Why wait for the weekend when you can start your Halloween festivities on "hump day"? Marshall "Fucking" Beck, one of the Valley's most prolific and controversial heavy metal musicians, is getting a head start on the season with a Halloween bash at Martini Ranch Wednesday night. Beck is scheduled to perform with Reign of Vengeance, featuring special guest Jon Rice (of Glendale's Job For a Cowboy) sitting in on drums.
The show will be hosted by goth pin-up babe Metal Sanaz and will double as a book release party for Beck's collection of short stories, And Let There Be Darkness. Kult of Thorn, Prime 8 Picnic and Hell Defined are also scheduled to perform, and a haunted house theme and "sluttiest costume" contest promise to keep the night entertaining.
Read on for a Q&A with the always outspoken Beck about the Halloween show, his new book and his nefarious plot to bed Metal Sanaz.
Q&A with Marshall "Fucking" Beck
Up on the Sun: Looks like it's going to be a pretty busy night. What are you most looking forward to: the RoV gig, your book release, or the "sluttiest costume" contest?
Beck: I'm looking forward to performing with Reign of Vengeance in a club that is typically predominantly filled with metrosexuals. I cannot wait to watch their jaws drop and bodies fly as we unleash our brutality upon their unsuspecting, materialistic, pathetically weak culture. I am also looking forward to having my book in print and distributed to the public. I can't imagine anybody being able to read it without it causing them some kind of disturbance... Hell, I almost threw up myself writing one particular scene while visualizing in detail what I was allowing to play out in my head. You know if it almost made me throw up its got to be bad, because I truly am one of, if not the, most brutal and bad-ass motherfuckers I know.
Sluttiest costume contest is no big deal, I see a lot of pussy everyday anyways...
How did you manage to get Jon Rice on board for this gig?
The Job For A Cowboy dudes used to play with my other band, Rebirth, back in the day, before they became one of the most ragingly famous metal bands on the planet. I simply asked Jon if he could fill in for our drummer Samus [Paulicelli], who is currently on tour drumming for The Black Dahlia Murder, and he agreed. It was that simple...
Who exactly is Metal Sanaz and how did she end up hosting this shindig?
Metal Sanaz is a MySpace-vixen-turned-metal-host and VJ... She has the biggest online following of any metal host/VJ in the world. I don't like standing on stage announcing the bands and all that, so I simply just sent her a text and asked her if she would do that for me. She said "yes" and that's that... I also figured it would probably be a good opportunity to get some shots of Jager in her and drag her back to my place after the show.
Why did you decide to write a book? Can you tell us about some of the problems you encountered getting it published?
I wrote a book between Rebirth's and Reign of Vengeance's downtime. I have crazy - and what I consider very entertaining - dreams. Almost every night that play out like perfectly plotted movies. I figured if I was entertained so much by these dreams that I might as well write them down in story format and share them with the world.
The biggest problem I ran into while getting this book published was Christians. I had my own Christian father pay off my original publisher to stop working on my book; IUNIVERSE refused to print it because of its "offensive and socially devoid" content; LuLu told me they would format it but not print it or advertise with it for the same reason; D&L Printing refused to print it after printing out a test copy and having their Mormon owner look it over; and finally, A Book's Mind Publishing picked it up but even they had to go through four different printing companies until they found someone willing to put it into print. Apparently, 90 percent of the printing presses in this country are run by Christian companies, and unless you agree with what they have to say, you aren't going to be put into print. It all just goes back to what I always say: I like Jesus. It's just "Christians" that I hate.
You've got a new RoV album coming out early next year. What is the status of your other bands/projects?
Rebirth is actually currently recording and has Kevin Talley (Daath and many other huge international bands) on drums, Ralph Santolla (Obituary, Death, Deicide) on guitars, Tommy Gibbons (RoV) on guitars, and we have been talking to one of the ex-Death bassists about joining full time... Being October though, it is definitely the month for Reign of Vengeance. As our distributor Brain Damage Films puts it, we are the "Horror Death Metal Band," so this month, Tommy and I have been focusing on RoV for obvious reasons.
I might start doing the vocals for a local band I used to perform with back in the day as well... We will see how that all turns out.
Do you have any other upcoming gigs after this Halloween show?
Not currently, but definitely... My main focus at this point is to make this Halloween party as bad-ass as possible with the low budget I have been given. I've been running around like a decapitated chicken all month putting it together. Once this event is done many other things will be planned.
To the regret of much of the other asshole, lazy-brained, pathetic, local metal bands here in Arizona, Marshall "Fucking" Beck and his bands will not be going away anytime soon, especially now that I'm the only musical artist signed with the largest distributor of horror films world wide, Brain Damage Films... I win, they fucking lose... Thanks for the interview.
Reign of Vengeance is scheduled to perform on Wednesday, October 27, at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale.
