The other week Hysteria magazine offered me the opportunity to interview Ben Hutcherson from doom lords Khemmis about the band’s new Doomed Heavy Metal release.
It’s a fantastic EP that features a superb, doomed up cover of Dio’s Rainbow In The Dark as the lead track. Not only does it sound great, but, as Ben revealed in our chat, the solo and other parts were actually rearranged and re-written, while staying faithful to the original.
The EP also contains two deleted tracks and three live recordings. These last three reveal something about Khemmis that, while not immediately apparent, is nonetheless quite remarkable. The live tracks are faithful renditions of what the band does on stage, with no overdubbing or post-recording ‘extra’ love. Listen to those tracks with this fact in mind and you’ll hopefully gain a new level of appreciation for this band.
As mentioned, Doomed Heavy Metal is an excellent release. It’s out now on Nuclear Blast and you can see our original chat here.
We had a little bit of time left over during our interview and so Ben was kind enough to answer a question about what he’s been listening to during lock-down in his home in Denver, Colorado.
So, in no particular order, here’s Ben’s top five lockdown playlist.
#1 John Prine S/T (1971)
I’ve been listening to a lot of John Prine, especially the John Prine self-titled record. His music means so much to me. Whenever I listen to John Prine, I think about so many good memories of my father and memories of growing up in the south. That self-titled record is just one of those amazing moments in music history, where someone was able to create a collection of songs without any sort of critical pressure, without any expectation beyond what they were doing.
Don’t get me wrong, John Prine has so many good songs and so many good albums. His final album is amazing. However, this album is a collection of stories that I find to be so compelling and to be so moving. There’s not a lot of music that can make me cry but John Prine’s music is one of those things. It can make me cry sad tears, it can make me cry happy tears.
It’s very sad that he passed as a result of this illness [complications resulting from Corona virus]. I never got to see him alive so I’m a little bit heartbroken about that. But I have his records to keep me going.
#2 Neurosis A Sun That Never Sets (2001)
I can honestly name pretty much any Neurosis record as being one of my favourites of all time, and day in and day out, that ranking will change. But, A Sun That Never Sets holds a special place in my heart. It was the first Neurosis album I ever really listened to that I got.
I heard them when I was 16 or 17 and it didn’t land. I was super into the most extreme, underground stuff. And I thought, ‘this band doesn’t even have blast beats, what’s going on’? When I was about 23 or 24, a guy that wound up being one of my best friends, Eddie Riley, happened to play that album for me. He had it on CD in his pickup truck, he put it on and it just hit me at the right place at the right time. I fell in love with that band.
Years later, Eddie and I would travel to San Francisco to see Neurosis for their 25th or 30th anniversary, I don’t remember which one. And that album is just an amazing piece of art to me.
They’re an amazing band and I understand that, like anything, they’re not really for everybody. But I think for the people for whom Neurosis hits that spot, there’s nothing quite like it.
#3 Wake Devouring Ruin (2020)
I’ve been listening to the new album from the band Wake. They are an absolutely fantastic, sort of blackened death grind band out of Calgary, Canada. I had the privilege of playing a guitar solo on one of the songs on the record. But that’s not why I’m listening to it, I’m not just listening to myself over and over.
This is a band that I think has done something really impressive by taking really extreme music and melding all of these influences and creating something that is catchy and artistic, but is still, in every sense, brutal. I just I can’t say enough good stuff about this band. Their new album is called Devouring Ruin. I’ve listened to that quite a bit. I just got my vinyl copy in the mail two days ago and have been spending it pretty relentlessly.
#4 Black Sabbath Dehumanizer (1992)
You know, I love Dio, but this might surprise people: I think Black Sabbath’s Dehumanizer is the best Dio album with Sabbath. I understand that that might be a bit dangerous to say. I slept on that album for years, it was only about a year and a half ago, that I finally sat down and listened to it, top to bottom, all the way through. And it is *amazing*.
Dio’s vocal performance on it is so good. It doesn’t sound like his voice on the other Sabbath albums that he did. It’s a little raspier, at times it’s almost like he hit some notes, almost like Chris Cornell, which is not a comparison I would ever expect to make when thinking about Dio. There’s just awesome doom riff after awesome doom riff.
It’s an angrier sounding album. And, it doesn’t have that sort of ‘evil’ sound, or however you want to phrase it, that we might associate with Dio-era Sabbath. Everybody just sounds a little bit pissed off.
I think that’s really, really cool, and I think it comes through in almost every aspect of the compositions.
#5 Metallica Master Of Puppets (1986)
And then there’s Master Of Puppets because, no matter what you might think of Metallica post-1990, their output in the ’80s not only changed metal then, but continues to change metal. They remain one of the most important influential bands of any style in the history of the human race.