by Niklas Göransson

Stargazing from a spiritual wasteland: KK Warslut of Bestial Warlust and Deströyer 666 looks back on the Melbourne days of predatory psychedelia.

This is an excerpt from the full article, which is twice as long and published in Bardo Methodology #8. The same issue also includes conversations with AKHLYS, LEVIATHAN/LURKER OF CHALICE, BLACK WITCHERY, CULTES DES GHOULES, THUNDERBOLT, BLACKDEATH, MISÞYRMING, NORDVIS/ARMAGEDDA, MORTUUS, DÖDFÖDD/REVERORUM IB MALACHT, and OFERMOD.

 

– I came to Melbourne in 1990 and moved in with Brad and a few of his mates. They had a band called INCEST: Brad played the drums, Damon was on vocals, and… I can’t remember the rest. So, I lived in that house and got to know the INCEST fellas – which doesn’t sound very good, does it? – and joined their little crew. That’s how I met Damon.

KK and Brad grew up together in Whyalla, a small desert town in South Australia. After a string of run-ins with local law enforcement, Brad relocated to Melbourne a few years before KK arrived. Out of the ashes of INCEST rose CORPSE MOLESTATION: KK Warslut on guitar, Brad behind the drums, and Damon Bloodstorm as frontman. While the band worked on material, KK was trying to acclimatise to his new urban surroundings. As part of this pursuit, he had an LSD experience in the Box Hill Gardens in early ’91. Through almost three decades of interviews, KK has repeatedly referred to this as one of the most formative experiences of his life.

– I got back to the house from my fucking ‘bonding with nature and the universe’ trip and just stood there staring at the walls in my room: pictures of Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy and so on. I was like, in third person, ‘What kind of fucking idiot lives here? Right, this has gotta fucken change.’ When I woke up the morning after, I tore down everything and ripped it up. I brought all of my serial killer books – apart from Manson’s writings, I felt there was something more to them – to Kill City, a Melbourne bookshop that only sold murder literature. Yeah, it’s fucking bizarre, isn’t it? So, I got all that shit outta my life. I mean, I was even writing to… hm, what’s that maniac’s name? John Wayne Gacy.

Gacy, also known as ‘the Killer Clown’, was an American serial killer convicted of having raped, tortured, and murdered thirty-three boys and young men. He was executed by way of lethal injection in 1994 at fifty-two years of age.

– Obviously, I found many of these murderers quite repulsive. I wasn’t intrigued so much by the act of murder as by their complete lack of morality and remorse. This was before I fully understood terms like ‘sociopath’ and ‘psychopath’. And when I started looking into it deeper, I noticed that many of them actually turned around and fucking begged for forgiveness or pleaded insanity. They were basically, to paraphrase Charlie, naughty mommy’s boys acting out sick sexual fetishes on innocent, defenceless women… or men, in the case of Gacy. This adulation for serial killers is rather indicative of young Western men without any real role models, so we seek out these kinds of anti-heroes. Maybe something like that? I don’t know.

KK’s fascination with the so-called ‘Manson Family’ was what made him try LSD in the first place. During that same trip, KK experienced what he describes as a kind of predatory awareness – mental lycanthropy – of which there is a detailed account in Bardo Methodology #1. Following this discovery, he kept exploring both lycanthropic and psychedelic states.

– I remember sitting in the backyard – in the fucking lotus position, tripping off my nut – when I looked down at my belly. ‘What the fuck is this shit? How did it get here?’ I was fucking twenty, you know, singing about wolves and war and so forth but had all this flab hanging off me. ‘Right, that’s it. I’ve gotta be fit, lean, and alert like a fucking wolf.’ So, I took up swimming and similar endurance training. That’s also when I stopped doing speed and so on; I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t need this shit.’ Besides weed and acid, I didn’t do drugs for all of the 90s. So, oddly enough, LSD got me off drugs and into fitness.

Later that same year, CORPSE MOLESTATION recruited guitarist Joe Skullfucker and bass player Chris Corpsemolester and recorded an official rehearsal tape. Shortly thereafter, they booked studio time for the creation of their first demo. Unfortunately, Brad was nowhere to be found; as it turned out, he’d been up boozing and speeding all night. Coincidentally, the same thing happened a decade later when VOMITOR recorded “Bleeding the Priest”.

