1. How did the band get started? How did you meet and how long have you been together?

Ryan Dawe: Kicking shaun's ass out.

Vance Kotrla: We all kind of decided to start playing instruments about the time we started high school, and a bunch of us got together and played old metallica songs while we were learning how to play. Ryan wanted into our makeshift band and we were going to move crowson from guitar to bass, but we didn't want to kick all the other guys out, so we just broke up and then reformed in secret with our present line-up. We all went to the same school from the time we were about 10. We've been together since 1995, we think.

2. How would you describe your music?

Chris Crowson: Doom thrash. We've got some real melodic parts, but its also pretty primitive, in places, kind of atmospheric death metal

Vance Kotrla: Or melodic death, to simplify

3. What are your biggest influences?

Vance Kotrla: We got burned pretty bad by answering this question once before.

Chris Crowson: Sepultura, Acid Bath, At the Gates, and old Metallica

Vance Kotrla: Those are our roots. But I have to go on record as saying I think that we don't necessarily sound like those bands in a blender, but more like some cool offspring of them.

Ryan Dawe: I like Bach and Beethoven

4. What influence do you think your bands has in music and metal today?

Chris Crowson: If we got any exposure, I think we could be pretty big

Vance Kotrla: Surprisingly, we developed a lot of the same stylistic nuances that are taking hold now, just in the isolation of Katy, TX rather than Europe. We made a decision early on to try to avoid weedley-weedley guitar solos and incorporated higher, more melodic guitar lines with some straightforward thrash phrases. We also use a lot of counterpoint in the bass lines so that we don't just double the guitar all day long.

5. What made you want to be in the band?

Ryan Dawe: Crowson's hot bod.

Chris Crowson: Uh...but anyway...

Ryan Dawe: Vance's love pump

Vance Kotrla: Dammit Dawe

Chris Crowson: I wanted to do what Metallica was doing because I thought they were cool

Vance Kotrla: These were the people I knew who played instruments, and it was just good fortune that we all wanted to do the same kinds of things.

-And if you weren’t in the band what would you be doing now?

Vance Kotrla: Lots of side projects

Chris Crowson: If you look at it as though the band had never been started, I suppose our lives would be very different...but I'd probably just be in another band

6. Are any band members in side projects? If so what are they, and explain a little about them.

Vance Kotrla: Well let's see...

Chris Crowson: Me and Vance are in De Profundis, but we're trying to change the name. It's kind of like if Tool were heavier, and if they had a cello.

Vance Kotrla: And if me and Crowson growled a lot. We're working on a cd right now. Should be out later this year on our label, Broken Image Entertainment

Chris Crowson: And there's Mission 13, our goofy industrial band. We play industrialized 80s techno covers. I'm also working on the prototype of a black metal band, kind of like At the Gates meets Mortiis meets old Emperor

Vance Kotrla: I'm trying to put together an all-drum cd with a few guest musicians

Ryan Dawe: I'm a piano wonder boy. I've got an ep of original pieces and some old favorites that should be available later this year on broken image

7. How would you feel if a band took their sound from yours and became very well known?

Ryan Dawe: I'd have to kill them all

Chris Crowson: Me too

Vance Kotrla: I kind of feel like that's happened. Like i said earlier, we were doing stuff in 1995 that is pretty popular now, but we've had no exposure, so I don't really expect that people will believe that since it's so easy to make up after the fact. I feel a little shortchanged, though, to be honest

8. What current bands do you like or respect?

Chris Crowson: Uh...

Vance Kotrla: All my favorite bands broke up.

Chris Crowson: Acid Bath, if they're really back together, Emperor's old stuff, Tool, Arcturus, too many to name, really

Vance Kotrla: I have to admit I'm digging Cryptopsy, Vader, and System of a Down right now. And awaiting Primus' and Nine Inch Nails' new cds

Ryan Dawe: I don't listen to much music anymore

9. How many demos/albums do you have? Tell me about them!!

Chris Crowson: A bunch of crappy tapes...and Defeat

Ryan Dawe: Please buy it

Vance Kotrla: We'll also be on dwell records' tribute to death later this year. But about those demos, they're a bunch of old 4-track demos from high school. Selling them at shows actually helped fund the recording of defeat, but I feel kind of bad that there's people out there with really crappy tapes and they think that that's what we sound like

10. What demo/album do you like the best?

Ryan Dawe: Defeat

11. What is the meaning behind the songs?

Vance Kotrla: It's horror movie metal lyrics, i'd say. Zombies and nightmares and what not.

Chris Crowson: Dust: wait...

Vance Kotrla: Oh yeah, I wrote that one. It's about living a sheltered life and finding out that you don't know all you think you do about life

Chris Crowson: Feral: it's about werewolves

Font of put: It's about how pollution and cities are bad
Beneath the waves: The cthulu mythos, pretty standard
Rage: It's about channeling your anger...toward destructive ends
Necrotic enchantment: It's an allegory using zombies for people who do whatever the masses dictate
Rex mortis: It's about vampires
Revolt:

Vance Kotrla: We wrote this two days before we recorded it

Chris Crowson: It's about the marginalized intelligentsia rising up to assume world domination

Twilight: It's about entering the spirit world

Vance Kotrla: ...asshole

Ryan Dawe: They won't understand that

Vance Kotrla: Oh well, it's a joke

12. What are the bands favorite songs?

Ryan Dawe: Revolt, Feral, Dust, Rage

Vance Kotrla: I dig them all, but Feral's got to be near the top of the list

13. What does the future hold for the band?

Vance Kotrla: Uh...well.

Ryan Dawe: My nuts ... enjoy!

14. If you could play with any band who would it be and why?

Ryan Dawe: My nuts.

Vance Kotrla: He's from canada

Chris Crowson: That's a hard question

Vance Kotrla: I'd like to play with at the gates, if they were to be resurrected

Chris Crowson: Nine Inch Nails would be really cool, but the crowd probably wouldn't be into us

15. Who writes the majority of the music?

Chris Crowson: The piano wonder boy

16. Who has been the favorite band you’ve played with and why?

Ryan Dawe: Acid Bath

Vance Kotrla: They were our favorite band at the time they came through houston in late 1996, so getting to play with them was just really bad ass

17. Where did you get the band name from?

Vance Kotrla: Crowson stole it.

Chris Crowson: Black Spiral Dancers was the name of a werewolf tribe in a role playing game

18. Describe what the band is like live?

Chris Crowson: We didn't move around much.

Vance Kotrla: I've always tried to get them to change that.

Chris Crowson: We haven't played in a long time since Ryan goes to school in Georgia, but if we did, that would be different. It'd be really bad ass now.

19. If you are gonna do any kind of video what would be in it?

Vance Kotrla: We actually did do small-format video for dust. It had a little claymation guy climbing into a box and getting buried in a sand shower. It could've been better.

Chris Crowson: But if we were going to do anything with a budget, I'd like to do a video for Feral that follows the lyrics

20. Are there any touring plans made; if so tell me about them?

Vance Kotrla: No

21. Where do you think the band will be 20 years from now?

Vance Kotrla: That's like that future question earlier.

Chris Crowson: It'll probably be a side project, if it's still around.