Wednesday 13
Subscribe
X

Get the latest from Beat

Wednesday 13

wednesday13.jpg

Joseph Poole, better known as Wednesday 13, is a man who has made quite a fruitful career out of combining the disciplines of horror movies and heavy metal. He formed his first band Maniac Spider Trash in 1992 and since then he has released album after album of songs about zombies, vampires, werewolves and various other ghastly ghouls under various guises (Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13, Murderdolls, and his own solo moniker to name a few).

“For me the whole thing started from watching TV and movies as a kid,” Wednesday 13 explains. “I loved the theme songs. I loved things like Rocky and Rambo and I loved like the action themes but as I got older I started watching movies and I’d be like, ‘Oh it would be really cool if Ramones had done a song here or if Motley Crue did a song about Nightmare on Elm Street.’

“I started seeing a couple of bands that would do that and I just went, ‘Alright, we’ll just do a whole band that does nothing but songs that sounded like they’d be in movies.’ It something I started in my teens and carried on till now. It’s kinda always made sense in my brain as I always had that diet between rock’n’roll and Dracula.”

This aesthetic approach along with his superhuman work ethic has seen him gather a dedicated fan base around the globe, and his Australian fans have the lucky treat of being able to see him put on his own horror show as he returns for the second time this year.

“Yeah I’m excited!” he explains in his American drawl. “We played Soundwave earlier this year and it’s really cool to be able to come back for the second time in a year and do our own headline shows.” Last time we were there we had to do a 45 minute set for Soundwave so it will be a really cool return in which we can do our full hour and a half set.”

He and his crew will be over in the end of October in support of their latest EP Spook and Destroy, with Australian shock rockers Dark Cell in tow. Although by the sounds of it, the release is just a kind of warm up for a full length record which we can expect in 2013, and basically an excuse to get out on the road, to the point where he has come to refer to Spook and Destroy as “The Tour EP”.

“This EP is just to tide people over till the end of the year, to whet their appetite. If you look at my history of releases, I’ve pretty much put out a full-length record once a year since 1996. It was coming to the end of this year and I knew I wasn’t gonna put a full length out, I didn’t wanna put it out by the end of the year and I wanted to save it for 2013. I didn’t want 2012 to go by without any recorded output so it made sense for this tour to have an EP out.”

Spook and Destroy is a collection of re-recorded live favourites plus a couple of brand new songs which he says are much heavier than anything he’s recorded before and give an indication of where he will be going with the new record. “We really kinda took on more of an early ‘80s John Carpenter kind of vibe in the intro and some of the sounds and things like that. The whole album is pretty much like a horror movie itself.” While he is certainly excited for his upcoming EP and supporting tour at the end of 2013, it certainly seems that he has big plans for 2013, as not only is he releasing a full length album which he refers to as his “horror master piece”, he will also be starting work on his first horror movie.

“I’m looking at 2013 as my year that people are either gonna know who I am and be happy with it or they’ll know who I am and be like, ‘Oh I wish that guy would go away’. I’m making myself heard.”

It seems like the obvious move for someone so obsessed with horror culture, and it’s actually surprising it’s taken until now for Wednesday 13 to get involved with a movie.

“I guess in the last few years with Rob Zombie putting out films it’s definitely opened the doors for someone like me to be able to do something and get it out there,” Wednesday explains. “It’s something I’ve been asked for years and I’ve been like, ‘Well maybe one day I’ll do it’ and now I’m really focused on the idea of doing it. I wanna make a Wednesday 13 movie in the fashion of how people think I would make one. It’ll be funny, and violent. It’ll be perfect.”

BY ADAM ROBERTSHAW