Ages ago in late 1990s, and well before the modern zombie TV series (like Walking Dead) not to mention modern zombie movies, I was crafting some zombie (and ghoul) themed tunes as part of my tracked metal (information about tracker music) ventures with a nickname 'Aeuk'. Zombies as inspiration was nothing new back then of course, as anyone into metal music (not to mention horror movies & stories then) knows.
But well, as I've sometimes in past explained, these certain experiments led me into forming Scumfusion. Scumfusion wasn't originally about scifi / space themes, but zombies and horror stuff in general. Rather miscellaneous topics in the early releases, for sure. But Scumfusion wouldn't had been born unless I hadn't crafted the certain songs as 'Aeuk' in 1999-2000. I downtuned guitar inhumanly low (don't ask me how low, I can't really say it and I didn't keep diaries back then!) and crafted music that I soon started calling as "sewer metal". Part of it was the guitarsound, but other part was the vocalstyle I came up for it - "sewer vocals" - singing while inhaling ... rough way to do it, for sure. And not necessarily good for throat either! :)
So, ... as I had put finishing touches to that 'Achromatic horridness' by Scumfusion, I went into digging my mod archives, and listening some of these sewer metal tunes after years of break from listening to them, at all. I think it could well be that I was listening to this stuff previously around 2010 when I was putting up "Garage grind days & Z-files" compilation (here) with Timo who was doing Scumfusion with me back then. On that compilation born out of fun (the covers) there are the Z-files which were Scumfusion songs not released previously or songs related to Scumfusion in some other ways - and one of them was part of these "sewer metal" tunes from 1999-2000, namely "Zombies" which is the closing song for that compilation. That song was chosen there because it was one of those ancient tunes which led me into forming Scumfusion, based on the so-called sewer metal experiments.
Well, I got kind of inspired listening to the Aeuk songs and got an idea to do a sort of remix album about selected sewer metal style songs. With especially the artist name Aeuk, which was the name I was tracking metal style music from 1989 into 2007 (actively into 2004). I used some 2-3 weeks of October and about 1 week of November for working into this remix package; the music is in its' original form, more or less, some tiny changes / finetuning technically - but I re'recorded all the vocals for all of the songs, trying to pay respect to the moods & atmospheres. And as not all of these songs from 1999-2000 had full lyrics, I wrote bunch of new lyrics in the same vein - over the top zombie & ghoul themed things. All in all it came out very nicely I'd say and it feels good to truly pay homage to origins of Scumfusion - that's why I'm writing about this here, too. It has a strong Scumfusion connection after all. Some of the 'Aeuk' songs in this release were later re-recorded for Scumfusion but with different song titles and lyrics which had no longer nothing to do with zombies (it was the way Timo wanted, as he wrote the lyrics and sang back then). Honestly I didn't like that the lyrics were changed, something got lost - it could be that I just feel like that because it was me who composed the early tunes ... but you can compare a song like "zombie twins" (Aeuk) and "in weary light" (Scumfusion) how it feels ... I'm not saying I wouldn't like "in weary light", I do - but the original piece "zombie light" was something I really liked, from theme to music.
Guess what, it's actually possible to do that comparison already. :) Aeuk compilation album "Selected raw sewage works" comes out (streaming medias worldwide) on 30th November 2024, but I've crafted two visual lyric videos for Aeuk release - second one of these happens to be "zombie twins" and I released the video just today. :) Check out the videos below or head out into my youtube channel <here>.
