#ray-ting straight got nuked!?!?!?

[doomedandstoned]

Rise of the Wizard Union!

Part I: Seek & Ye Shall Find

By Billy Goate

Ceremonial Smoke by Wizard Union

After The Great Wizard Fight had scattered what was left of our clan to the four corners of this God-forsaken orb, it was believed that the Great Hoary Ones of Olde had all but disappeared from the land. Yet, in the progress of time, rumors passed by me -- whispers at first, faint as baby's breath, but slowly they crescendoed into a wyvern's roar. The Wizards were back, one traveler said feverishly before collapsing. His last words: "They have gone underground. Look to the barren wasteland of Michigan." Impossible, I muttered, as this region was long thought to be uninhabitable, cooked to a crisp after the nukes had done their worst.

Having heard good enough of these annoying anecdotes, my apprentice and I ventured forward into the vast unknown to find out whether this congress of baked mages was one of myth or of mischief. With cloak, staff, and Geiger counter in hand, we set out for the Forbidden Zone. As we crossed its borders, we begin to pick up on the trail of blunts and faint wi-fi signals. We did cross paths with Wild Savages and broke bread with Bubak, Blue Snaggletooth, and the Bison Machine. We did ride the Cavalcade to the dank steps of the Temple Of The Fuzz Witch, where we were compelled to partake in the bizarre Stone Ritual.

This unlikely fellowship with barbarian hordes led us ever closer to the fabled irradiated thaumaturges. It was said that after the blast, they had become both one and many and that these diviners could, through their strange alchemy, compel rocks to roll until they were transformed into an altogether different substance, something the smiths were wont to call "heavy metal." An enchanted guild had become responsible for crafting this heavy metal. They called themselves the WIZARD UNION.

Notes stealthily changed hands, leading us to close associates of this Wizard Union, both present and past. With care, I crossed the Laserbeams Of Boredom, walked over the husked remains of Lizerrd and Lord Centipede, followed the scent of Bladder and Verminous Scum. Nearer, still nearer, until my companion and I chanced upon the Wizard Union's lair.

There, my eyes could scarce believe, lay the very manuals of the Wizard Union containing the secrets of their magick. I tore eagerly through them, from 'Smoking Coffins' (2014) to 'Phantom Fury' (2016), finally partaking of the 'Ceremonial Smoke' (2017) itself. My eager apprentice could bear it no more and excitedly ventured forth into the cavernous dwelling of the Wizard Union in hopes of speaking with them. Meanwhile, I sent word to the skies by way of my trusty raven, declaring with a shriek: "Our brothers yet live in the frigid armpit of America!"

Art by Unexpected Spector

Part II: Knock & The Door Shall Be Opened

Interview by Shawn Gibson

Today, we're visiting with Samir Asfahani of the band Wizard Union from the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. Samir, maybe start by telling us who all is in Wizard Union and the album you just released, 'Ceremonial Smoke.'

Sure, sure. We have me on guitar and main vocals, Aaron (or "A Ron" as we like to call him) on bass and backup vocals, and there's Larry on drums. Though A Ron didn't record vocals on this particular record, we had special contribution from sound engineer JC and his girlfriend Lindsay, who recorded the special effects you hear in the album's title track.

You guys have a really good stoner-sludge sound -- vocals are harsh as hell.

Yeah, even though I run the Super Dank Metal Jams blog and my co-writer, Brandon, covers a lot of the doom and stoner stuff, I've kind of stuck with the sludge and now into more grindcore and death metal stuff. In Wizard Union's last album, Phantom Fury, we were experimenting more with hardcore-punk type vocals, and then things progressed from there. I approached the guys and said, "Hey, would you mind if I did it this way, to add something new to the mix? I'm not saying we need to tweak anything else at the moment, but this is kind of what I'm into." They said, "Yeah, go for it!" Anything to make us a little different or even just to be a little weird is good.

