TECHNICAL MUSIC REVIEW
After overcoming a pretty big setback last year, Rochester brutal death titans Gutted Alive are full steam ahead towards dropping one of the area’s nastiest albums. Headed to the studio today, guitarist Jason Acquilano was kind enough to let me inquire about what the future holds for the Gutted camp. Check it out!
Welp, let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into metal?First metal album I ever owned was Cannibal Corpse’s Tomb of the Mutilated. I was like 13. My mom found it and gave me a talking about how disgusting it was! She tossed it. I fished it back out and hid it. Ha ha ha!!! Truth be told I was more into NIN and Manson at the time. Then pretty much Black Sabbath and Cradle of Filth sparked my interests around 16. It just went deeper from there.
What made you want to pick up an instrument?I was just getting into Nirvana and other 90’s bands around age 12. And I really wanted to just play guitar. Had a buddy teach me power chords on his. Took off from there. Fun fact, the first song I learned on guitar was Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People”. Pretty sad, I know.
And to tie those together, out of everything you could be playing, why brutal death?Because I feel it’s just the rawest shit we can do. I like other genres, but this just feels like the right path. I’m not skilled enough for tech stuff and I’m not sad enough for Doom or Black Metal. Ha! I love the tongue in cheek subject matter. The aggression and brutality behind it all. Like making your own horror film through music.
How’d you all get together?Ryan Michael (vocalist) and I knew each other from pretty much high school. We decided to start a band after we tried previously with members from one of his former bands. Brandon Graves (drummer) was kind of a happy coincidence. I know his brother and ran into him at a Psyopus reunion show at the Bug Jar in 2012. He introduced me to Brandon and we agreed to meet up. Two weeks later we had a song. Made it to the first album actually; “Collector of Souls”. We put out an ad on Craigslist and we found our former bassist Michael Sloma through that. He clicked pretty well and actually ended up contributing a lot to our songs. Our current bassist Adam Shampine replaced him about a year ago due to Mike moving out of state.
When you started this band in 2012, you named it The Gutted. What prompted the name change?There’s already 2 bands out there named Gutted. We felt to get more visibility we needed to change it. We still wanted to use “gutted”. So we added “alive” because that’s a pretty fucked up image.
In my opinion, Consumed by Carnage was a step up from Culmination of Mutilation, and presented us with some of your greatest hits, like “Headless Love Slave“, “Necrophiliac Chainsaw Rapist“, and the title track. How do you plan to top those on the new record?By staying fucking brutal! m/m/
Without giving too much away, what should we expect?Well the whole writing process is different. We pretty much wrote this together at practice. I wrote some riffs on my own here and there. Shit, even Brandon wrote a sick one. Before it was mostly Mike and me. This time everyone had a say as it was happening and molded it as we went. And Adam brings this style on bass that really punches through. I’d say it’s definitely our most experimental one yet. But still fucking brutal as ever.
Assuming you’ve written most of the new album, and are just waiting to record, do you have a favorite track so far?One I really enjoy is titled “Chopped Up For Chum”. It’s just a crazy song. Really fun stuff to play. I think “Purveyor of Filth” will be a pretty big hit too. It’s just real catchy and mean. Oh, by the way, writing is done. We begin recording at Watchmen Studios April 1.
You recently played a few dates with Gutted Christ and Dismal, how’d it go?Everyone in both bands are awesome dudes. Great bands. Check them out. We had fun, wasn’t our best run. But we made the most of it. Met some cool people and bands out there. Always a plus.
I believe you’re planning a few dates with Debrained as well?Yeah, I think it’s still being worked out at the moment. We’ll be figuring it out in the near future. Probably after recording.
Do you have any other plans to get out of NYS this year?Anything can happen, but no plans at the moment.
One of you recently had a pretty close call, but he’s made a pretty impressive recovery in a really impressive amount of time. Would you care to touch on that, quickly?That would be Brandon. He almost lost his leg from an axe. There’s a story there lol! But yeah, he’s made incredible strides and was back behind the kit a few months later. Dude’s a fucking beast!
Aside from a few dates here and there, and a new record on the horizon, is there anything else we should expect from the Gutted camp?We definitely want to ramp up our visibility. So we plan on really pushing this new album as hard as we can. We’re even thinking maybe doing some vinyl this time around. Depends on funds really.
Any other questions, comments, concerns?Nope. Thanks for the opportunity. Keep it fucking brutal! New album 2019! Get GUTTED!
And huge thanks to Jason for taking the time to let me pick his brain! Don’t forget to keep your eyes out for new music from Gutted Alive, and be sure to check ’em when they’re playing out! Especially this bad boy right here! And thank YOU for checking this out! Peace!
Originally published on Technical Music Review. Republished with permission.
