Morbid Ecstasy, Secluded Violence, Raid, Astaroth & Abaddon.....and my gravestone thief newspaper articles

So my musical "career" began with my first "real" band, MORBID ECSTASY. I know the other guys wanted to purposely misspell the word Ecstasy as Extacy - I never cared to do that. We never had a logo, and if we did, I lost it. We formed in the summer of 1988 through some flyers I posted at the House Of Guitars seeking band members. I had just bought my BC Rich Warlock and a Crate G600 Full Stack. I was totally immersed in thrash, speed, death, power and black metal. The guitar players I was into at that time were Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman, Mike Torreo, Larry Lalonde, Quorthon, Mike (Destruction), Michael Denner, Hank Shermann and Chuck Schuldiner, and I learned tons of songs by bands and then finally started writing my own songs. The first two songs I wrote ended up becoming the 2 Morbid Ecstasy songs on this rehearsal: "Golgotha" and "Sludge". These songs were recorded on a boom box in our vocalist's basement where we rehearsed. The line-up was Me (Guitar, lyrics), Mike Proctor (vocals), Rich Rago (drums) and Dan Santillo (bass). We rehearsed for a few months when suddenly Dan quit the band to join another superior local thrash band Explicit Death. I was pissed. The band ended up breaking up.
MORBID ECSTASY - Rehearsal summer 1988
1.  Golgotha
2.  Golgotha (cuts in)
3.  Sludge
DOWNLOAD HERE 


So by late 1988/early 1989 I joined a band from Ontario, NY called SECLUDED VIOLENCE. They had just recorded a demo a few months earlier but they were losing their rhythm guitarist and needed a replacement. After hearing their 1988 demo I was VERY impressed with their Sacrifice-inspired speed and sound. I tried out and joined them. I learned all the demo tracks and rehearsed with them for a few months. But they ended up splitting up in early 1989 and that was the end of that.
SECLUDED VIOLENCE - 1988 demo   (I do not play on the demo)

1.	Biogenesis
2.	Death and Numbers
3.	Black Dawn
4.	Curse
5.	The Last Generation
6.	Psychokinetic
7.	Circle of 9
8.	Secluded Violence

DOWNLOAD HERE

By mid-1989 I had met and befriended a band called RAID. Their first demo'89 was decent thrash and Todd Krasz (vocals/guitar) was a big fan of Voivod and Sacrifice, just as I was. I joined the band and me and Todd co-wrote a killer new song that I have a rehearsal track recording of. I cannot remember what the name of the song was. But in late 1989 I met another guitarist who was into harsher thrash than the direction I felt Raid was going to go in, so I ended up quitting Raid and that pissed off Todd. I've heard a rumor that the song "Two Faced" on their second demo'91 is about me.

RAID - 1989 demo#1  (I'm not on this demo)

1.	Phobia of the Mind
2.	Morbid Assaults
3.	Institution (instrumental)
4.	Death Becomes Life

DOWNLOAD HERE

RAID - Rehearsal track 1989  (w/me on guitar, Todd guitar/vox, Aaron on bass, Chris on drums)
1. Unknown title
DOWNLOAD HERE

Astaroth 1991 L to R:  Mikael (caressing the angels breast), Jason "Zombie" Grover, Kevin "Evil" Wilson (caressing the angels pussy), Jason "Armageddon" Snell

