Before there was Red Fang, the Juanita Family or the Last of the Juanitas there was Iscariot. Actually before that I believe there was Fat Pig, but I never saw them. This was the collaboration of Lana Rebel and Bryan Giles prior to moving to San Diego and forming the Last of the Juanitas and if I didn’t know the history you could have told me this was a Last of the Juanitias demo or their 1st album and I wouldn’t have questioned it. The drummer, Mark, had a more metal style, but was equally as dynamic as the Last of the Juanitas drummer. This was one of the earliest bands I saw that played hard, heavy music that threw typical song structure and timing on its head. A term like jazz-metal makes them sound absolutely horrible, but great bands like Don Caballero and Iceburn worked similar territory in the mid-90s, if that helps. This approach to song structure has been applied to just about every genre of music today, but when I first saw them do it, it was jaw dropping. And this demo has aged well. When I tell people one of my bands played with them and Kyuss at the DPC (to about 12 people) they get all excited about Kyuss, but Iscariot was infinitely more interesting and memorable. Lana recently moved back to Tucson and has been playing around town solo-acoustic. I haven’t seen her play yet, but she is always a pleasure to run into. Brian is probably on tour with Red Fang. Not to be confused with about half a dozen other bands that were called Iscariot or Judas Iscariot in the mid-90s.
i still have the 4-track cassette masters for this downstairs in a box, but no machine to play them on, alas ... it was really fun to record - great music and really nice people.
ReplyDeleteI assumed this was recorded by Mark (drms) because he was recording other bands like Slag around this time, but looking closer at the cover that's not the case. Did you record any other bands around this time?
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