You can’t say that Vegas death metal lords Guttural Secrete aren’t dedicated to their craft. Their practice space (and home to bassist Matt Goldberg) is a scary-looking house straight out of Thor’s nightmare. Once you get past the pentagram-affixed door and into the halls, posters of bands with names like Disembowelment and Braindrill, branded with images of various types of blood, gore and other unpleasantries, plaster the walls of the house. Goldberg and guitarist Randy Thompson say the previous owner died in the house’s bathroom. It all makes for a fitting home for one of the most brutal bands in the nation, much less the city.
Started in 2002 by Vegas native Blue Jensen and friend Mike Fitzgerald, Guttural, with their insane drumming, pounding guitars and lyrical brutality, made a name for themselves in the Vegas and national metal scenes. “We got together, made a three-song demo and took it to the Maryland Death Fest,” Jensen says. “From there, we’ve always done pretty well.”
As a testament to their popularity, their 2004 second EP, Artistic Creation With Cranial Stumps, and their full length, Reek of Pubescent Despoilment, released in 2006, keep selling out and going out of print. Not bad for a Vegas metal band, Jensen and Goldberg admit, but their new full-length—which the group is writing currently—along with an as-yet-sealed sweetheart deal with a new label (the band wouldn’t say whom since contract talks are still pending) could set the bar almost impossibly high for future metal bands. “We’re really excited about our new shit,” Goldberg says. “It’ll definitely be a step up for the Vegas metal scene.” But the band—despite its popularity nationally and overseas—continues to lay low in the Vegas scene. They don’t want to sound cocky, but Vegas seems sort of below them.
“We’re not really a Vegas band anymore,” Goldberg says. When the band does perform, it finds solace in California, Illinois or other states where fans have G.S. tattoos on their arms and sport the band’s shirts in public. It’s a different scene outside of Vegas, the band says, and they’re more than happy to be in it. But these weekend rockers are focused and just want to take their time and make the best death metal possible. And inside of a house that looks like something out of a psychedelic torture horror movie, something cool has to come out of it.
With Defeated Sanity, Dismal Lapse, Mucus Membrane, Divaricate. May 29, 9 p.m., $10. Rox, 804-7644.