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My friend Luke and I interviewed Hirax frontman Katon W. DePena for our first fanzine, Frightmare,which would not be that alarming, except for two things:

1. It was 22 years ago, and
2. Katon W. DePena is still wearing the same outfit. I probably would be too, I just can’t fit into mine anymore.

It’s further proof that middle-age is just an extended second adolescence. Who wants to leave the teenage thrash pit, anyway? Not Katon, that’s for sure.

For the non-rattleheads among us, Hirax was a first-wave thrash metal band from LA who burst onto the scene in 1984, making waves in the underground tape trading circles with an outrageous demo that mixed hardcore punk and speed metal and tossed Katon’s high-pitched caterwauling over the top. They signed to Metal Blade records a year later and released a flurry of hardcore thrash metal albums over the next few years. Through relentless street-level promotion, Hirax became one of the top cult-metal acts of the 1980’s, but broke up, rather suddenly, in 1987. Years later Katon reemerged as one of the sleaze dealers behind infamous trash rock label Junk Records, and in 1997, he reformed Hirax. They’ve been together ever since, still plying their Nagasonic teenage speed-thrash to a fervent cabal of loyal old-skull metal hold-outs. This long awaited DVD features a full set from the 2005 Minneapolis Mayhem festival, plus a slew of live clips from various spots all over the world, including Germany, Sweden, and Holland. There’s a recent backstage band interview, as well. The set-lists cover the gamut from the bands earliest days (three versions of the infamous Bombs of Death!) to new, true-to-form tracks from their last album, 2004’s New Age of Terror. Visually, the main set looks pretty sharp, although the picture has a tendency to slip into total darkness between songs. Lighting rig gimmicks, you know. The sound, as you would expect, is thunderous.

I’m not enough of a thrash-geek to recognize if the entire original band is on display here, but Katon is, looking and sounding exactly like he did in 1985, and that’s pretty fuckin’ awesome. My only complaint, really, is the lack of vintage footage. There IS, in fact, some live clips from 1985 in there somewhere in an Easter Egg, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. If someone knows this secret-of-steel, lemme know, huh?