March 03--"We used to joke about it when something bad would happen. We'd be like, 'The only way this could get worse is if somebody died,'" says James May, drummer and vocalist for Savannah, Ga., metal trio Black Tusk. "Then somebody did."
Black Tusk bassist Jonathan Athon was on a brief furlough from the studio, where he had been putting the final touches on what would become the band's latest album, "Pillars of Ash," when his motorcycle was struck by a motorist who ran a stop sign. Athon, 32, died less than a week later.
Because Athon had finished his contributions before he died, Black Tusk's remaining members don't look at "Pillars of Ash" as a tribute album. To them, it's the last album when things were normal. It's swampy and fierce and death-obsessed, the latter being not at all remarkable; death-obsessed is how Black Tusk usually was, though band members regret it now.
"You're in a metal band, so it's all fun and games singing about death," May says. "Then, when something like that happens, it's like, whoa. It hits closer to home. ... That one song, 'Black Tide'? We'll never play that live, because it's Athon singing that and he's pretty much singing about death the whole time. It kind of took on another meaning after that."
Athon, May and guitarist Andrew Fidler met when they were teenagers and formed Black Tusk a few years later, after the implosion of their other bands. They were unusually close, and, until Athon's death, had always had the same lineup. "We took great pride in being the band that didn't switch members like underwear," May says. "We were like brothers."
Athon died in November 2014, six weeks before the start of an important European tour with Black Label Society. May and Fidler felt a great deal of pressure to immediately decide whether or not the band would continue. "The night it happened, I think it was four more days until they cut him off life support. That whole weekend, we weren't sure if he was going to get through it or not. Through the next week, we had to decide what we were going to do. It was good and bad, because we were forced to make a decision quickly."
Fidler and May approached Corey Barhorst, former bassist for Kylesa, and asked him to replace Athon until they could figure something else out. "We went to Corey and said, 'Can you help us through these tours? Can you learn these songs?' Then we got through the tours and he was like, 'I don't want to be a fill-in member, I want to be a full-time member.' And we figured he did good musically and we didn't want to kill him on tour, because that was a stressful situation. We figured, why not?"
Barhorst joins Black Tusk at a precarious time in the band's history. "Pillars of Ash" may wind up being Black Tusk's breakthrough album, the one that finally places it alongside Savannah sludge metal titans such as Baroness and Kylesa. Or it could be that everyone, fans included, decides things are just too awkward. May is determined to press forward. "It's sad, having to go on without Athon, but it's also kind of exciting having a new musical aspect come into the band," he says. "Corey's an amazing artist. I'm excited about writing a new album with him. ... We've known him forever, he was at the first Black Tusk show. It's like family. He was one of Athon's buddies too. It's not like some foreign guy coming into the band. Of course we'll never be the same. Athon was my party buddy on tour, we did everything together. I miss that sometimes, definitely."
Still, May worries about the scrutiny the new album, Athon's last, will face, and the scrutiny the next album, Barhorst's first, will generate. He worries that fans of the band (which plays Saturday night at Reggies Rock Club) won't accept a lineup change that was totally out of Black Tusk's control. "A lot of times people don't like when a band's member gets kicked out, (like), 'Why can't you guys get over your internal problems?'" May says. "This is something that got dealt to us. Someone died, and we had to keep going. I hope people look at it like that."
Allison Stewart is a freelance reporter.
onthetown@tribpub.com
When: 9 p.m. Saturday (doors)
Where: Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St.
Tickets: $10-$14 (17+); 312-949-0120 or www.ticketfly.com