It's certainly refreshing for the genre, whether it's straight-up doom or some death, black, grind, or sludge combo. Really heavy, crazy shit turns me on! Go for different, go for unique, because far too many bands sound the same.

I don't really fault bands for that, though. When we started out, we definitely were just like, "Let's play slow and heavy music. This is the stuff we know and like." From there, we spent a lot of time exploring whatever we happened to be into at the time. I dropped the idea of having more of a collective, which is kind of developing into its own record label now. We're going to be dropping a lot of stuff that encompasses side projects, not being anything Wizard Union-related.

Going back to not faulting bands, you start out with what you like. It might be knocking off like, Electric Wizard, Sleep, or Sabbath. I think from there, you're there three or four albums in, you kind of have to make a choice and ask yourself if that's what you want to be, just a knock off band or do your own thing and find your own sound. We're still exploring that. Our last jam on Sunday, we were playing what sounded more along the lines of "Give Me That Amulet, You Witch!" I don't know if in the future we're going to have a regular release, then a companion release with more stuff like that to follow it up. You get two different sides of Wizard Union there, so we'll see!

I've been digging a lot of Konvent, Cavurn, and Spectral Voice, so it's awesome to hear what you've been doing with those Wizard Union vocals.

Yeah, I really like the death doom lately, definitely more old school sound, not anything super technical. On top of that, I'm not a technical player. I don't know too many bands that mix the death, doom, and sludge thing. That's something I wanted to explore more. There's definitely more bands out there that mix grind and sludge, I've been digging more of that. That's probably where many of my side projects will go once they've picked up steam.

Yeah, I'm really into Dragged Into Sunlight, Clinging To The Trees Of A Forest Fire, bands that like to blend grind and sludge, playing heavy and fast.

I don't think we'll get there with Wizard Union. I have Verminous Scum, a project with Clay, the drummer from Mutalatred out of Toledo. So there's a lot of blasts on that coming up, whenever we get our first recording mixed. It's a little like if Wizard Union had blast beats; it still has that core sound to it. That's what I've posted lately on my blog.

You've been involved in the heavy scene around Ann Arbor for a while now, haven't you?

We've been playing shows with bands from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. Ypsilanti, for people who aren't familiar with the area, is the next city over from Ann Arbor and that's where Eastern Michigan University is. It's kind of like a shared area almost. Because of Ann Arbor being gentrified, you're seeing the price of things going up and a lot of people are moving out of Ann Arbor to buy houses in Ypsilanti, especially artists. We usually play in Ypsi. I actually used to be in a band called Lord Centipede. We put out a vinyl called Centipede Up Your Ass. It's a kind of doom-tinged stoner-hardcore-thrash album, came out in 2012 or 2013. After we broke up, it just kind of sat there. I decided I wanted to do something with it, put it out again -- it will be up for download as soon as it's done mixing. Now the drummer is in a new band we've just booked a show with, called Bubak.

Cool!

Then there's Temple Of The Fuzz Witch, a Detroit band we're playing with, as well. There's Wild Savages, not really a doom band but they've got that stoner vibe, as does Bison Machine. There's Stone Ritual, those guys are pretty good. Cavalcade is a band out of Lansing we liked playing with recently. There's Blind Haven, who play the Toledo area -- they're really good. There’s Hung From The Rising Sun out of Northern Ohio. Those guys also play in the noise rock band Wax. I don't want to miss anybody on this. I know some people will get upset if I do! (laughs) Anybody we played with, if I didn't mention you, you're awesome!

Phantom Fury by Wizard Union

So you edit Super Dank Metal Jams and you’ve organized the Burnout Society Film Club, as well?

I started the Burnout Society Film Club on a suggestion from Joe Eldridge from Shade Beast Records. We were talking about cult films and he said, "Oh, yeah! Somebody should start a group about this." I was like, "Shit, I'll do it right now!" I immediately thought of a random name that had the initials "B.S." so Burnout Society was born and it's actually becoming more of a real life thing, not just something on the internet. It's turned into a local group in Ann Arbor. We have movie nights and just chat about film.

