Take a listen to our premiere of the new song, “Altar of Lies,” from The Fucking Wrath’s new album, Valley of the Serpent’s Soul.
The Fucking Wrath “Altar of Lies” by Decibel Magazine
Heavy, huh? Well, this aural onslaught is nothing compared to the brutality one occasionally suffers at the hands of one’s offspring. The Fucking Wrath’s guitarist/vocalist Craig Kasamis not only supplied us (via the band’s label TeePee Records) with this new track, he also offered up his take on the horrors (and highs) of being a dad.
“Heavy Fatherhood”
Since I can remember, I have, and will always be, a huge fan of metal. It is ingrained in my DNA, mostly from my father. He once told me that he stopped listening to KISS, and most music, after they released the Kissco album, Dynasty. He told me that they ruined rock ‘n’ roll and he would have nothing to do with it until they got their shit together.
In my early years, I spent most of my time playing music, riding a skateboard and listening to all that was heavy metal. Many of my days were spent with my friends having headbang contests to see who could last the longest (I will still challenge and beat anyone you know). On a good day, you could find us starting circle pits in my garage while holding axes and screaming along with the lyrics. Many times it turned into an all-out pit-attack on my mother and sisters as they unexpectedly entered into my domain.
Fast forward 20 years to the present and you will still find me doing much of the same. Still headbanging and “pit-attacking” people, but now it is my wife and two children. Which brings me to my point. I always knew that the path of heavy metal would be a dark road filled with horror and constant battles, and that is why I ultimately love it, but I never thought in a thousand years that being a father would be tougher, or heavier, than metal.
This tale is just one of the many battles I have encountered in four years in the realm of Heavy Fatherhood.
It’s 3:30 am and I awake to the cry of my eight-month-old boy, King (yes, his name is King Kasamis). He is starting his midnight tit-fit and as I hear his anger begin to build, my eyes start to peel open like the awakening of the Kraken from a long-deserved slumber. With the movements similar to a drunk Ozzy, I hobble my way out of bed, still not having any real idea what’s going on but I know I have to get in there before he wakes the other little monster I have created, my 3-year-old daughter, Scout.
As I start to take my fist steps, I feel a squish. I look down with one bloodshot eye to make sure that, yep, that is a piss-filled diaper. As I continue on my path into their pitch-black room, I manage to step on what must be the sharpest plastic toy that has ever been made. It’s as if God placed it there and sharpened it for my foot just to give me the final “Fuck you” for not believing in him. The pain forces me to take a seriously unwanted knee, and with a crash of thunder and lightning I fall down, slamming my head into the boy’s crib making him cry even harder.
I can tell that my foot is bleeding but my only concern is to get that baby out of the room before the whole house wakes up. I pick him up out of his crib and start frantically looking for the bottle that he barely tolerates when he doesn’t have a boob to drink from. In the middle of the night the boy is much more prone to having a titty so he tends to fight with me over taking his bottle. He spits it out and throws it on the floor and then spends most of his time trying to latch on to my man-tit. To be honest, I have thought about letting him have it just to get him to sleep. I know it would be fucked up but you will basically try almost anything to get a kid back to sleep.
He finally starts to wind down after what seems like hours and is beginning to fall into the great valley of slumber. His eyes are closed; he has finally stopped startling himself awake. My mind is beginning to ease and as I start to feel the heat of victory, I hear a faint movement from the other room. I know in the pit of my godless heathen soul that Scout has awakened. “FUCK!!!!” I scream in my head.
As I prepare for the worst, she peeks around the corner of the door and supplies me with an odd, but cute, smirking type of half-smile. This makes me think, “Oh, maybe this is going to be easy.” I figure I’ll get her back in bed real quick, put the boy down, and go the fuck back to sleep. As she moves closer to me I say, “Scout, it’s OK, go back to bed.” She begins to tell me that she does not feel well and before she can even finish the words, a magnum-force atomic torpedo of vomit starts super-charging out of her mouth.
The sheer volume and force of this puke is not only shocking to me but it also has its cross-hairs right on my fucking face. I yell, “Holy shit!!” as I’m being dowsed in puke like a hobo who takes his showers in a car wash. I manage to wake up my dear sleeping wife, the newly-sleeping baby and scare the shit out of Scout. I am covered in puke and everyone is crying, including me, as I gather myself from wondering what I did to deserve this terrorist act.
I get everyone in the shower to wash off the blood, puke and piss that I have just bathed in. As I let the water and soap do its work, I immediately start to rethink my position of not liking to fuck with a condom, hence creating this spectacle. Everyone eventually gets cleaned up and they all get back to sleep. It is now 5:30 am and I will be getting up in an hour to make my way to work.
I love my kids more than life and, yes, heavy metal itself, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. That is the fucked up part about Heavy Fatherhood. After all that, you still go on to the next battle.
