Dead Conspiracy - "As You Would Have Them Do" CD-single

Originally I had the idea of doing oddball reviews under the title of Weird Tales of Metal, which was honestly just a catchy title for what should have been Common and Recurring Themes in Metal.  Most bands inevitably turn to shit, mediocrity abounds everywhere, there's the whole dichotomy of unfaltering traditionalism vs. throwing in all sorts of avant-garde nonsense (for the sake of pushing "boundaries" which are usually self-imposed), there are lots of hidden gems buried by time and obscurity, etc.  Nothing particularly weird about any of those things.  It's how heavy metal is.

Remember what I just said about bands turning to shit?  Well, here you go:


Lemon yellow inserts and a polka-dot logo.  You know this is going to be good.

Dead Conspiracy's As You Would Have Them Do CD-single was released by New Renaissance in 1991, during the very end of the label's original run.  As such, it abandons the classic New Renaissance castle logo in favor of their later-but-decidedly-heavy-metal-looking logo of a bloody chopping block.  It was also (until the label's resurrection), along with the Terrahsphere CD, one of the last releases done wholly under the New Renaissance moniker.  Ann would shortly team up with Colossal and go on to release towering thrash classics such as Dead & Bloated You Don't and Denial Antichrist President.

As noted on the cover, this lone track was released as a preview for a full length album which never came.  Probably fortunately so.  This is pretty much New Renaissance's WORST RELEASE EVER.  Not because Tuff Luck or Intense Mutilation are so great, but there's only one silly and ill-conceived song here, with nothing else to temper it:



Lewis Livermore?  Heh heh heh...

As you can see from the band member names and yellow background color, I have not sneakily posted the lineup from a ska band.  YES--DEAD CONSPIRACY HAVE A HORN SECTION.

The song opens with an audio snippet of Marin Luther King Jr., so we're clearly in for pro-social lyrics; indeed, lyrically it's an anti-hate/anti-persecution tune.  For all the trepidation I had about them, the horns are used in an oddly superfluous way.  They kick in right at the start, last about a minute, and then reappear at the end after a short funk bass section.  They provide an extra flourish but don't really follow the theme of the song.  The horn players were clearly not regular members of the band--if you look up Tim Bryson and Lewis Livermore (bwahaha...), this is the only semblance of anything remotely rock-like in their musical careers.  I'm not sure how they knew the band, but it's entirely believable they didn't--I wouldn't be surprised if everyone just happened to be at the studio at the same time, and someone thought it would be cute and novel to throw trumpets and a sax into the proceedings.

Initially, it seems things are going in a funky-music-with-heavy-guitars direction ala Mindfunk/Last Crack (there are some similarities to Mordred, to be sure, but things get nowhere near as thrashy) and all the Red Hot Chili Peppers/Jane's Addiction influenced tripe that was prevalent in the late '80s/early '90s.  Eventually the main riff begins to build speed; broken free from all the funk influence, it may have been the basis for a decent progressive thrash song.  But let's not get too ahead of ourselves with what might have been, because the cherry that tops this shit sundae comes in the form of the ridiculous vocals.  I sense they are an attempt at "schizophrenic" crossover-style vocals.  Trembly talk-singing and occasional bursts of more aggressive punkish singing are involved.  I'm not sure of the correct technical term (well, other than annoying), but some of the vocal phrasings are purposefully drawn out, to comedic effect.  Perhaps the vocalist realized he was resigned to the terrible fate of singing over this shit, and that resulted in his strained wails.  Ultimately, with only one song here, it's hard to tell whether the band was moving towards this style or whether it's just a fluke tune where they were trying to be quirky.

As silly as I find this release, it unfairly colored my perception of the band for a long time--for almost 2 decades this CD-single was all I knew of them.  They were off in the Pacific Northwest, placing me far away from any local word of mouth, and I never encountered their '80s demos through tape trading.  I was quite content with my ignorance until a few years ago, when the Gore Drenched Legacy CD compilation came out.  It was touted as actually being good.  Could this really be the same band?  Sure enough, it was, and I was pleasantly surprised that they started out as raging deaththrash.  Whatever their later transgressions, their earlier stuff should have at least merited a track on one of the Satan's Revenge comps. or something similar.