The band I left Raid for was ASTAROTH. It was co-founded by me, Kevin (guitar), Jason Snell (bass/vocals) and Jason Grover (drums). We were together for 3 years yet only churned out a rehearsal and played one live show - and I left the band a month or two later to form Buried Beneath.
But Astaroth was meant to be dark death metal, twisted and evil. Did we accomplish that? Not exactly. Kevin worshipped Kreator and it showed in his riffing. I was into my thrash and death and speed and black metal as always. We wrote stuff, we just never recorded anything in a studio. I drew the logo above and you can see it's similar in style to the Buried Beneath logo I'd design later on. The seal inside the logo is the seal of Astaroth. We painted it onto black paper in glow in the dark paint for our one live show. Also during my time in Astaroth was also the time when I was arrested for stealing gravestones from Mt Hope Cemetery (in October 1990 - see articles below). And a year later was my trial and then I had community service (in the Cemetery). So there was a lot of hindrances during that time. What I do have from Astaroth is 2 short rehearsals from late 1991 and a few live tracks from our only live show 2-14-92, we billed it as the "Valentine's Day Massacre with ASTAROTH" since it was Feb. 14th: Valentine's day. The rehearsal tracks and the 3 live tracks are all in one folder (below). I ended up leaving the band after the one live performance. They continued on without me releasing a demo under the name Astaroth, then they changed their name to Adar and released another demo before vanishing.

ASTAROTH - Rehearsal tracks Oct./Dec. 1991
1.  Unholy Playground (Oct.91)
2.  Unholy Playground (Dec.91)
3.  Book Of The Black Earth (Dec.91)
ASTAROTH - live 2-14-92 Rochester, NY @Bosco's
4.  Abdominal Destruction
5.  Manifestation Of The Unholy Messiah  (I did vocals on this one song)
6.  Offering Of Sufferage
All in one folder: DOWNLOAD HERE


And I recently came across something really old.
Before Morbid Ecstasy, in 1987, I did actually have a band, sort of. But it was more talk than actually jamming. Me and drummer Gary Sauer did jam sometimes and this one instrumental track is an old rehearsal from when I still had my Cort Flying V and a shitty little Amp the size of a few tissue boxes. The drum set Gary is pounding on is the set he'd later sell me that I used on the debut Night Conquers Day CD and the Into The Sunless Meridian demos and CD. I don't have it anymore. Anyways, the band was supposed to be called ABADDON. I found an old logo I made with the band name Rotting Corpse, and I found one for Abaddon and I found a picture of me with my guitar and the Abaddon logo taped to the wall, so I must've settled upon Abaddon as being a cooler name. Although the Rotting Corpse logo I designed is fucking cool too. My friend in school Dave Clarke was gonna be our vocalist, but he had no PA. We just talked about having a band but never got any further than me and Gary screwing around and discussing which cover-songs to learn (I did learn a bunch of songs). Even though this little rehearsal track sucks, it's my first song and it's simple thrash riffing. WTF, I was 16. The song is called "Tutevillus' Diary". I meant to write lyrics and include vocals, but it never got that far obviously.
ABADDON - Shitty rehearsal track 1987
1. Tutevillus' Diary
DOWNLOAD HERE

Mikael, aged 16, 1987

One more thing that I found and had forgotten all about. Around 1989 I was in a joke band called GENITAL ASPHYXIATION. We played "Blow Job Thrash Core" LOL. I wrote thrash riffs, and Jim the drummer was from a local hardcore band called Rot Gut. The vocalist was Dan the Slam. All the songs were about beer or fucking, plus we did some S.O.D.-covers. We only rehearsed a bunch of times and played at one party put on by the Rochester Slay Team (they were a horde of metalheads that listened to my radio shows, came out to all the metal concerts, and had parties at houses or in parks). Here's the flyer for that party/show.

OK, there is the first part of my musical history. I'll continue into the 1990's and Buried Beneath with my next post. That's when things got interesting.

M I K A E L


I am a convicted gravestone thief. Below are the newspaper articles from when I was arrested in October 1990 and from when I went to trial a year later. Click on them and read about my "satanic literature" lol. I was quite infamous around here back then. Everyone knew who I was - the crazy guy who took gravestones from Mt Hope Cemetery. My sentence ended up being 3 years probation and 3 months of community service at the Cemetery I took the gravestones from. I got to put bodies in the crematorium, rake ashes and put bone chips into the bone grinding machine, dig a few shallow graves and raked a lot of leaves!