fear of god memberberries dismembered 2023

this is no attempt at "history", this a personal recollection written down from april to june 2023, by dave phillips.

i don‘t remember how tschösi and me first met, but it was 1978 or ‘79. we attended the same school, him a year ahead of me, and a year older - a big deal when you‘re 9. that we met made sense - we were the only two kids amongst our peers in our village into "hard music". this shared passion got us very close for over 15 years.

from attending our first ever live concert together to building own instruments, to sharing new music and the networking that developed from it, playing music ourselves was an unworded drive that didn‘t take long to manifest. when we got into our first shared rehearsal room in a humid bunker under oberägeri’s kindergarten we were 15 and 14. there was a drumkit and an amp, the rest was all tschösi‘s gear. he had more records too.

we formed messiah together, which only "got serious" when tschösi met two other, older guys who could actually play. that was me out. understandably i guess, as my musicianship was nowhere yet, nor had i found "my" instrument yet. it didn‘t bother me much though - i was at all of messiah‘s early gigs, helping out and supporting.

tschösi and me jammed less but kept on - and there was all this new music happening. the worlds of both metal and hardcore-punk had exploded in the years since they first grabbed us, and were doing so more and more - the developments and general tendencies towards replace"faster, louder, meaner" were an exhilarating ride, totally our teenage cups of tea! as the at once quite rigid seeming formats of metal and punk mingled, grew and exploded together.

at the end of 1986 i found myself doing vocals on stage for one song with exxor in kriens near luzern. that‘s when i first met erich. tschösi knew him already. that night we decided to play together. erich had formed "bunch of lies" or b.o.l., a "nonsense"- or "antimusic"-project rather than a band, who had performed maybe once or twice at the time, but with no consistent line-up. nasty, drummer for exxor had been part of b.o.l. on bass - and now tschösi and me were.

there was an issue with skinheads later that night too. i canˋt remember how far or if at all they got into the venue, but i remember an unsettling, tumultuous half an hour.

spring and summer 1987 saw us in a rehearsal room in baar, scored by tschösi, maybe once or twice a month, saturday afternoons only - the evenings were for jazzdance classes. the b.o.l. sound developed into something more maniacal, but we still could hardly play, and we switched instruments often - i recall pounding things frenetically, ultrashort songs and long sessions of screaming and stomach muscles aching. it was silly and good fun but had none of the stern urgency that would later inform our drive. we played some gigs, then stopped switching instruments and changed our name - i guess we were onto something. i was playing drums at that point - badly.

our name. we all loved amebix to bits and of course knew their song "fear of god". i cannot imagine that that was not somehow present, but it wasn‘t in the foreground, as far as i remember. i recall talks regarding a new band name being informed more by our surroundings: all of us perceived "received" christianity, as it was taught and lived in swissgerman-speaking villages and towns, in pretty much the same way: a self-righteous, condescending and conceited "holier than thou" arrogance and hypocrisy. add to that, nearly every swiss hill has a christian cross on it, every village has one church (at least) and their bells pollute the airwaves. we were pissed off about this conditioning, about the damage christianity had done to humanity, and about the idiocy of it all. organised religion, the tool that it was, the great deceiver and manipulator... no! nevertheless, amebix were close: tschösi and me had visited and stayed with them in bath in 1987, i believe erich visited them too and kept contact with the baron over many years.

our first gig under the name fear of god happened on the last day of june ’87, in the youth centre of zug. erich/voice, tschösi/guitar, nasty/bass, me/drums. we probably weren’t very good; what can i say - we tried. it would be another few months before our definate line-up, and musically we weren‘t even close to what we‘d become. the event was memorable nevertheless: it was napalm death‘s first ever swiss gig, ripcord were along too, all in one van, plus equipment, plus friends. both bands were stunning, and wonderful people. tschösi and erich set up that show, and the bands stayed at tschösi‘s parents house in oberägeri.

i had turned vegan the year before, and mick, bill, lee and buzby were the first ever other vegans i‘d met in the flesh. i was full of questions and they all were more than happy to share their knowledge.

we travelled up to geislingen with them the next day, erich had ties with some guys across the border in germany like oliver barth (a lot of the live-video-documents from that era and area can be credited to him) and people who would later form cluster bomb unit and nuclear blast records.

we played as a trio (without nasty). our set was better already, the space was much more intimate than in zug, i guess the pressure of not being a host also helped - thus "liberated", it was raw and barbaric and the audience seemed to enjoy it. seeing napalm death and ripcord play again was a thrill.

