Torture Chamber/Gruntsplatter – Bisect

Wow, Amazon.com has a used copy of the “Bisect” cassette listed. This was released in 1995, and limited to 100 copies. It was the first release on Crionic Mind, and has been out of print for years. Torture Chamber was Jonathan Canady’s pre-Deathpile power electronics project, and the other member of Torture Chamber now does A Minority of One I believe. It was my first release, and is rather primitive but the core elements are there I think. I just had next to no gear back then. There are some reviews for it, mostly from Metal zines, when it was released on the Gruntsplatter page of my website under the “Split reviews” section.

The origin of the cover image of which many questions were asked over the years, most notably by the graphic designer I took it to to make the cover, is this… When I lived in San Diego I worked with a guy whose roommate worked for the coroner’s office. I didn’t really know the guy, only met him once or twice, I called him Dan Dan the Cadaver Man. I came home from work one day and a series of color photo copies had been shoved under my front door. This picture was one of them, and I can only imagine that Dan the Cadaver Man was responsible, I don’t remember actually seeing him after that to confirm.

In hindsight I wish I hadn’t used it actually, the fact that it was someone local and who had probably died not long before the image mysteriously appeared under my door, my conscience ultimately made me wish I had gone another direction with the art.

My side also features a tribute to Jeffrey Combs. I think this tape is the only Gruntsplatter release I have used samples on. It’s been a long time since I have listened to it. The Torture Chamber side is recorded live and features 4 tracks I believe, and mine is in the studio and is 8 or 9 tracks. If you have the Organ HarvestCDR I did of old and out of print stuff, the track  “Anesthetized” was recorded around the same time as the tracks on this cassette to give you an idea of what to expect.

Anyway, I was surprised to see that, and if you are a completest of either myself or Jon’s music than it’s cheaper than you will probably see it on eBay.