Nice!

We screen movies and it's usually themed. The first movie night was The Wild Life (1984) with Chris Penn, Sean Penn's brother, and Eric Stoltz. It was kind of made by the people who made Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982). The theme of the night was films that are still stuck on VHS. That was a film that was obscure; a lot of people didn't know about it. Then we watched another film, Dudes (1987) , that hasn't made it to DVD or Blu-ray. For whatever reason, they’re kind of like obscure, even though they're good movies, so I thought it'd be a cool first movie night. The second event we held was holiday themed: we had Black Christmas (1974) and The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978).

Star Wars holiday Special that was a rare thing.

We had a bootleg copy we were watching and it had the original commercials that aired, which were probably more entertaining than the Star Wars Holiday Special itself! (laughs) The next one I think is going to be Bigfoot themed. We're also going to do an actual screening at a bar for a film that's been passed on to us that we'd like to show people. We'd like to do public screenings for DIY filmmakers whenever possible.

We are all into the cult movies -- weird, strange movies. I've always been into 'em. I think it really took off when I was working at a Hollywood Video in high school.

Lucky!

Yeah! You got three movie rentals at a time. I'd just grab whatever I could find. It didn't take long before I started getting into Troma movies.

Lloyd Kaufman! Man's a fucking genius.

Have you ever met him?

Not yet, I bet that's wild.

I've met him three times.

So what's Lloyd Kaufman like?

He's really weird. He's really eccentric. He was really cool, too. Around the time that I met him the first time, he was showing Citizen Toxie (2000) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I volunteered to be Toxie at those events. (laughs) Have a friend who volunteered to be the Noxious Offender from Citizen Toxie, but we hadn't seen the movie yet, so we had no idea what we're getting into. Lloyd gave me a screener copy and was like, "Here, just watch it before you come out or whatever." I remember my friend and I were at my parents’ house watching it until 3 am, just laughing. My parents woke up screaming at us, "Be quiet!" (laughs)

That's awesome! I got started with The Toxic Avenger (1984). I'd get my grandma to take me to the video store and I could rent anything, she didn't check. We got back home and I started to play it around 8 pm. My grandma walked in on the locker room scene with topless women. "Nope, nope, nope!" she said. I was like, "Goddammit!" So I waited until midnight or so, snuck out of bed, and watched the rest of the movie.

Shame on you! (laughs)

Then I rented that Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986) , Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1990) , and other Troma flicks.

I feel you on watching The Toxic Avenger while you're young. I was a product of the times, when they were pushing R rated movies onto kids by making them cartoons. There was a Rambo cartoon, as well as a Robocop, Toxic Crusader, and Police Academy cartoon. The original Police Academy, remember, was rated R.

Right.

I recall being three or four years old and watching the Rambo cartoon and just begging my mom, "I know there's a movie based off of this -- you've got to let me see it!" I remember how devastated I was when I brought it to her at the video store and she was like, "No, you can’t get that, it's rated R!" It was the same thing with The Toxic Avenger. I was like, "This was a movie? Oh my god, I've got to see it now!" So then, a couple years later, I go and find it -- same thing. One night I was able to persuade my mom to let me watch The Toxic Avenger: Part II (1989). That finally happened and then I realized somehow it was connected to Class of Nuke 'Em High, just like looking at the covers. It wasn't until years later that I realized what Troma even was. They used to have those marathons on the USA Network.

I remember them well!

I know they had the Up All Night series, where they'd play all the movies -- Nuke 'Em High 1, 2, 3, and what not. They did a Toxic Avenger marathon during the day -- it was the weirdest thing. I don't know of any other time where this happened, it was a rare moment for USA, sometime in the mid-'90s, so I got to watch all three back-to-back.

Smoking Coffins by Wizard Union

What's a damned good book you've read lately?

See, the thing is I only read non-fiction.

Me, too.

