“Pizza thrash” is a pejorative term used to describe contemporary thrash metal bands that make numerous cultural references to the eighties and focus on topics in their music like drinking beer, going to parties, Saturday morning cartoons, and of course eating pizza. Because of course there has to be people out there who hate what makes thrash metal fun. Previously, I thought that Municipal Waste and their third album The Art of Partying might be the epitome of this so-called “pizza thrash” style. But in the spirit of Australian larrikinism, there of course also has to be a band out there who do them one better and commit to the bit by taking the term literally.
Pizza Death are Nuclear Family Sized five-piece tomato-based in Melbourne who serve up truly cheesy slices of crossover thrash goodness that are hotter than a Hellapeño Hot Pocket and faster than a Domino’s delivery driver on the gear. With an average song length of just over a minute, Pizza Death’s songs don’t overstay their welcome and go down your gullet quicksmart, leaving you immediately craving another serving.
It was actually our point man Shelvo who first met Pizza Death in one of his many jaunts down south. He was going to see them at Blutes Bar when they came up our way to Brisbane but he wasn’t able to make it. After giving me his ticket, I decided to give Slice of Death and Reign of The Anticrust a spin. I knew immediately that I had to find out more about the Beast Inside The Box. Perhaps already used to high temperatures from their time in the oven, they were the perfect fit for our Five Quickfire Questions!
Pizza Death are:
- Pat Simkin: Vocals
- Kane Quackenbush: Bass
- Tim Day: Drums (not interviewed)
- Braiden Mann: Guitar (not interviewed)
Pat: OnlyBands is the site that has the saucy pictures behind the paywall, right? Because we will do anything to show off our greasy bodies.
OB: Of course, yes. We will do a very saucy shoot after this.
1. If you were on Pizza Death Row, would you choose Death by Garlic Bread, to drown in a Tsunami of Salami, suffer a Capricciosa Decapitation, get Sliced To Pieces, be Eaten O-live by Zomb-olives, or end up as Blackened Remains?
Kane: I would choose to drown in garlic bread. Was that one of the options?
OB: Death by Garlic Bread.
Kane: Death by Garlic Bread? Yeah, I’d probably go with that one.
Pat: Because that’s about being force-fed garlic bread until you explode.
Kane: Yeah. I don’t want to be eaten alive by anything, really. Yeah. Or Sliced to Pieces. These don’t sound good at all. Who wrote these songs?
Pat: Sliced to Pieces is about getting cut up with a pizza knife by a serial killer. I think I would go with the Tsunami of Salami. It just sounds fun.
Kane: Yeah, you’d take a few other people down with you as well.
Pat: And your family would be like, “How did he go?”, “Tsunami of Salami.”
2. It’s about to be the Pizzapocalypse and all pizzerias in the world are about to disappear except one of them chosen by you. Which pizzeria do you save?
Kane: Thin Slizzy.
Pat: Thin Slizzy.
Kane: Thin Slizzy. Basically, they’ve paid us to play there before, so… and, you know, no other pizzeria has done that. So…
Pat: They’re a really awesome, authentic Italian place in Collingwood that’s got like a heavy metal theme. All the pizzas are named after metal stuff. Like the meat lovers, it is called “Meat-allica”.
Kane: And they named the pizza after one of our songs.
Pat: Yeah their Hawaiian is called Excruciating Painapple, named after our song. Slizzy all the way.
OB: Awesome. Did you guys ever play at Frankie’s Pizza By The Slice before it shut?
Kane: Yes, we did that once. Yeah.
Pat: Just before they closed. We heard it was going to close and we were like, “We need to play before it closes.” I think we were like one of the last bands in the last week or two. Just squeezed in. That’s a tragic loss.
3. You have mere minutes to eat an entire Nuclear Family Sized pizza or the world will end. Unless we have any competitive eaters here, who would you pick to help you save the world?
Pat: Probably… is it the band or…?
OB: Anyone really.
Pat: Oh… I don’t know. Probably Kane.
Kane: I’m an eating machine.
Pat: Watching Kane at an all-you-can-eat buffet is a spectator sport. I don’t know how he does it. He doesn’t put on any weight and just puts it away.
OB: Well, we’re in good hands then if we need to eat a massive pizza to save the world.
Pat: Do you actually have one of these while this is happening? Because I would love to watch you (Kane) try. It’s the size of a suburb!
OB: I mean, we can always ask Sal’s (the pizza place we’re doing this interview near) over there if they do a big pizza.
Pat: Yeah, (we’ll ask him) do you do Nuclear Family Sized over here?
4. Have you ever seen a pizza order so offensive you thought they were The Anti-Crust?
Kane: Ah well, do you know what? There was this guy who messaged us on Instagram and he said that he used to work at a pizzeria and this was his pizza that he would make for himself to take home at the end of his shift. And it was an absolute abomination. It was like the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life. Uh… I can’t even remember… It was so gross.
Pat: It was like he was trying to describe the worst pizza you could possibly have. It was like his guilty pleasure.
Kane: I can’t really remember it. All I do remember is like telling him, “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Pat: But we in Team Pizza Death, we are all “You do you.” You like the grossest shit? Do it. That’s what life’s about. Enjoying it. Even in Sweden, they put curried banana on pizza.
Interviewer: Yeah, that was gonna be my answer (if you couldn’t think of one off the top of your head).
Pat: And Kiwi fruit apparently? I think Denmark I hear they do that?
OB: I mean I’ve seen peas and mayo on pizza before.
Pat: Urghhhh. I used to work near a place that had fucking sushi on pizza. That… yeah. It’s just like you’re trying to be facetious then. Wait, this place, Sal’s. Have you ever been to Sal’s?
OB: Yeah I have.
Pat: Probably get me a slice there later.
5. Which album would you pick to be the soundtrack to your Psilocybin Pizza Murder Suicide?
Kane: I would pick Reign of the Anti-Crust.
Pat: I would as well.
Kane: I was going to say maybe KISS, because we sampled a couple of things from Detroit Rock City. But they’re all fucking assholes. And I don’t really want to say that I like KISS.
Bonus Round
Because I had so much fun coming up with questions based on their song names, I decided to show them some of the ones I didn’t use to see if they might want to have an extra slice:
6. Who do you think deserves to have a Napalm Cheese strike dropped right on them?
Pat: Anyone who puts pineapple on their pizza. Anyone.
7. If you have to screw with your worst enemy, what would you throw inside their microwave and press start to create a Microwave Monster?
Kane: Well, I wouldn’t throw anything inside. Just to screw with them, what I’d do is I would steal the plate out of the microwave and then fuck off. And then their microwave is useless to them. That is how I would fuck with someone. It’s a very petty thing to do.
And there we have it! A conclusive answer to the age old debate over whether pineapple belongs on pizza from the experts themselves. While their music does revolve around the sort of pizza that you get in a box as part of a combo deal, I wasn’t surprised that they seem more partial to the stuff that gets a baptism in fire and comes to you right off the stone. Once you’ve had some truly authentic pizza and listened to some truly authentic pizza thrash, there’s no going back! Pizza Death already have two albums with quite a few songs on them already. I was wondering to myself if they had enough ingredients left over for another. As it turns out, they already have a third one out of the oven and ready to be boxed and delivered to fans very soon. You can listen to their cut from it, Prosciutto Necronomicon, below:
Make sure to give them a follow as well:
All shots in this were by RALK Photography for Sense Music Media.