– Yeah, I suppose it’s just nerves and anxiety that he tries to quell and ends up being his own worst enemy. It was a real shame because Brad and I were close mates from the age of thirteen or something. We spent a good eight years of our youth together. I basically moved to Melbourne to play metal with Brad. It was heartbreaking, mate. Big disappointment. I mean, if you can’t even get through the first hurdle… that demo had three fucking songs; it’s not as if we were recording “The Dark Side of the Moon”.

CORPSE MOLESTATION went on to find a replacement drummer and recorded “Descension of a Darker Deity”. The demo tape was received very well – it sold around two thousand copies – and soon led to a collaboration with local record company Modern Invasion. Their new label got them a slot supporting MORBID ANGEL; so, CORPSE MOLESTATION’s debut concert took place in August 1992. A delegation of Whyalla headbangers travelled the one thousand kilometres (621 mi) to Melbourne. Despite being a small town revolving around the local steelworks, KK’s birthplace had a large contingent of tight-knit metalheads.

– About fourteen of the cunts came over – all of whom stayed at my place, crammed into a two-bedroom house. In my nervousness, I’d left my guitar at home and had to go back. Now, I had a big pile of “Descension…” tapes on the coffee table for no other reason than I wanted to take a photo of ‘em and thought they looked cool all stacked together. Like a monolith of black and red demos, you know? When I got home, I noticed that some of them were missing. The cuboid was no longer a cuboid; a big chunk had been taken out. Everyone was at the venue, so I went through their bags and took my fucking demos back. My mate Ed had taken two of ‘em, the cunt! But I realised that was how the Whyalla boys showed their appreciation. Like, ‘This sounds good. It looks good. I want a copy, but I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna give you five bucks for it.’

A few months later, Rob Death Dealer – one of Whyalla’s finest – relocated to Melbourne and moved in with KK. In the VOMITOR interview in Bardo Methodology #3, Rob spoke of how they would embark on city-wide vinyl pilgrimages every month after the dole cheque arrived. But besides record collecting, drinking, and playing with VULGAR, Death Dealer doesn’t seem to have done very much.

– Rob would usually rise around 6 pm. I’d go in there and wake him up; he’d reach over and press play on his tape deck, pre-loaded with the BLASPHEMY demo, and then grab a two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola. “Blood upon the Altar” and warm Coke – that’s how Rob Death Dealer started his day. And the only reason he got up in the first place was to watch Home and Away. He had to submit his dole form every two weeks, so he’d stay up all night, listening to records and whatnot, and get there super-early. And then he was back to his usual routine for another fortnight.

Death Dealer also spoke about the dilapidated, leaking house they lived in. Whenever it rained, the wooden floors would get completely soaked. The constant moisture led to black mould growing on the walls; Rob reckons that’s what afflicted him with the nasty cough he had for several years after.

– Yeah, that place was pretty bad. The floorboards were rotten. I don’t know if Rob told you, but our roommate Packer broke his leg and had it set in a cast; they put in one of those big fucking bars connecting his thighs. So, he had to hop everywhere. Wherever you were in the house, you’d hear him. Hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. Then, every now and then…

KK makes a crunching sound and then proceeds to scream.

– We’d all immediately come running, just to laugh at him. He’d gone straight through the kitchen floor, fallen over, and lay there with his good leg lodged in the hole and the broken one sticking up in the air. Brilliant. Just brilliant. We’d have to heave him out of there. Then the landlord would repair the floor, but with this cheap chipboard stuff: just a little bit of moisture and it was fucked again. Yeah, good times.

Was Packer the guy who kept poor company?

– Oh my god, yes. Packer attracted bad news, man. He actively sought it out. He’d bring this fucking fella around – built like a brick house, tattoos all over. One day, Rob and I were watching TV… we had a tiny 1950s black-and-white television; it was about fifteen fucking centimetres and made this incessant high-pitched squealing noise. You’d sit there trying to watch the screen with your ears constantly pierced by this Chinese sound torture. Anyway, Australia’s Most Wanted was on and then, suddenly… ‘Melbourne man Luke X is wanted for murder.’ ‘What the fuck? That’s fucking Luke! He was here just the other day.’ And he still kept coming around, despite being on the run. His bikie mates had fucking ditched him: they gave him a Japanese motorcycle and a thousand bucks and said, ‘Never come back.’

Eventually, the fugitive decided to turn himself in – but only after getting hammered one last time. Packer was kind enough to facilitate a drinking session.

