Hatebeak
Number Of The Beak 12″ LP
Face-crushing guitars, head-pounding drums, bass so low you’ll vacate your bowels, and vocals so scorching, so extreme, they simply can’t be human! They’re not. This death metal outfit with a parrot for a singer makes trashes the pathetic bird feeder you call the metal underground!
That’s correct, a parrot for a singer, savaging you with feathers of razored steel! Try as one might, they will not escape the claw; nothing can dodge the talons of hate!! These tracks are an ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY beak in the ass of all things sacred in the underground. The holiest shrines of metal and hardcore seriousness are duly trashed, burned, laid to waste, smeared in Avian excrement. The pecking order has been established!
This monolithic release, which is beautifully mastered by Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed) will be issued on CD, cassette, as well as limited vinyl runs. Featuring a stunning cover by artist Stephen Kasner, one side of the vinyl collects all of Hatebeak’s long out-of-print EP’s from 2004-2007 while the other side features six never released songs, the first new avian-metal to surface in eight years!
During their initial existence, they were a studio project shrouded in mystery. In recent years it has become public knowledge that Hatebeak was the brainchild of Blake Harrison (who is now in Pig Destroyer) with Mark Sloan (The Index), occasional bass by Vincent Saulsbury, and inimitable vocals by Waldo, a 21 year old African Grey Parrot. The first Hatebeak recording was “Beak Of Putrefaction” on Reptilian Records (a split with Longmont Potion Castle).
The band’s logo was a parody of the Hatebreed logo, and the single cover was a blatant rip-off of Judas Priest’s “Screaming for Vengeance”, which quickly earned a cease and desist order and was re-issued with Waldo obscuring most of the original picture.The public reception quickly went from metal underground oddity to national news as programs like The Howard Stern Show and outlets like The A.V. Club covered the band. Their follow up single lambasted the band NILE and was a split release with NYC band CANINUS (fronted by two pit bulls), and their third and final release was a split single with BIRDFLESH on Relapse Records.
Refusing to perform publicly for fear of traumatizing Waldo, the human members went on to other projects while Waldo went on to do album reviews for Decibel Magazine, so Hatebeak went underground until NOW. Groundbreaking, nest-crushing, egg-shattering! You can run, but you can’t fly.
From an old interview:
How do recording sessions look like? What tricks do you use to make Waldo sing the way you want him to? Or maybe you record his vocals first and then try to mix it with the music?
WALDO is quite talkative and has always responded to music in general. We can tell he likes metal because he stands on one leg when he’s happy. This happens anytime we play Carcass, Left Hand Path by Entombed, pretty much anything from the early Earache catalog (except Scorn). He’s also a big Tomas Skogsberg fan. No Scott Burns, though, he gets cranky and soils his cage if we play Deicide or Obituary. He gets very hyper and talkative when we play music he likes and we usually record his outbursts following an extended listening period. We take the best parts and track them with the rest of the music.