Rochester metal band Kaged was breaking in
new singer Todd Gursslin.
“There is no f***ing way this guy can pull this off,” I said to myself as I
entered the band’s practice bunker in the CoxBuilding
on St. Paul Street.
See, Kaged is a 3-year-old quartet steadily climbing into the Rochester metal scene. But
the band hasn’t had a permanent member in the singer slot. The vocals that drummer James D contributed in the meantime were more
than adequate — huge, in fact. And so far as I could see, Gursslin
was gonna have to split his head open in order to
match up to him. I had to see this.
Guitarist MugsyMattern plugged in and
immediately began to feed back as bassist J.P. Altieri
tuned up. Lead guitarist Sam Cordaro strapped on his
guitar and took his post in the corner by a window. The formidable drum kit
seemed to cringe as D took the riser. Gursslin
wrapped the mic cord around his hand and assumed a
pitcher’s stance. His free hand held the lyric sheets. They began to play.
Up to this point all of Kaged’s vocal duties had been filled by D. D
sings like a monster. He’s already a big dude, and the timbre and weight of his
voice is positively Kong. But D wanted to concentrate on drumming. He just sang
to get the band off the ground.
“I was always going
to be the drummer,” D says. “And we couldn’t find a singer so we figured I’d
just do both for awhile. We wanted a guy to come in and take that role so I
could lean back into my own drumming style.”
Through the miracle
of MySpace the band found Gursslin.
Gursslin (formerly of the band Fuel) had just moved
back to Rochester after living the lowlife in Seattle. He was up for a
challenge and a change of scenery.
“I was strung out
pretty bad,” Gursslin says. “I’m in recovery now. I
don’t drink, I don’t do nothin.'”
Gursslin’s got a new monkey — music — and it helps.
“Oh, big time, dude,”
he says. “Especially with starting to write lyrics.
It’s just an emotional release.”
And the prospect of
filling D’s vocal shoes doesn’t have him shaken.
“Well, I can scream,
dude,” he says. “It’s a challenge. I’m down with the challenge; especially
being clean. I love it.”
Gursslin is learning old Kaged material
and working on new stuff with the band as well. Lyrics originally voiced by D
still fit into Gursslin’s mindset.
“I never wanted this
Never meant to be like this
Think of everything I missed
Never meant to be like this”
Whether voiced in joy
or anger, the intensity remains constant. So does the hurt. It’s
pleasure and pain. The lyrics run an emotional spectrum.
“It’s all over the
board,” Gursslin says. “Lots of
pain that I was going through — but how I made it through that pain. I
can’t stick to just one emotion.”
To the outsider Gursslin’s catharsis and rage can get misconstrued as
temper.
“I could sing the
happiest lyrics and my mother would think I was being pissed off and mean,” he
says.
The band kicks into an older tune, “So Far Away.” Gursslin dives in face
first with a howl. It is guttural, loud, and mucho intense. Cordaro and Altieri sway as D brutalizes his kit with a barrage of
snaps and thundering double-kick fills.
The intensity builds
and builds. Gursslin discards the lyrics. His face is
fire-engine red and the veins in his neck bulge as his smile gets increasingly
wider. The band smiles back, nodding its approval. They his
cruising altitude, volume, and speed.
Then it happens. Gursslin’s face splits and his skull begins to emerge. This
just makes the rest of the band lean in more, pushing him. By the time the band
reaches the second chorus, half of Gursslin’s body is
out of its skin. Tissue and guts and Gatorade spill as his carcass crumples
into a heap on the floor. By now all three amps are on fire and D is pounding
what amounts to a pile of kindling. There’s smoke everywhere. The sprinklers go
on. The song ends. There’s water and smoke and blood and guts everywhere. The
fire alarm is wailing in the hall. Gursslin’s
skeleton looks at me and smiles.
“I told you I could
scream, dude,” he says
Kaged plays a New Year’s Eve Bash with Intox, December’s
Halo, Compressed, Split Rail, and Darkling Sunday, December 31, at The California Brew Haus, 402 Ridge Road West,
621-1480, 8 p.m., call for cover.
This article appears in Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 2, 2007.
