Toronto’s favorite thrash party monsters Fatality are currently on a two-month North American “Towards Disastour” in support of their latest album, Psychonaut. Vocalist Spencer Le Von checks in, telling us all about reuniting with California’s Zombie Holocaust…
After our gig in Pensacola, we had a good long drive ahead of us. We were to drive into Houston and pick up our friends in ZH [Zombie Holocaust] the following morning around 11AM because they were to join us in our tour van and play gigs with us for the next 3 weeks (that’s right, 10 dudes in an 11 seat van). They were taking a two day bus ride from sunny California to Texas and that meant in order to meet them at the Greyhound station, we would have to drive all night long to prepare for our gig at the White Swan. We fueled up with some pancakes and hit the Florida highway at around 4AM.
Night drives are absolutely horrendous and I hate them like I hate being stabbed in the ass with the butt-end of a goalie stick. First of all, it is very uncomfortable to drive while you are tired but it’s also near impossible to get any rest in the bench seats while the tour van cascades towards its destination in the dead of night. So you are damned either way. We made it into town and illegally parked in a lot next to the Houston Greyhound station and waited in red-eyed anticipation in the mid-afternoon sun for our California rock star buddies to pull into town.
I was relieved when they arrived and looked even worse than we did. They had a dreadful and uncomfortable 48 hours in a bus, all with different sets of stories including almost getting kicked off mid trip with all of their gear on the side of the road. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in 2 years, everyone was dead tired and a little dazed from exhaustion. We went for burritos and blinked at each other in restive stillness for 3 or 4 hours until we were set to play. Despite the mutual fatigue, we both played crushing sets to an enthusiastic crowd of young headbangers. The crowd was so rowdy that a fight even broke out during one of the sets.
After the gig, the ZH boys and us headed to a motel for a snooze. To save money, all 10 of us crammed into the same room and conked right out. Thank goodness we had the next night off and were free to slob the day away and go camping in the outskirts of San Antonio. The spot we ended up at turned out to be where they filmed the Patrick Swayze movie, Parenthood. This ended up being our first big party blowout with ZH and we had an absolute blast. The night was spent making fires, cranking James Brown music and playing Frisbee in a scorpion field and sleeping in tents under a tree. It was the perfect way to get reacquainted with old friends.
I could not be happier with having ZH on the road with us. It is very strange for 10 dudes to be sharing each other’s space while avoiding conflict. I think the reason is that both of our bands function in a world of positivity. No matter how bad things get, we keep each other laughing and energized, and when things are good we are all there for each other to savour it as a family. Every conversation we have is fodder for a sidesplitting joke, or a milk-out-the-nose laugh that will catapult you into a schoolgirl-like titter for miles and miles.
The next day we went for a swim and headed into San Antonio for our gig at a club called the Korova, which was a Stanley Kubrick-themed rock club. Before our set I went for my pre-gig walk and vocal warm up looking quite haggard. I was running out of clean clothes at the time, so I was wearing black Daisy Duke cutoffs and a black tank top. My brother Mason remarked that I looked like an Australian goth. I also had a patchy, shaggy tour beard that made me look like a real asshole. After our gig a dude came up to me and said that he thought I was a homeless lunatic because he had seen me walking past the bus station singing to myself. That assumption was completely justified, because at the time I looked like Saddam after they took him out of that hole.
Spencer “I smell worse than I look” LeVon
Check out the Fatality blog by clicking here.
Stay updated with Fatality tour photos on their new Flickr page here.
And check out the Fatality Backseat LevonCast (podcast) for hilarious stories from the road!