we met osi at a gig in september ˋ87 - fear of god opened for indigesti in luzern, not far from osiˋs home. osi played with tenebre and crawlnoise was his latest project - his drumming was very impressive!

fear of god - the band, not the name - came to be when osi joined. i switched to bass. that‘s when things started coming together - when that what we somehow envisioned, had talked of, hinted at, desired, wished for or had otherwise expressed with or without words, seemed to become a real possibility. something shifted in our musical language, in our abilities, and in our drive, it was suddenly much closer to what we actually wanted to express.

itˋs late 1987. osi found this rehearsal space in an old barn on the outskirts of steinen, one or two villages from his home. rehearsal sessions were difficult to arrange somehow. we lived in 3 different places, erich´s was over 2 hours trainride away. i reckon we averaged one rehearsal a month, though in phases there were more, like before gigs. or maybe less. but when we got together, it was... mostly thorough, dedicated and.... high-spirited to the point of being ecstatic. we could not believe what we were creating. we pushed and pushed...

for years i‘ve likened fear of god‘s existence, in that line-up (osi, tschösi, erich, me), to one of an intense love affair, a passionate and very physical one, alert, sensual and attuned yet also highly energized and explosive - on the brink between violent ecstasy and loss of control, total destruction. and because of its intensity, it could hardly last long. but boy, what a ride...

because our common drive was something else - i believe deep down we wanted the same - to somehow go beyond music, to "destroy music", to create its antibody, or its abomination, to go further and further. we were utterly committed to this, and we found something, we managed to create something larger than life. looking back, the above aspirations are cute and naive,  nevertheless, in the context of our then inexperienced and limited musical horizons, we found our voice and took a stand.

our rehearsals lasted for hours. we‘d blast through a set to warm up. then someone would toss an idea, which wouldn‘t bounce around for long before being tested. tschösi and me had by then developed a sonic dialogue through years of jamming that didn‘t require many words. osi just loved blasting and once he found his part the backbone was there, and we could refine. our creative energies bounced off each other intensely, a high energy buzz.

i believe all of us contributed in essential ways to our sound, not in the same ways of course, and maybe not even all too obviously either, but we each had our distinct sonic voice and key parts - we were all pushing in the same direction, in my view none of us were replacable and because of our common drive we didn‘t have to make compromises. as one, we were much more than all our parts. i reckon that’s as good as a band gets.

looking back it seems, in the sound we created together we found much more common ground than in anything we said or did together otherwise - i‘d even use the word "harmony".coz not all rehearsals and gigs bare fond memories. at times there was friction and of course we argued too. i recall some strange displays of dominance; erich had a big voice, not just on stage. he liked attention, he liked to "conduct" the band and thus felt in charge. none of us others seemed bothered enough to deny him that, though i recall him and tschösi having a few head-ons down that lane. i was easy to wind up and quite gullible - something erich loved taking advantage of. he was very sharp and very funny, but also vicious and manipulative, especially when he wanted things his way... like when rehearsal scheduling didn’t go his way, he promptly asked other musicians to come and play with him and osi, behind the backs of tschösi and me. so much for a loyal and honest bandmate. let’s put it this way: erich was very dedicated to the cause.

alas, these incidents don‘t weigh much looking back - most of all i remember a high-spirited, full throttle ahead, four driven beings on the same track, with a common intentionality and force: our sonic language and all that it communicated. playing together was another dimension. fear of god would not have been this with any other members. and of course this is subjective. as is this whole remembrance.

erich was quite the networker - i believe he dedicated more of his time to networking than any of us - see his output as megawimp. he found labels who put out our records, did most of the artwork layouts, and got some of our gigs booked. he was a voracious record-collector and he ran a record label with thomas mölch - whom i saw once on stage, in an early b.o.l. incarnation.

tschösi via his messiah experience also got us gigs, but more than that he contributed gear and amps, and messiah‘s van for travelling to gigs. osi was our most accomplished musician technically - behind a kit he was a whirlwind, and otherwise he seemed to be always smiling, eager, and just sweet to be around.

my tape-recorder was present at most of our rehearsals and gigs, a portable deck that i‘d often carry around with me. the old-fashioned automatic recording volume was particularly sussed on this device, as many of the audio documents i gathered display. a trusted companion, without which many of fear of god‘s recordings would not exist. i contributed some lyrics and some artwork and not all was dismissed.

plus we were all avid tape-traders.

