Today I'm going to be showcasing one of my favorite local bands from my area. All these bands now doing the death metal hardcore sound (despised icon etc..). RED SKY was the originators as far as I am concerned. Red sky was a deathcore band from Edinboro Pennsylvania, and who I feel to be one of the only band in the erie area who could actually play metal. There have been numerous bad bar metal bands coming out of erie at the time who were caught up in style of korn/the deftones etc. I've had to sit through many of these bad bands when I used to hit up the now defunct State Street Tavern. SST was a metal bar in downtown Erie that used to have all ages showcase shows on saturdays... But there was many a time that I've snuck in the back during the 21+ shows. SST turned into Nickys pub which is a fucking yuppie bar, but apparently nickys pub is now closed and theres some new bar called the crooked I in its place..anwyays back to red sky for a moment. I remember watching red sky and idolizing their drummer Phil Hogan. At the time I was just dabbling into playing drums, and was drumming in my first hardcore band downturn when I was 15. I never had drum lessons, and we just kinda winged it. We were teenagers powered on SURGE soda, and just wanted to play shows with some of our favorite local hardcore bands, (Contradiction, Red Sky, Neverfall, Abstain, Digression, Brothers keeper, xDISCIPLEx).
Knife behind the smile is one of my all time favorite hardcore metal releases, it holds a special place in my heart growing up & I know deep down that if Red Sky never parted ways in the early 2000's they would be huge today. If you take a look at all this psuedo deathcore bands out, who downtune their guitars and pig squeel, they are all terrible. Take a word of advice go listen to an obituary record and write some new riffs.
You can download their First Full Length from 1998 entitled "KNIFE BEHIND THE SMILE"on the now defunct CT label ENDLESS FIGHT RECORDS (Clubber Lang, Unearth, dissolve) and their second Full Length "II - "MPFW" released in 2000 on ALVERAN RECORDS out of Europe.
Hellz yea! Red Sky, I saw them once at the Wired Frog in Eastpoint (Detroit suburb) and I bought the KBTS album there. The drummer was definitely nuts, real quick on the dub-bass. I think he wore wrestling sneakers?
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ReplyDeleteI'm engaged to Phil Hogan, the drummer from Red Sky. He was so excited to see this blog post, he's not much of a techie, but he knew enough to google "red sky". He says thank you for what you said about his drumming, and the band. He also says that playing in Red Sky was one of the high points of his life. All the band members are still good friends to this day...Shawn Hammer is currently in a band, and is touring, but I don't know his information off hand.
Oh and Ryan, Phil said that yes, he did indeed wear wrestling sneakers, because he saw Paul Bostaph (Slayer) doing that.
Anyway, I just wanted to post and help him say thanks for what you said. He said it's a lot of fun to see how people remember Red Sky. He said that Knife Behind the Smile was their first real recording, and he said that they were all so excited about it, and impressed with how the sound turned out. Thanks for listening!!
~Nikki
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ReplyDeletethanks josh! i was always happy to see you at our shows.. and love that when i get out, i still do.
ReplyDeleteamazing to find this! lost my cd so many years ago when i absentmindedly left on the roof of car. these guys were a huge influence on me all the way across the lake in small town SW Ontario, having first heard of them through Day of Mourning...still have (and wear) the under-the-arm "stained glass reaper" shirt which i mail ordered years before the armies of hipster doofus screen printers started with off-set tees... ahead of the curve on many levels.
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