Fatal Strategies

The podcast returns with a special international roundtable edition focusing on Mr. Bungle and their relationship with the metal genre. Appropriately enough, my guests are both distinguished scholars in the burgeoning field of “Bungle Studies”: * Dr. Sam Thomas , a professor of English at Durham University in the UK and author of a forthcoming paper (”Unsentimental Education: Mr. Bungle, Metal Mus...

French-born, Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist Camille Giraudeau joins the podcast once again, this time to update us on some of what he’s been up to since the recording of our first interview (which took me absurdly long to publish). We hear about the making of Doedsmaghird’s Omniverse Consciousness and Stagnant Waters’ Rifts , both of which came out in 2024, along with a (verbal) sneak preview...

My guest on Episode 4 is Camille Giraudeau, a French-born, Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist who has been a key player in the international avant-garde metal landscape for the past two decades. Camille’s projects as bandleader (or co-leader) include Dreams of the Drowned, Stagnant Waters (alongside previous FS guest Svein Egil Hatlevik), and Smohalla, though he has also lent his talents to a rang...

My guest on this episode is Andy Hawkins, guitarist and primary composer for the legendary instrumental trio Blind Idiot God. We talk about how he developed his distinctive guitar sound and how that process was shaped by the particular context in which he likes to operate (i.e., a live band performing together in a room, sans overdubbing).We also talk about his relation to metal and hear about wha...

My guest on this episode is Svein Egil Hatlevik—founding member of Fleurety (“the Steely Dan of post-Norwegian black metal”), ex-member of Dødheimsgard, current member of Stagnant Waters, and sole member of Zweizz. Here, we talk about everything from coming of age (and forming Fleurety) in the early ‘90s and prank calling Helvete (the infamous black metal record store in Oslo) to collaborating via...

In this, the debut episode of Fatal Strategies, I talk to Skye Klein, the multi-instrumentalist behind Terminal Sound System and A Beautiful Machine (among other solo projects) as well as one-half of the long-defunct Relapse Records industrial/sludge/noise duo HALO. Here, we talk about the evolution of his music over the past 25 years and how this has coincided with changes in technology—from 4-tr...

Don’t worry, I’m not going to be getting too “creative” with the audio on the actual podcast episodes. The first actual episode should be up next week… Music credits: * Blind Idiot God, “747” * Terminal Sound System, “Gridlike” * Dreams of the Drowned, “Midnattskogens Sorte Kjerne (Dødheimsgard cover)” * Zweizz & Joey Hopkins, “No Clue” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this w...