osi was a year younger than me, and erich a few months older than tschösi, who was a year older than me. at least that‘s how i remember. in december 1987 that would make us between 17 and 19 years old. tschösi found this studio in baar for us to record in, via some messiah connection. i think we spent two days recording, though somehow it seems we were in there much longer. it was intense. we had been rehearsing a lot, were in good shape, eager and excited. the instruments were recorded first, vocals later. recording the vocals for first class people is particularly memorable: the vocal booth was too small for all 4 of us, so we entered in different constellations of 2 or 3 - and screamed. and screamed. we puked our guts out. we screamed like there was no tomorrow. and watched each other screaming through the booth-window. it was hilarious. and ecstatic. it was to be the only time we ever recorded in a studio.

the record came out in 1988, it seemed to take forever but i think we got it in july. the front cover was by stiv, who also did artwork for peggio punx and the amazing wretched, erich made this connection. we felt honoured. i designed the cross-logo (inspired by the swans), and the hooded figure on the back was by some girl erich had the hots for. lyrics were largely by erich, with very few contributions by me, erich also did the layout.

in early january 1988 we played our first gig with osi, in burladingen‘s youth centre. recording in the studio was just a few weeks ago. i recall some feedback issues (tschösi’s amp i think) but we were in great form and it was a total blast!

in february the then already legendary reithalle squat in bern hosted us. the PA was the best we played on so far, it was loud and it felt amazing! five days later we played with extreme noise terror in thalwil, a gig i had set up. i was writing to phil/e.n.t. since their earslaughter split-lp and we remained close - 8 years later he‘d move in with me and doris in aarau, but that‘s another story. then we bulldozed burladingen again, hardly a month after our first onslaught.

in january that year i also started to work for recrec, a zürich distro for independent music. my first proper job. recrec carried amazing labels, a wide world of "other" music opened up to me. we also carried fear of god‘s records, and off the disk. roli brümmer worked there too, in fact it was him who told me about this job. roli, röbi and claudio were the speedairplay crew, hosting a monthly hardcore-punk radio show on radio lora zürich. fear of god had been their guests in the march transmission. and claudio could drive...

metzgerstrasse hanau, on a hot early july day. arriving there was already epic. none of us could drive, but there was claudio. we travelled in messiah‘s vw-van to the gig. at one point, we had reached hanau already, were looking for the venue, a house-number, crawling along the side of the road, when suddenly the van jerked sideways and its front jumped up onto the pavement. the van was heading towards a housefront when claudio managed get his hands back on the steering-wheel, just barely swerving alongside the wall before hitting it, but not in time to avoid smashing a protruding letterbox straight off the wall...

at the venue, per from filthy christians had turned up, but without band, atavistic didn‘t turn up either, unfortunately. but we played our most ferocious set to date. i recall a low-ceilinged room. the stage-pieces were loose, they‘d move around with too much activity. the sound was raw. it was hot. per recited some poetry and then screamed along with us on a few songs. we... it felt like an earthquake. i think with that show, we reached some kind of apex...

our post-gig exhilaration was at a new peak, we were so high on what we just did. our set was technically messy, the circumstances difficult... but we all felt we had delivered our noisiest, most ferocious, abominable, brutal (etc etc) gig to date. swissgerman words we’d like to use for a particularly good takes or sessions or sets were "massacre" and "butchery" - they were never more adequate than tonight. "the end of music, anyone?". this had to go on record. and thus the idea for "as statues fell" was born.

our next gig was a bigger affair: we played the fri-son, a well-known alternative venue in fribourg - the swans, foetus, the young gods, la fura dels baus, gore and the butthole surfers had played there. we were opening up for caspar brötzmann massaker, caspar being the son of peter brötzmann, gabi delgado‘s brother eduardo played bass - he let me use his monstrous amp.

the big hall didn‘t work in our favour, but the venue staff did, they were helpful and accommodating. we felt good. i knew marius, our host for the event, through my work for recrec. marius would later work for pro helvetia.

our set that night was ferocious in a different way. we could hear ourselves clearly on the monitors and the PA was huge, louder even than in the reithalle, we had new songs and a new intro... it was probably our darkest and most nihilistic set yet... and we got a soundboard recording of it! it would become the other side of "as statues fell". off the disk put the record out. erich did the cover, the images were taken from a bible with gustav doré prints i had. 

rote fabrik, zürich‘s biggest alternative venue and a piece de resistance of the city‘s 80‘s movement. it‘s the end of october. about 800 people attend the gig - the largest audience we played to so far. the rote fabrik staff made it clear they didn‘t think much of us "local" kids and our racket, we were met by cold and dismissive attitudes. they kept turning us down, and the soundengineer added a strong delay/echo onto erich’s vocal track without asking us or us agreeing to any such thing. i don‘t think our set was too bad under these circumstances, but...