– A few drinks in, this fella starts going on about, ‘I wanna fucking destroy some cunt before I go inside. I need to fuck someone up.’ I’d already had several run-ins with him, like ‘Look mate, you’re bringing heat to the house – I can’t have this.’ So, we’d clashed previously, and when he began talking about taking someone out, I thought, ‘Yep, that’s gonna be me.’ So I made my excuses, left, and didn’t get home until around 2 am. My room was next to the back door, and at five or six in the morning… bang, bang, bang!

Upon opening, KK found himself with a gun pointed at his head. On the other end of the barrel stood a police detective, demanding to know Luke’s whereabouts.

– ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. He’s gone, mate. He turned himself in.’ I had a replica gun in case I got robbed or something; thank fuck I didn’t bring it to the door. It was a proper good replica too – enough to get me fucking shot. Then we had to attend court over the whole affair because Packer had to appear. I came along with him, and we were joking around about something out the front. In hindsight, probably the wrong place to be having a laugh. Afterwards, we’d gone to get a bite to eat when these lads came up to us. ‘You’re fucking laughing? My mate’s been shot. I’ll fucking kill yas both! You’re dead, man.’ Great. I’m like, ‘Packer, why the fuck do you keep bringing these maniacs around?’

There were more of them?

– Yeah. Another prison bird he invited over returned later with an escapee from a mental hospital – a fucking escapee from a mental hospital! – and tried to rob me. They came with screwdrivers and knives… kicked my fucking door in and smashed the windows, attempting to get to me. And then the cops showed up. That was the final straw; I grabbed my guitar and my LPs and was outta there. Packer had gone up north at that point, so I took his amplifier as compensation and left a note saying, ‘You’re a fucking wanker. This is what you gotta deal with now.’ The front door was off its hinges, mind you. Then, over the next few years, I’d keep running into that detective who’d pointed the pistol at my head. I’d see him when walking around the city, buying records or whatever. He’d come out of a bar or a café: ‘G’day Keith. How’s the band going mate? CORPSE MOLESTATION, wasn’t it? Doing alright?’ Like, he was letting me know he knew who I was and what I got up to. Very disconcerting.

 

With maturing age came the realisation that CORPSE MOLESTATION was not all that representative of a name. So in late ’93, the band brought in drummer Marcus Hellcunt and rebranded themselves BESTIAL WARLUST. Their first gig under the new name was in support of CARCASS. A few months later, Modern Invasion released BESTIAL WARLUST’s debut album, “Vengeance War ‘till Death”. In separate interviews, both Rob Death Dealer and Damon Bloodstorm have stated that the emergence of BESTIAL WARLUST changed the Melbourne scene – that it turned large parts of it against them.

– Oh, it was very obvious. Rob and I used to go to this local alternative bar; they had everything from punk to rock ‘n’ roll to folk music. I’d head over there on a Tuesday night to see a folk duo, and then on Friday we’d catch a punk band. They got all types of hippies, punks – a whole gamut of subcultures. But after BESTIAL WARLUST, there was a noticeable shift. Like, we were getting the cold shoulder from guys we previously knew; they’d turn their backs on us. So yeah, it was highly evident. Well, that was alright by me. You know, I think a part of me even thrived on it. ‘This is how it should be.’ I didn’t start a fucking underground death metal band to be accepted by the mainstream. And certainly not by those kinds of people, or just normies or anybody.

Damon Bloodstorm suggested that Death Dealer’s proclivity for stirring up trouble when drunk was in part driving this development. Rob himself said pretty much the same thing.

– Eh, that must be Damon’s selective memory. I dunno what Rob told you, but I’m sure that if he was here now and I jogged his memory… see, I distinctly remember Damon starting most of the fucking fights, and usually against large groups of people. Whether it was a bunch of Mediterranean MANOWAR types, glam rockers, or just people on the street: it was Damon starting the fights and me and Rob having to come in and square up to ‘em. And there’d invariably be three, four, five times as many of them as us, so we never fared too well – haha! At least it gave us some stories to tell.

In fairness to Damon and his memory, Mark Howitzer – another former Whyalla resident – said that history later repeated itself when Rob moved to Brisbane. In the GOSPEL OF THE HORNS feature in Bardo Methodology #7, Howitzer recalled suddenly finding himself feuding with people who once were his friends.

