listening to the solos now I have no idea how I did them, what happened. I was in a completely different dimension. That's why Johnny Hart would have been great and Burn would have been great because they would have been like, “OK, guys, let's get these people out of here. Let's focus on the music”.

Is it true that during those sessions you recorded Queen's song “We Will Rock You”?
Yeah, but I completely forgot about it until I heard the recording. It was supposed to end the album. First of all, it was one of the worst recorded cover ever in the history of rock ’n’ roll. It's so bad. There were about 20 people with us singing along, like screaming and all that. And I think now, if it would have been on the record, we didn't get the authorization to release it by, so thank God. But I think if it would have been on the album, it would have made Aggression even slightly crazier than our reputation was because it's so atrocious. There's like a hundred other options of covers we could have taken. We used to do a great cover of Aerosmith’s “No Surprise” with Cactus Pete, me, Dug and Gate. That would have been a way better selection than “We Will Rock You”.

Is it correct that Stefan Prudhomme was pictured on the back of the album as a drummer?
Yeah. We had a fallout with Gate. Everything started to go bad at that time. And, you know, just to piss him off, we took his picture out and put some random guy. But Stefan Prudhomme did play drums for Aggression. He was a great drummer, young kid. I used to bully him relentlessly, like nonstop. And I was pissed off that it was not Gate behind the kit. We do have some demo recording with him drumming with us. And it's really good. He's a really good drummer. We could have continued, but, you know, Gate was the face of Aggression. You know, if Burn was like the heart and soul, Gate was the face. So without those two people, there's no way it was going to be able to continue.

You already told me some crazy stories about playing in Canada, but did you manage to play in the States in the 80s?
We never played in the States in the 80's. Yeah, we were never able. I don't think Gate was able to cross the border because of his criminal record. Aggression 80s version never played outside of the province of Quebec. We played Quebec City and we opened for many big bands in Montreal.

You said that during the recording or after the recording of "The Full Treatment, you had a fallout with Gate. What was the reason of that fallout?
I think Gate at that time was entering a different phase of his life and he started to hang out with more shady people than we were. And I think at the time Cactus Pete, our singer, and Dug, bass player, they started to be worried about his attitude, but also like his willingness to practice and come to rehearsal and be ready to play. Like, both me and Gate at that time started to party too much. When we made the decision to get Burn to leave the band, Gate kind of lost his best friend in the band and Burn was really good at keeping Gate in check. And once Burn left, that security or that Big Brother watch was no longer there. So, Gate started not only partying and heavy drinking and drugs, but also starting to hang out with some serious dangerous people in the Montreal area. So, he was becoming more and more aggressive. And his ability to play was starting to go. So, we confronted him about it. We booked a meeting for him to come and he showed up and it didn't go well to the point where we didn't want to have his picture behind the record. Dug knew this kid, Stéphane Prudhomme, and he came to play with us. I do have some tapes of us playing songs with him. But he wasn't Gate. He was not playing exactly the same. He was an excellent drummer and really good guy. But to me, when Gate was gone as well, it started to have its affect on me. And then I started to go down a downward spiral as well. So, yeah. Dug and Cactus Pete were best friends, always together. And they started to see things didn't go properly. And they were completely right in their approach.

As you mentioned, Gate had a criminal record. So, could you reveal some details about this?
He was often in and out of prison for things like car theft, breaking into people's houses and stealing things, some drug possession, and also trafficking charges, like, if you have more than a certain amount of drugs on you, then it's called trying to sell drugs, or trafficking. We're not talking about a cartel level, but just enough to get sentences and things like that. So, Gate, the entire period we knew him, was always going to court, and then either get sentenced or not. We had to deal with that and play around that, but he would never go too long. It was only sometimes 20 days, sometimes 30 days, but he was always able to find a way to get out of jail.

I also would like to ask you about the cover of "The "Full Treatment". The idea came from your roadie, Sylvain Chasse. Could you tell me about this guy and what was the idea of the cover? Because I still can't get it.
Okay. Me and Sylvain, we used to go to elementary school together. I don't know if we played baseball together, but maybe we did. I don't remember, but I think it rings a bell. He was hanging out with Aggression a lot and actually went on to become like Voivod's roadie and still has a career working with concerts and things like that. And Sylvain was supposed to be the one drawing the cover because he was able to draw and things like that, but he had an accident, he hurt his elbow, and he was not able to do it. So one of our friend Thrasher, André "Thrasher" Giboulot, actually did the drawing of that witch or sorcerer. And where Aggression and Voivod used to practice, we had like windows that used to open and we were able to go on the roofs. We were hanging out on the roof, so the scene that you see, it looks like factories and that was the view from our jam space. And the sorcerer gives that guy the full treatment with the lightning. I never really super liked it, but at the same time, I like that it's completely original, it's done by someone from our group of friends and it's completely like homemade. It was Sylvain's idea, and then André Giboulot actually finished the drawing. We really liked to get our friends involved in Aggression, so we were operating like a family or a gang, so everybody had a chance to participate. And now, touring the world, I see people with that cover tattooed on their back, tattooed on their heart and on their body, so kind of crazy that something we've done like, almost 40 years ago now still represents something.

And as you mentioned Voivod, I know that you've had a band with Snake called Union Made.
Yeah, I tried to start the band with Snake and a few other guys, and then I got kicked out just because I was partying too much. But I was the first guitar player, and then it just didn't work out because I was unable to focus enough, to show up to practice and things like that.

