Thunder from Heaven

I can’t believe it. Cam called to set up an interview. He said on my voice mail that there are new tracks up on a website called Reverb Nation. I checked it out. It sounds glorious to me. But then again, I like grunge and metal and emotional intensity. I miss the nineties. I like freaky stuff. Thunder helped me through a black spell of depression last summer. At one show Cameron, the lead singer, mentioned watching a murder in NYC as the inspiration for a song.
“Skinarexic Psycho” reminds me how any of us male or female, might just disappear if we can’t find a way to feed ourselves, physically and spiritually.
One time I told Cam he was looking great. He looked back at me and said, “Well, at least I’m eating.”
I became a regular follower last June when Thunder had the opening slot of Cinespace’s Camerata with headliners The Devil’s Orchestra.
Cameron is a genuinely nice individual, despite his model good looks. It might take you off-guard. How nice and sincere.
I bet he’d really like my favorite black metal band Naglfar.
Since Nick Maybury added his brilliant touch last autumn with a bow and slide, the band has expanded in a wonderful direction, with an orchestrated richness in the soundscape.
Brett mans the saxophone. Eric has the bass.
Stella, the extraordinary, beats the life out of the drums, and Cameron spills his soul on the stage with lyrics that are enigmatic, cryptic, and immediately gripping. Brian McGuire of the “In Search of a Midnight Kiss” fame, sometimes shows up for general stature-related, comedic, and gong-related purposes.
The marketability of suffering is a good question, when a lot of music is about celebration. Thunder will be a part of the McGuire Music Oligopoly.
I’m voting for catharsis and exorcism, and that means Thunder. Thunder at the Roxy, or the Viper, or Cranes and Cinespace.
We can’t wait for Stella to get back from tour.
I love the rawness and exposure and frenetic intensity as it unfolds in a Thunder from Heaven show. Cam has been know to take sweet ballads from the eighties and add a whole new level of intensity. At the last show I caught at January 9th at Cranes, Cam played a new song about a mountain and a rainbow. To me it meant the mountain of the suffering mystic who retreats from the world, and then dreams of love, rainbows and things. It set me to panic, it was so real. Nobody is going to believe this but Thunder from Heaven is one of my all time favorite live acts, finishing in queue with the Melvins and Radiohead. But I never saw Naglfar or The Horrors live. I wish Rodney Bingenheimer knew about them. I’’ll keep trying to find Cam so I can tell you more about his world. Check out the show early March at Cinespace.
Part Two:
Speaking with Cam on the 30th of January was the culmination of a long passion for his art and poetry.
The most valuable crystal of poetry he spoke regarding the songwriting process was a rhapsody on the subject matter . . .
It is not love of the particular, or a story of a broken heart . . . it is a “Love song with the earth . . .
Living with the fear of death”
A background in the underground hardcore scene of Virgina influenced the chemical makeup of Thunder from Heaven, a band which hovers on the periphery of acceptable, in the LA musical landscape.
The scene was "highly punk rock . . . i love punk."
Is it retro or now?
Talking to Cam brought me down to earth, on a day of stress and other concerns.
So far I can write nothing regarding the interview because my mind is so clouded by the exaltation Thunder brings me. And because my knowledge of the genre is so scarce.
To contextualize Thunder one would need a better understanding of the history of punk and grunge and metal. All I know is the Melvins and . . .vaguely of Bad Brains . . . and how much I loved the punk at Lucy’s Record shop in Nashville.
I loved Murdered Minority. A friend showed me The Germs and the leadsinger of Legendary Shack Shakers put a rockabilly twist on punk and got a Jello Biafra endorsement as the best living band frontman.
Really, I don’t know a thing about the genre . . . I just know that times I want to leave LA, I worry about leaving Thunder . . .how would I live without Thunder?
Cam says “a blues vibe is good times” and refs John Cash, Black Sabbath, Fugazi, Hatebreed,and I asked him about covers . . .
Like in the fake real world, there is no dignity in cover songs, but it conveys so much reverence for the inspiration of others . . . Pat Benetar . . . and Thunder makes the odd cover new, enchanting, and so sad, I’m sorry, but that cathartic, gut-wrenching element is intrinsic . . . and if it sets your nerves on edge maybe it were better to listen to Edvard Grieg or something . . .
And so if you check out Reverb Nation, you’ll find a nice new blitz of noise.
Band lineup has undergone transition. When Nick shows up the ambience changes . . . the . . .guitar with bow, and the meandering, melodic soundscape underneath the harsh jagged rant of Cam’s soliloquies . . . so interesting . . . and I miss and love Taylor who heads up the scene at Bardot now, but Stella keeps a mean tempo, and it’s all good. Brett’s sax, and I have loved Eric on bass, but everything’s going to be new on March 1st 2009.
Post-"get over yourself LA" show, we don’t know what to expect, except Cam says everything will be new.
Here’s the scene:
Cinespace
Sunday
March 1, 2009
Sorcerer, fast metal rockingness
Thunder from Heaven
Devil’s Orchestra
If it’s not a packed house . . . we will have revenge on you LA. . . bring earplugs if you want to have hearing in old age.