In a new series, we’ll be hearing from a different person every month, reflecting on Reno music projects, current or not so current, and what makes them special and personally important to them.
Scaught Bates on Vae Victis
“This is one of those bands that would take the piss out of you live. Grossly underrated, mostly due to the fact that they didn’t make it out of town that often. When my old band recorded with Steve Albini, he expressed heavy liking towards our Vae Victis cover more than any of our original songs. He was a little let down when we told him it wasn’t our song.
They existed sometime within the late 90’s to early 00’s. First record was a good listen. It had a message on the back cover to mail their singer’s address for lyrics. Not sure what lyrical themes were taking place on the record, but this would end up being a great building block towards their following full length.
The following full length, “Ugly Reflections”, showed guitarist Jensen Ward taking on vocal duties(It’s a close call, but I’m certain that this is my all time favorite record to come out of Reno). I took the opportunity to talk to Tom Gordon who recorded this record to share his feelings on it a while back. Tom is known to record a wide range of well-known artists from Dr. Dre, Whitesnake, Milli Vanilli, and many more. He confessed that their song ‘Six’ was one of the most chilling performances he’s ever witnessed in a vocal booth. Time stood still and the goosebumps were aplenty. Seeing that song live, I certainly believe it. That song is about his Dad being diagnosed with cancer. Really heavy, and you can honestly feel the narrator of the songs world exploding. That heaviness would carry over to a following band known as Iron Lung. Which went on to probably be one of the most accomplished bands to ever stem from the Reno area.
Fun fact: Local Renoite, Eddie Joseph, from Eddie & the Subtitles would perform under the alias Iron Lung here and there around 1980-81’ down in southern California. Always thought that was a funny small world coincidence. One was acid induced incoherent jamming and the other was short fast stop on a dime power violence lyrically informed by medical atrocities and misanthropic themes.ps. Probably my favorite part of this band is the drumming. David Torch is definitely a prodigy with percussion. He is not a punk drummer, but came up with the tightest, most fucked up drum lines to these songs that may have only come from a single person’s own flavor being challenged in an unfamiliar style. The stuff he plays on the song ‘Hanging’ is absurd.
From the Iron Lung website where you can buy this record – “The bass player Chris went on to work for mega rock bands like Death Cab For Cutie, AFI, and The Postal Service doing production work, he never stops touring. The drummer, David, who is a sick photographer with gallery shows all around the world, played on Jimmy Fallon’s show with a band called Phosphorescent a few months ago. Jensen sells punk records out of his garage and is highly regarded in the lowest circles.”
You can listen to Vae Victis HERE