– Sure, Rob was causing a bit of a ruckus as well. I mean, we all were at some point. We didn’t so much go looking for trouble as trouble had a way of finding us. I’d even get in fights if people were shitting on a band I liked – absolutely ridiculous. I remember someone slagging my NUCLEAR DEATH shirt; at first, I said, ‘Okay, fair enough. I don’t care if you like ‘em.’ And then he goes, ‘No, I think they fucking suck, mate. They’re really shit.’ ‘Alright, I’ve heard enough. I’ll wait outside, you fucking wanker.’ And then I’m on the street, fighting about a band. That one didn’t go too well either, cuz I was a bit drunk. So I thought, ‘Right, next time I see this motherfucker…’

A few weeks later, the two met at the Cathouse – a big glam rock club that would get two thousand people per night in its heyday.

– I spotted the fucker and said to Rob, ‘That’s it. I’m gonna stop drinking for half an hour.’ Then I went over there and lined him up over the fucking pool table: bang! He fell down, and I’m pouncing on him: bang, bang, bang! And then Rob comes outta nowhere and starts hitting him as well. So, we had this jackhammer-like effect of multiple fists; the poor cunt must’ve copped like thirty punches in fifteen seconds. That shit happened a lot back then, but it wasn’t as if anyone got seriously hurt – just some bloody mouths and broken noses here and there.

And broken vehicles, as I recall.

– Hah, yeah, I went to check out a Ford XC Falcon up for sale: a car that I had no license for, mind you, nor any clue how to drive. It had mag wheels, if you know what those are? Big steel wheels. I thought, ‘Fuck, this is awesome.’ The woman selling it went, ‘Would you like to go for a test drive?’ I said, ‘Sure!’ and jumped into the passenger seat. She looked a bit confused, ‘Well, don’t you wanna drive it?’ ‘No, no – that’s fine. I’ll just see how you go.’ I watched her, hoping to get an idea about how she operated it. It looked easy enough, I thought. So yeah, I bought it and drove back home. The first thing Rob and I did was grab our boombox and chuck it in the back; then we went driving all around the city, drinking beer with metal blasting through the open windows. No license, no registration, no insurance, and no driving experience to speak of. Fuckin’ nothing.

Two days after purchasing the vehicle, KK came upon some gravely upsetting news.

– This was in my acid days, so I’d told my missus, ‘If you wanna fuck someone, go ahead – I don’t care.’ Well, it turns out that I did care, haha! I was still on a buzz from the new car: king of the fucken road, you know? And then I found out about this. I told Rob, ‘Right, let’s get him!’ The cunt worked and lived at that local bar we often went to, so I grabbed a big fuckin’ battering fucking stick, drove down there, and waited across the road in my new car. With the mag wheels, of course.

Despite monitoring the establishment for a good while, the duo had yet to set eyes on their target. Finally, KK grew impatient and sent Rob Death Dealer on a reconnaissance mission.

– Rob came back out and said, ‘I couldn’t find him’, so there wasn’t much point in sticking around. I’d parked on one side of a busy street and decided to do a U-turn – and to do it in style. You know, just to let the fucker know I’d been by looking for him, haha! I did a full fuckin’ spinning U-ie… but obviously not full enough, as I rammed right into the rear panel of a brand-new Commodore on the other side of the road. Fuck! Some businessman-type fella sat in the driver’s seat. And his little plastic car just crumpled like a fucken biscuit, mate. Crumpled.

What about yours?

– My ride, a 70s car made of fuckin’ steel, got a little dent next to the headlight: a bit crinkled, and that was it. Luckily, I was able to tell from the angle – and my fucking two days of driving experience – that he probably couldn’t see my number plate. So, I gave him a hand signal, like, ‘I’ll be with ya in a moment, mate. Hang tight; I just gotta get into a safe position.’ There was a laneway right to my left, so I reversed a bit and then…

KK imitates the sound of screeching wheels.

– I sped down the laneway, which was barely fucking wide enough for the car. Rob clung to the dashboard: ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck! You’re gonna kill us!’ At the other end of the laneway was a street, and I just came flying through it. Much to my shame, I almost ran a kid over. I missed him by fucking… I don’t know, half a metre? He would’ve been fucking squished. This laneway continued for many blocks, but with the same width; I screamed through ‘em the entire way home. And somehow, I got away with it.

 

This was an excerpt from the full article, which is twice as long and published in Bardo Methodology #8. The same issue also includes conversations with AKHLYS, LEVIATHAN/LURKER OF CHALICE, BLACK WITCHERY, CULTES DES GHOULES, THUNDERBOLT, BLACKDEATH, MISÞYRMING, NORDVIS/ARMAGEDDA, MORTUUS, DÖDFÖDD/REVERORUM IB MALACHT, and OFERMOD.