- Jason Hesley
Fetus Aftermath release "Aftermath"
FETUS AFTERMATH: “THE ALTER” DEMO (1994)
“We never had the grander look of things, or else we wouldn’t have called the band what it was,” said Darcy Rawlins of his band, Fetus Aftermath, on a recent radio interview with CKCU’s ‘Meltdown.’ Love it or hate it, he added, you’ll remember it. After befriending Disciples of Power during their stay in Ottawa around 1990, Darcy and Sean McArthur followed them back to Edmonton, where Fetus Aftermath was, uh, born in 1991. Returning to Ottawa, Darcy found guitarist Ray Fortier, who in turn recruited his drummer friend, Frank. A nice bonus about Frank was that he already had a rehearsal space in the CHEZ-106 building (126 York St.) --- the mecca of the thrash and death metal scene in Ottawa at the time. In 1994, Fetus Aftermath recorded a demo at Rock’s Wonderland, just around the corner from CHEZ. The three-song cassette, called ‘The Alter’, was sold in Ottawa at Record Runner, but also distributed in other cities, with a clever distribution tracking technique: white labels for Ottawa, green for Montreal and red for Toronto. You can stream the full 1994 demo on YouTube [https://bit.ly/2D9L39i] or download it directly from F.A.'s old Angelfire (!!) website: https://bit.ly/2RxoQLm According to their 2018 Meltdown interview, Fetus Aftermath had previously been to CKCU for an interview in 1994, to promote their demo. The band was drunk and a bit unruly, apparently; a real handful for the host: “We probably gave him a heart attack,” says Darcy in the recent sober and gentlemanly interview with Dmitri on Feb. 19th last year.
You can listen to the full Fetus Aftermath interview, with music and talk about the old Ottawa metal scene of the ‘90s, here: https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/56/36355.html.
All three songs on the 1994 demo were re-recorded for their 1999 CD album on Withdrawl Records, ‘Everything Disgusting And Vile.’ The 1999 line-up of Fetus Aftermath has reunited and will likely re- appear on the Ottawa scene in 2019