Epidemic "Decameron": Bleeding Priest's Bay Area Metal Spotlight 20
- Bleeding Priest
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Hey, what’s up everybody. Will Carroll here with another episode of Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight. It’s been a minute. I haven’t done one in a while, so I’m stoked to be getting back at it.
Today’s band is a very important thrash metal band in the Bay Area scene. They put out two records on Metal Blade and are great friends of mine to this day, at least some of them. The band is Epidemic.
I’m going to be talking about their first Metal Blade release, Decameron. They actually did put out a vinyl a year before, or maybe two years before, this came out called The Truth of What Will Be. That was their 1989 demo put on wax, and some people consider that their first album. I know the guys in the band don’t really consider that their first official full-length album. They consider Decameron to be their first official full-length record, and I do too.
Man, this album is a tragic piece of work. The songs are fucking punishing, and the band’s playing is great. Bobby Cochran is a fucking sick drummer, and he sounds great on this record. Everything is working in their favor. All cylinders are firing, except for the way the album sounds.
The production is just a shame. It’s such a missed opportunity. Epidemic were the biggest unsigned thrash metal band in the late 80s, around 1989 and 1990. They were packing The Stone and The Omni on their own as headliners. They were drawing the same amount of people that Vio-lence would draw sometimes. They were riding high. The two demos worth mentioning sold incredibly well, and the whole world knew who Epidemic was.
When they recorded this album, I was hanging out with those guys a lot at the time. My roommate was good friends with them, and so was I. There was a lot of excitement. We were all stoked for them and ready to hear this fucking record.
The demo leading up to this album, Extremities ‘91, is great. It sounds killer. I think every song on that demo, minus one, is on this album, and the demo smokes this record. That’s not a good start. When I first heard the album, I thought, “Dude, the demo sounded way better.”
I’m not one of those guys who automatically likes the demo better than the album. There are a lot of metalheads like that. I was rooting for this record. I thought it was going to smoke the demo and be the shit. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver on the production end. The performances are great, but the problem is the guitar tone. It’s just so mushy. There’s no definition or bite.
Some of these riffs could peel paint, but if you don’t have the proper tone and sound, it’s just lost. It loses all its oomph. The guitar tone is really washy.
Guy Higbey, who was in the original Epidemic, is on this album. He told me in detail what went wrong with the guitars. I’m not going to try to explain it because I’m not a technical guy and I don’t know shit about engineering or recording. But he did tell me that a frequency was lost in the guitar tone, or something got erased, so there was no high-end bite. It ruined the guitar tone.
Guy discovered what the problem was right before they were going to release the record. He wanted to remix the album and not give that version to Metal Blade, but the clock was ticking. Metal Blade accepted the album as is and thought it was okay for release, and they released it.
It’s not terrible sounding, but if you hear the demo leading up to this, you’re like, damn, that sounds better. It shouldn’t be like that. The same guy engineered that demo and this record, so I don’t know what went wrong, but something did, and it’s unfortunate. Such a missed opportunity. I love these songs, and I loved Epidemic.
The funny thing is they followed this album up with a brilliant record that never came out on vinyl, Exit Paradise, in 1994. Unfortunately, between when Decameron came out in 1992 and 1994, the entire music world had completely changed. By 1994, no one gave a shit about Bay Area thrash anymore.
Even though Exit Paradise is more of a death metal album than a thrash metal album, it was just too late. That album didn’t really get any notice at all, and Epidemic broke up soon after it came out. Guy Higbey had already quit the band by then. He did the Cannibal Corpse tour, but I think his mind was already set on leaving, partly because of how this record turned out.
It’s just unfortunate. Such a missed opportunity for these guys. If this album had been remixed and given a proper guitar sound, Epidemic would have been fucking huge. They would have lasted much longer than two albums and been big and successful.
I shouldn’t complain too much, though, because them breaking up led to Old Grandad. That turned into a decade and a half of a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol… and some music too!
–Bleeding Priest
