This mini profile originally ran in July 2024 edition of Stereogum’s The Black Market.
Lord Kaiju, the guitarist and vocalist of Oxygen Destroyer, choreographed Guardian Of The Universe like a showstopping fight sequence. “It’s a tribute to the Heisei Gamera Trilogy, my favorite films of all time,” he writes in an email about the genesis of the Seattle quartet’s third full-length, later adding, “The plan was to push ourselves to our absolute limit and create a record that’s just as grand, epic, and brutal as the movies they’re inspired by.”
But the death and thrash ragers that make up Guardian Of The Universe aren’t just paying tribute to some of the most “highly regarded [films] in Kaiju fandom.” No, Oxygen Destroyer use the films as riff templates, lining those riffs up with the action on the screen. “Every riff on this album is inspired by specific key moments from the Heisei Gamera Trilogy,” Lord Kaiju explains. “It syncs up perfectly. We have a handful of music videos on YouTube. I recommend checking those out to see what I mean.”
Or you can just hear what Lord Kaiju means. Guardian Of The Universe is a visceral album, a true leaves-marks onslaught pairing speed-demon death metal and chunky thrash pummeling that’s like if enlargened-by-radiation versions of Angelcorpse and Demolition Hammer did battle within a city that’s soon to be stomped to dust. Lord Kaiju and Joey Walker’s guitars fire forth with the anarchic precision of an atomic breath attack. Bassist Paul Wright and drummer Chris Craven bang out a bevy of bruising body blow rhythms. Oxygen Destroyer plain rips. And “Shadow of Evil” is a ripper on an album of rippers, somehow turning it up a notch on an album that already feels dimed.
“That song is a tribute to Gyaos, Gamera’s arch nemesis,” Lord Kaiju notes. “The Gyaos species are sinister as hell and consume literally everything they can, including each other, when they have the opportunity. With this in mind, I wanted that track, in particular, to be as chaotic, frantic, and destructive as possible.”
On “Shadow Of Evil,” Oxygen Destroyer hits a frantic high from the jump. Between the sonic boom OOGH and the start of the rough-as-a-cat’s-tongue, rasping vocals of the verse, the band consumes many notebooks full of headbangable riffs, the kind of involuntary neck-snappers that will keep chiropractors in business for eons. For the rest of the track, the terrain quickly shifts beneath the listener’s feet as fleet rhythms explore the outer boundaries of thrash extremity while panic shredding solos chase closely behind them. All of this happens in lightning-fast miniatures. It’s the thrash journey — that classic songwriting standby when the bridges and codas sprint through an instrumental odyssey before returning to the main section — condensed to highly concentrated laser-like zaps. So, how does Oxygen Destroyer structure these surprisingly intricate songs?
“We play hyper-fast to symbolize certain moments in specific Giant Monster films where buildings are crumbling, landscapes are exploding, and titans of terror are clawing at each other,” Lord Kaiju writes. “And when we play slow, it’s syncing up to the scenes where Kaiju are slowly lumbering across the land or recharging themselves within the depths of the sea before the next attack.”
As for the journey, those wordless moments of thrash badassery? “Sometimes I feel like it’s best to let the music speak without words being said,” Lord Kaiju states simply. “I love making the listeners wait for the vocals to kick in from time to time, the same way most Kaiju films keep the viewers waiting a short while until the monster finally appears.”
Of course, crushing these songs in the studio is one thing. It’s worth noting that Oxygen Destroyer also excels on the stage, as evidenced by its recent West Coast run of dates with the similarly-minded Ascended Dead. At a set witnessed by yours truly, the band rose from the depths and tore the venue to bits. It made it look easy. Oxygen Destroyer knuckled down, becoming almost entranced by its own ripping qualities, and performed its promised business of tearing off my face. This practiced, super-athlete quality belied the difficulty of the new material, as Lord Kaiju notes. “I won’t lie. The new songs are tough, far more technical than anything we’ve done before. They’re a real bitch to perform. I love it, though. I like to imagine we’re summoning the presence of the sacred beasts themselves, and their power is almost too much for our human forms to contain.”
Be that as it may, the technical side of the songs isn’t the hard part. “The true hardest part is making sure the songs are a worthy tribute to the monsters that inspire them,” Lord Kaiju explains. “For example, the eighth track, ‘Banishing The Iris Of Sempiternal Tenebrosity,’ is based on the final battle from Gamera 3, which might honestly be my favorite Kaiju fight of all time. That song, in particular…took me half a year to write. I needed to be absolutely sure that it would do justice to one of the most important scenes in the Gamera trilogy. It drove me mad, but once it was finished, it was totally worth it.” I’m sure the choreographers of Kaiju films feel the same way.
You can find a second interview with Lord Kaiju in the October 2024 edition of The Black Market here.