Last fictional book I read was Ready Player One (2011). As far as fiction goes, I would recommend that totally. Anybody who wants to go see the movie, Spielberg is directing it. The premise takes place in a dystopian future, where everyone's doing this virtual reality thing. It’s not unlike Facebook, if Facebook was VR. Every bit of information comes to you in VR format -- movies, stuff like that. Everybody’s creating avatars for themselves to portray TV and film stars. That'll be cool translated on the screen. From what I've seen of the trailer, unfortunately, it's not going to be as literal as the book. The fact is it's being put out by Warner Brothers and Amblin. I think whatever properties those two production companies own is probably what you're more likely to see on screen. There are plenty of obscure references made in the book, though. It's a very entertaining read. As far as non-fiction, I recommend The Disaster Artist (2013).

Cool. I've seen the trailers for the movie. I didn't know it was a book as well.

Yeah, that's what it's based on. I do most of my "reading" through Audible. It's one thing I've learned, to be more productive, is actually listen to audiobooks if you can versus wondering, "When am I going to have time to read, anymore?" I got an Audible account and started doing books that way. I get through two books in like a month. I don't feel bad about it, I still read what I need to -- blogs, articles, and stuff like that. The one physical book I'm reading at the moment is The Tao Of Bill Murray (2016), which I got my wife. That's a really entertaining book.

I bet. I love Bill Murray!

Trying to think of one more book -- a random one -- it's All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan (2005) from Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia. I'd recommend that to anyone who's having financial issues or trying to figure out how to get their financial troubles back together. I think after going through that book I was like, "If she ran for president, I'd 100% vote for her." She could get this country back on track. (laughs) If she's able to get the middle class to figure out their finances there has to be a way. She's got a plan! (laughs)

I’m not too confident in the one we have in office now. I don't think he's made it so great again. I don't think it was great in the first place. Just my opinion.

Well, I'm not going to go into that, just for starting a comment thread about who's on whose side. I'm sure that readers can figure out where we align politically. I feel like when Cheeto came into office, there were a lot of people who felt like this'll make music great again or whatever. It'll make people angry again. I haven't really noticed much of that. (laughs) There's always been angry music; there's always been politically charged music. Whatever gets you motivated to create, go for it, you know? That's one thing I want to encourage people, that's what I push myself to do. Everything I do is to create, to keep going and make more whatever it is and not to question yourself or hold yourself back. That's why I do the blogs. Burnout Film Society is going to starting a blog soon, with reviews for movies.

Cool.

The members of Burnout Film Society are all people that, as far as I know, haven't written for a blog before. I want to show people that you don't have to write for something. If you love something, if you have a passion for it, obviously you know what to say.

It exudes!

That's what it was for me when I wrote Dank Metal Jams. I thought, "If I were in a band, I'd want someone to write a review for me." Not that I'm doing these guys a favor, but I truly want the people to listen to their music! I'm going to write what I think about an album and just put it out there. Hopefully, I can get some other people on board that feel the same and agree, "Yeah you're right!" That's the only reason I have the blog around. It gives me something to do, while constantly introducing me to new music. It keeps me open to new ideas and fuels my creativity, especially when it comes to song writing. "Oh I can do it this way, I didn't even think about that way, or I can mix this with that."

What’s in the crystal ball for Wizard Union this year?

We've been around, this is going to be our sixth year now, and we're still kicking! We know we're not quitting anytime soon and we've got more ideas we want to put out there. I have another kind of stoner side-project I'm working on that doesn't have a name yet. It's me and Aaron, the bass player. Actually, we switched it up -- I'm doing bass and he's doing guitar. Then we have a local drummer who is in a one-man band called Laserbeams Of Boredom. We're working on that and finish recording in early spring. We still haven't settled on a name for that one, either. I don't want to drop any names or suggestions yet before it happens. I don't know if it will be out by the end of this year or the beginning of next year, but it's definitely something we're working on right now.

Samir, thanks a lot!

Oh yeah, thank you!

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