then there was rollins, whom we were curious about, after all, black flag, s.o.a., the guy has quite a history...

what we met was someone with a condescending attitude who obviously felt superior, a "rockstar" without any interest in having a chat, and acting in ways that seemed very disagreeable with the persona he presented on stage.

for us the whole experience that night was deeply frustrating and disillusioning, it brought us face-to-face with the music "industry", with its ugly but unfortunately all-too-common side, and as such, something we felt no connection to, nor wanted to have anything to do with. that night we decided to call it quits. i remember it as an unisono group decision made even before we had finished our set.

i couldn‘t understand why erich reformed the band just a few weeks later, on top, with the geuggis brothers, whom he had always bad-mouthed. tschösi and me were not asked. and their new songs sounded just like some death metal-band... alas, that line-up didn‘t last long...

tschösi and me would go on to form PK a little later, together with roger drein. and i had already begun working solo - inspired by the "band" experience, i was eager to be 100% responsible for my audio communications and everything that came and went with it - but that‘s another story.

fast forward to 2002. erich and me had gotten in touch again and through my move back to zürich saw each other from time to time, usually having a couple drinks, listening to music, and eventually also talking about making music together again. there was this wish to create something utterly devastating, and when we discussed potential instrumentation it became pretty clear that, conceptually as well as musically, it would be similar in ideas as what we did 15 years earlier - so why beat around the bush and not just try fear of god again? osi and tschösi did not want to join so we found two new people to play with.

though we rehearsed a lot, a lot more than the original fear of god ever did, looking back this experiment was a failed attempt, it got nowhere near to what, for me, fear of god had been back then, on all kinds of levels, and even though this is not something we or i had declared as a goal by any means, after a while you just feel it barely touches on what u know could be possible, not just in terms of musical "harmony" but also in terms of the band and its spirit. we played 5 live shows between june and august 2003. after i left, erich again couldn‘t let go. he continued with a new bassist/backing screamer for a brief while. that didn‘t last long though. in the end, i reckon it‘s better we tried than not.

regardless of that last chapter. being part of fear of god is an experience i hold in high regard and that i‘m grateful for, it taught me a lot and also informed me in the following decades as a solo sound artist.

some things remain with me from our early days that i hold dear to my heart: the creative dimension. the DIY spirit. the "community" or "scene"< that i couldn‘t quite grasp at the time, coz what i saw were individuals and small pockets of activists... looking back it makes more sense, i now see a precious parallel universe of shared passions and activists involved in all aspects of fringe/free/extreme music - a parallel universe i’ve been immersed in a lot more through being active in the experimental/noise music universe. for what it’s worth, i feel fear of god had quite a unique voice, and that what we left behind is a valid statement. it still goes over my head though that this band is still talked about...

thanks to tschösi, osi and erich for what was and thus is.

to end, here’s something i wrote in 2021 for a book on grindcore by iván hernández aguado, to the question:

¿What does Grindcore mean to you?

when fear of god existed, the word 'grindcore' didn't exist yet; or at least, we hadn't heard of it.

grindcore is, as every genre-label rather broad in musical expressions, there are diverse intentions, different stylistic choices, there's various roads that lead to it, and it is perceived in multiple ways.

i talk from my subjective viewpoint:

grindcore is also about high energy, intensity, high tempo, over-the top-sounding voices and instruments, and precision, tightness. these elements combined create a kind of high, and it is a source of energy. the practice of high speed or short songs or other forms of concentrated intensity has to do with reaching, touching and crossing limits, exploring how far one can go - there's playfulness in that, in so far, an avantgarde spirit was naturally part of this movement, at least in the initial explosion that pathed grindcore.

the high energy of grindcore can be understood as life-affirming constructive, but also as destructive/nihilistic - as in reaching the end of music and in fact destroying music, as some acts wilfully exclaimed - which in turn can become constructive again as in to "destroy to build new" - often, in beautiful contradiction, it is a mix of both.

grindcore isn't as urban as it might sound, in fact quite a few of the early acts came from the boonies. political / socially aware lyrics are part of it too. in fact i would say grindcore is born of a societal and/or political and/or existential disenchantement and a longing for a kind of grace or release or elevation, a way to turn negative input (of a restrictive society, or of disagreeable social or existential circumstances, i.e.) into something constructive, so it becomes in a way liberating, causing relief, even balance.

in other words, grindcore, playing as well as enjoying it, has therapeutical merit, as it is a place for venting and turning negative energy around.