Tankcrimes Records has announced the signing of BAT. An unholy union of MUNICIPAL WASTE guitarist Ryan Waste on bass/vocals, former D.R.I. drummer Felix Griffin and VOLTURE guitarist Nick Poulos, the Virginia/Texas punk metal marauders invoke the spirits of VENOM, HELLHAMMER, MOTÖRHEAD and DISCHARGE with their Primitive Age demo EP. Featuring five tracks of filthy, fuck-all, debauchery, Primitive Age is a primal outpouring of molten metal riffs, confrontational “Kill ‘Em All” angst and enough vocal venom to level a nation.
Primitive Age track listing:
1. BAT
2. Total Wreckage
3. Code Rude
4. Rule of the Beast
5. Primitive Age
BAT was forged in fire when Ryan Waste met Griffin in Austin at a MUNICIPAL WASTE gig in 2007. Sharing the same musical tastes and metal/punk backgrounds, the two immediately hit it off. Griffin hadn’t performed with D.R.I. since the late Eighties and itched to play again. “We eventually spoke of doing a project together,” relays Ryan. “Originally I was going to play all the guitars, bass and vocals and it would be a studio thing. We sat on this idea for years and humored it every time I’d pass through Texas. It seemed too exciting to not make this a real live band so I asked Nick from our current heavy metal band VOLTURE if he wanted on board as a permanent guitarist and it was a done deal. I would have my hands full singing and playing bass as it was.”
BAT, which was the original working title before VOLTURE, seemed to suit the style they were going for so it stuck. “Nick and I cooked up a few raw demo songs, I laid down some basic garage band drums and we sent the tracks to Felix,” says Ryan. “With Felix living in Austin and Nick and I in Richmond, Virginia, it had to be arranged like that to start. Over this last summer Felix flew in town for a week and we banged out those songs with live drums and wrote a couple more on the fly. With only a few practices under our belts we recorded all the music in one day on reel-to-reel analog tape. It was a challenge to not over analyze and nail down all live takes. It was indeed primitive. We wanted a raw sound to begin with and this turned out to be the ultimate way to achieve it.”
The Primitive Age EP is available as a “pay-what-you-want-including-free” download at the official BAT Bandcamp page. Tankcrimes is also offering a “Primitive Pack” preorder bundle which includes a double sided T-shirt, embroidered patch, die-cut sticker and cassette tape all for a thrifty $20 plus shipping.