After "The Full Treatment" the band disappeared. Was there a certain meeting when you decided, "Okay, guys, let's quit, let's just go our separate ways"? Or did all of you just stopped showing up to rehearsals?
Well, I think we never had a meeting and said that Aggression is done. That never happened. I think that after Gate left I started to get in trouble. And then we lost our jam space and didn't have a place to go and practice. We didn't have any money to pay for our jam space. So we just stopped jamming. And shortly after that, I started to go towards Florida a lot at that time, because my dad was there. I was never really in town. I started to travel more, spent a lot of time in Wisconsin, and also Iowa. But we never had a meeting.

Okay, I see. In 2000's you had a band, Cradle to Grave, which was like, groove metal, something like Pantera type of stuff. Was it something you really were into at that time?
Yeah, I moved to Vancouver. And then I thought I couldn't find musicians that could play Aggression. And I thought people wouldn't care anyway, they wouldn't listen to Aggression. So I wanted to start something new. I've always been a big fan of bands like Monster Magnet and Down. And I really like Corrosion of Conformity and the switch they did from like, hardcore punk thrash to that Southern rock, groovy, Black Sabbath kind of thing. I think I decided to go the same way. Even though like a lot of the riffs that I use in Cradle to Grave were from past like Aggression ideas. There's a song that's called "As We Lay Dying", which was an old Aggression song. There's a song called "Projectile". That was also an old Aggression song that we never released. So most of the material of Cradle to Grave was old Aggression riffs that we never used in the past. But the difference is the tuning is much lower. Aggression used to tune like standard E and then with Cradle to Grave, we were like Drop B, which made the song a little different. But if you listen to some of the songs and some of the riffs, you can tell it's the same. A lot of the riffs sounds like "The Final Massacre", the last song from "The Full Treatment" album.

What happened to Cradle to Grave in the end? Why didn't you succeed?
Well, we released a couple albums. We did some U.S. tours and we played a lot in Canada everywhere. And then we kind of switched from Cradle to Grave back to Aggression. So some of the guys who were in Cradle to Grave now became an Aggression. It's all because of King Fowley from Deceased, he asked us to play at the Defenders of the Old festival in New York City. We said, "Okay, let's just do it". And after that, we had to learn all the songs. We found Ryan Idris who was able to come and do the drums, very similar to Gate's style. And Dave Watson came on guitar and Brian Langley on vocals. We started to get the buzz again playing thrash metal. And now that I had a team that can do it sometimes better than what Aggression used to do in the past. Then that's it. We were back. So that's what happened to Cradle to Brave. It was just like a completely natural transition back into Aggression.

In 2004 you finally released "Forgotten Skeleton". How did you get back the rights to this recording and everything else?

Well, I think in the early 2000s, I started to see a lot of the old guys from Aggression again. So I got in contact with Burn and Botcher and Johnny Hart. We started to hang out again with Dug and all that. Johnny had the the original tapes for "Forgotten Skeleton" at his house, but the tapes were completely stuck together, like almost glued together. Here in Vancouver, there was a studio that was baking old tapes and then restoring them. We were able to do that and then move those tapes to digital and then being able to release the album. People from Great White North Records were friends of ours from the old days. That's how it came about. And every time I listen to that record, even today, I always think that our musical journey would be different if that album would have been released in 1986 as it was supposed to be released. I don't have any regret in my life. I deal with the consequences of my choices and it is what it is. But that one is an era of my life that I circle back quite often and be like, "OK, was that choice necessary?" Because we had a good team with Johnny Hart, Burn, and Botcher, and Gate, and Dug. Like, you know, we were definitely onto something. And that record proves that. It's fast, it's furious. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened next if the album would have been released in 1986 and if we have stick together a few more years. Nothing against Cactus Pete, I really love the guy and I think his vocals are amazing. He was our sound man when Botcher was in the band. So I think he would have ended up being in the band regardless. But sometimes when I think about "Forgotten Skeleton, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if it would have been released in 1986.

After that release of "Forgotten Skeleton" you tried to resurrect Aggression under the name Aggression A.D. I remember you told me that there was some legal issues with the other bands called Aggression.
At that time we didn't know what to do because there was other bands with the name. I think Johnny and myself owned the right to the name at that point or after. And also some of the songs on that album were kind of like still under a 20 year contract with "The Full Treatment". So just to make it to be safe, we did release it as Aggression A.D.

During that reunion you also sang for the first time in the band.
We had Botcher for a while. And then he left. So I sang at a couple of shows in 2006, I think, in Quebec City and Montreal. And yeah, during some of the shows Cradle to Grave, opened for Aggression. So we were doing double duty. But yeah, it was a fun time. We tried to make it work, but the distance between me and the rrst of the original guys is almost 4500 kilometers. So it didn't work out. And then I continued working with with Cradle to Grave at that time. It's hard enough to have one band when you try to run another one and it is far away.

Did you try to get Gate back in the band during that reunion?
Yeah, I think the guys met with him and and they tried to practice with him and he couldn't do it. So they advised me that he couldn't play. He was not well mentally and physically. But I never met him at that time. One of our friends, Jeremy, came in and did the show with us. I think Gate took it really hard.

It's always sad to me when such talented guys waste their talent and lives because of drugs and something like this. I feel so sorry for guys like Gate, Paul Baloff, who lost their lives to this rock and roll style of living.
Yeah, 100% agree with that.