DEAD GODS
Dead Gods AKA Dead Gods Without Heads 1987-1990 in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Members Include:
- Brian idle edsel Diederich: All Instruments
- Steve Loschi: All Instruments
- Wayne Ciccolo: All Instruments
- David Lukei: Drums
- James Gracia: Drums
Dead Gods was an ultra fast thrash-core band that is often considered America’s first Grindcore band. Idle was renting a basement that lacked a shower. The band practiced next to the big ole furnace with a bunch of potentially live wires hanging around with seemingly no purpose, no one knew what they were for. Pipes hung everywhere scattered amongst the chaos were televisions with exposed Cathode Ray Tubes that were often glowing. The band wasn’t doing very well academically, but got to jam just about everyday.
“We would kinda just jam out, noise improv until the tunes melded into actual songs. We would switch instruments so we sort of had three sets. The Butt Hole Surfers were big and the industrial noise genre was born, influencing bands. This three piece band committed themselves to taking speed and power past any limits. We were trying to find a way to take thrash and speed core to another level. We were called pioneers of ultra fast thrash noise by some reviewers and America’s first grindcore band by others.
We had fast and slow sets, we would record them on a boom box and smoke marijuana upon playback, taking mental notes. We would play tape loops of people talking and other noises while we played. We played many big basement parties. We traded tapes with other early grindcore bands such as Carcass.”
In 1987, Dead Gods formed when Steve and Idle finished at Virginia tech and moved back to Virginia Beach where Drummer David Lukei joined them. This iteration of the band did away with rotating instruments and alternate sets. The band started playing in Idle’s parents garage until we got kicked out for constantly being too loud for the neighbors. After that we would play in a tin storage shed padded up almost like an insane asylum. The storage shed was next to a trailer park, which was behind the car wash, which was frequented by drug dealers and their following on Virginia Beach Blvd. This gave the band an audience that would hang around their sacred sanctuary otherwise known as our storage unit.
“Ronny Hackett left his drum is my basement when FFFH fell apart, otherwise me, Wayne and Steve might not have even started jamming, and dead gods would have never existed.”
In 1988, the band recorded the dead gods “without heads” tape in Blacksburg Virginia.
In 1989, the dead gods left the confines of the academic world and moved to Virginia beach to pursue their goals.
In 1990, the dead gods redorded “Kill All Who Don’t Believe” and decided they would have to break out of the east in order to bring all the don’t believe to their knees.
In 1991, the dead gods booked studio time in September, but the band dissolved before the date.
Recordings of this band can be found below.