NAUSEA L.A. - the beginning ------------------------------------------- NAUSEA was formed in 1987, from the ashes of MAJESTY. It is uncorrect, as most of the critics has done during the years, considering NAUSEA a side-band to TERRORIZER or anything like a follow-up. MAJESTY was: oscar/guitar/vocals, "cosmo"/guitars, eric/drums. NO BASS PLAYER! NAUSEA: oscar/vox/guitars, “cosmo”/bass/vocals(high peech), eric/drums. Occasionally, Garvey from TERRORIZER filled in the bass. “one day oscar called me to form another band. we wanted it to be different from terrorizer,, more punkish/discharge/polittical style, i said yeah! ,so we did. the name Nausea was taken from an old fave band (HERESY) song title.” (Eric) Let's see a panoramic of the time when these bands grew up. In the years 1984-1985, while here and there in the US were growing up the first death metal / extreme underground scenes (with bands like DEATH, MASTER, REPULSION, DEATHSTRIKE (in the US), NAPALM DEATH, AZAGHTOTH, E.N.T., DOOM (in the UK) and other self existent noise/core scenes like the prolific Japanese (with KURO, DEATH SIDE, and later S.O.B.), in the L.A. area were forming MAJESTY (1986) and, parallely, other thrashcore acts like BLOOD CUM, INFAMOUS SINPHONY, APOCALYPSE, all following the SLAYER "aggressive and fast" brutal way of playing. MAJESTY left his mark in the underground with the "Bestial Vomit" demo, composed by 5 tracks really in the MASTER vein -as for the riffs and way of singing-, and with a crushing D-beat tempo, in the HELLHAMMER style. After MAJESTY, Oscar formed another band with Jesse Pintado (guit), drummer Pete Sandoval and bassist Garvey. TERRORIZER was born. In this band, Sandoval pushed to play faster stuff than the MASTER/MAJESTY way, but, on the other side, NAUSEA’s 1988 demo sounded much more like REPULSION than the TERRORizers. As for REPULSION, they were pioneers of the “fast” attack in the other side of the US. During the year 1987, (as said before), Oscar and Eric formed NAUSEA. Once again with Cosmo (ex-MAJESTY) at bass, soon this new three piece grind combo developed his own original style. NAUSEA was one of the most important L.A. underground acts, and kept playing their original industrial / grind / crust mix until 1994. Especially in the first years, NAUSEA shared some false elements with TERRORIZER, being Oscar in both the bands: delivering maybe similar riffs, and same kind of lyrics (in the social / pessimistic way, much discharge-like). Eric, once called mr.Blastbeat, has an original drumming style, mixed with jazz influences which he learnt from his father (latino drummer). Oscar, by his side, after Terrorizer’s split up, later was just asked to record TERRORIZER album “World downfall”. Who still listen to TERRORIZER album, should know that some of the songs were NAUSEA songs. "world downfall" was born, wich contained few nausea songs that oscar took to complete the album..(corporation pulling,,need to live..condemned system..i think a couple more” (Eric) end of part 1. ------------------- part 2. ------------------- The second NAUSEA period was characterized by the incoming of guitarist Vito Tagliente, and then the changing of some bass players, trying to establish the stronger line up ever. As for Jesse, he never played in Nausea, but he was always hanging up the place. As everyone knows, he left L.A. for England in July '89, for joining a famous whirlwind team... with the name of NAPALM DEATH!. So, from 1989/90 on, the line up was well estabilished with Vito, who brought an (apparent) sense of innovation in the band. After a 1990 rehearsal demo called "Mind dead", delivering the new NAUSEA line up and a slight change of style with Vito, in the year 1991 the band got a record deal with WILD RAGS, a well known label who had already many releases out at the time. This came out with the name of "Crime against humanity" LP and CD, also distributed in Europe, and finally gave justice to the "real" band who, instead of Terrorizer, went on headlining the upcoming L.A. grind scene (with bands like EXCRUCIATING TERROR, PHOBIA, SADISTIC INTENT, DEMOLITION). Around 1991 NAUSEA got Armando Morales as bass player. The same year, they also released the "Psychological Conflict" 7", EP with 2 tracks not released on the album. This rare release was put out by BAPHOMET records, a phantomatic new label held by a Vito friend, from the cult L.A. band Sadistic Intent. Another Live tape, self-released that same year, fills the discography, for the happyness of tape traders, who got in touch with Nausea from all over the world. Immediately after the album release, the line up gets finally completed with the arrival of bassist Javier Arqueros, who came from promising band EXCRUCIATING TERROR (after recording their first Ep "Legacy of Hate" in 1991). Javier fills in perfectly, and now the band delivers a renewed and mature style, which still takes his roots from old style grindcore but makes trips into noise and experimental sounds, an original trial which -to my knowledge- could be compared only with Japanese noise "post grind" band ZENI GEVA. After the album release, the band was making a new 10" mini LP "Tumor", which was already scheduled by the label and announced in Wild Rags newsletters. But the release never happened, because the band broke up the deal, not happy of how the label had worked out things. These recordings were anyways self-released as "Tumor" demo, in 1992, and circulated again among worldwide tape traders but only in a few copies. Other two demotapes were recorded but were never released, until "Last" demo (1994), which signed the band's last recording after a 7 years existence in the scene. Fortunately, today we have been witness of an incredible come back of the band, in the year 2001, with exactly the same line up which saw the NAUSEA latest period in the nineties, now back stronger then ever! All the lost recordings have been finally released on CD by new label COLLAPSED UNITY (HALFLIFE side-label) on "The suffering continues" CD. During the years, we have also seen some bootlegs around, some very well done and some not. I'd just mention the one which it's well worth: the legendary NAUSEA / TERRORIZER split demos album, which was released on vynil at the pioneristic time of 1991. It was a unlicensed bootleg of the demos, but it let all us European hear the L.A.'s best and cult bands with an excellent unfiltered sound! The rest is the present. July 2003. NAUSEA has just played with GENOCIDE (REPULSION) at their re-union show in L.A. Who knows the future? Till now, we just have to thanx this (unexpected and well acclaimed) come back. NAUSEA keeps going on stronger and louder! ------------------- Note: sorry for any errors in English writing, I'm italian... for adding or correcting any info, please write me to both these e-mails: fassby@yahoo.it pier.ch@libero.it need your help! thanks Pier, august-september 2003 |