A Brief History of Panic (part I)

In the autumn of 2016, I got a Facebook message from a headbanger in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho!) asking some questions about Panic. In itself, this was not unusual. Once every few months I hear from someone asking about the band. I figure it’s easiest to track me because I have an uncommon name…

Konstantin Chilikin has an on-line metal magazine called Stay Heavy and wondered if I’d agree to an interview. I said of course, and gave him my email address to send the questions.

What he sent was the most-exhaustive list of prompts I’d ever seen. How this guy from the other side of the world could even know about some of the shit was beyond me. It sounded like he was writing from Burien! For a second, I actually thought it might  be someone from within the Circle of Trust playing an internet prank on me– because some of this stuff bordered on inside jokes. And it’s not like this guy has just been sitting in his parents’ basement in Moscow obsessing on Panic since the 1990s. He’s clearly one of these guys who enjoys research, and he has accumulated this level of knowledge about hundreds if not thousands of American metal bands from the last 30 years.

I was pretty overwhelmed at first, and hastily shut down the email– trying to forget about it. Occasionally I’d open it back up and eventually I started pecking away at it. More than a year later, I’d finished what had become an 10,000 word history of the band, using Konstantin’s questions as an outline. It was actually a real gas to write, with lots of trips down memory alley and more than a few fact-checking sidetrips. It’s fun to research yourself– you can find out some stuff you’d forgotten.

Anyway, it’s far from ‘complete’ but it is accurate. Also, it is not for everyone. I’d say for completists only.  Some of you will find yourselves in here. A few of you might not find the light in which history has recalled you to be very flattering, in which case maybe you shouldn’t have been such a fuckin’ dick at the time. History aint pretty…

In order to keep as much of your attention as possible, I’ll break this into three movements. I’ll add Konstantin’s prompts at the top of each section for context. Jack, George & Marty have already read this and issued their fondest endorsements. I hope you like it, too, although truthfully I don’t really expect you to read it…

Stay heavy,

–Braimes

Well, Jeff, let’s imagine we have a time machine and now we are ready to jump in the past. Location: Seattle, Year: 1987. Ronald Reagan is still in the White House, Starbucks still is a local company, Def Leppard has released “Hysteria”, while Guns ‘n Roses have unleashed “Appetite For Destruction”, “Slippery When Wet” is the most selling album in the USA and Nirvana is doing its first steps. And what about you and your band mates? What were you doing in 1987?

What about music scene in Seattle in the late 80’s? For many people this city is the cradle of Grunge but was there any interest in heavy metal? Were you close with guys from Forced Entry, The Accused and Sanctuary? Were you influenced by local heavy metal heroes Culprit? Did you have any troubles with hardcore / indie bands like The Melvins, Beat Happening etc.?

Tell me about the very early days of Panic. What influenced you to get in touch with other guys and form a band? What can you say about your first demo from 1988? Was it any good? Would you play it to your children nowadays?

I won’t bother you with questions about each demo but can you say a few words about that demo-era of Panic in general? Was it flooded with live gigs, new friends, business contacts, parties and whatever or was it pretty steady?

Summer of 1987

First of all, Konsantin, thanks for this very comprehensive questionnaire! Your perception of what it was like to be a PacificNorthWestern American headbanger in this particular era is very keen!

Terry Date, Seattle WA

Panic was two years old and transitioning from the name Cold Steele at this point in time. We were experiencing something of an identity crisis, torn between a few competing styles of metal. We were definitely more interested in Appetite for Destruction than Slippery When Wet or Hysteria– the latters of which we heartily despised. What we were listening to most at that time, however, was the best of the contemporary thrash metal of the day. Overkill’s Taking Over was a favorite and of course Among the Living. We were still squeezing the glory out of the previous year’s Master of Puppets, but the release of Garage Days Revisited in August really was a game-changer. Except for Marty, we weren’t much into Slayer—and we mocked Exodus openly which is ironic since they ended up mentoring us years later. We dug Trouble and Loudness and Accept. But the grunge movement hadn’t achieved liftoff yet and Cowboys from Hell was still three years away also…

Terry Date had the hot hand in Seattle at the time, and though we weren’t unanimously nuts about some of the local stuff he’d done (Sanctuary, Soundgarden, Fifth Angel) we admired his tones and sought to attach our name to his. We saved our money and went into Steve Lawson Studios with him that summer and did four songs. It’s a beautiful demo and it was really the first time we’d heard ourselves properly recorded. After the Saturday night sessions, around midnight, we jumped the 8’ chainlink fence that surrounded the festival grounds of Seattle Center, where the famous Space Needle is. It was Labor Day weekend, when the city hosts its Bumbershoot festival. It’s a much bigger deal these days, and in the post-911 security culture of the US we probably would have been arrested if not shot. But this was 1987, and instead security just escorted us off the grounds. We were pretty full of ourselves that particular night…

We worked this demo hard, sending it to radio stations, magazines and record labels. George had designed a killer logo and we took some photos on a stone staircase off Green Lake in Seattle. I pasted up some liner notes with lots of special thanks. The initial run of 100 cassette tapes was financed by a local record store manager named Lance Goodwin. Bubble Records was a great outlet for the latest in heavy metal, and Lance was a fan & friend. After exhausting our budget on studio time, we didn’t have enough money to pay for production!

Jeff Gilbert, Pain Brain

The demo didn’t get us a record deal, but it did get the attention of Jeff Gilbert who at the time was still hosting his Brain Pain radio show on Sunday nights at the University of Washington’s KCMU radio station (now the commercially-popular KEXP). Jeff was very supportive of Panic and played the tape every week. Jeff Gilbert was definitely the first and most-important Seattle media to get behind Panic, and really helped us graduate from suburban booger pickers to downtown Seattle legitimacy in a very short time.

Late ‘80s Seattle

As you astutely point out, the late 1980s was the pre-grunge era in Seattle. It’s not as if that music hadn’t been invented yet, because Green River was certainly playing and recording as were Crisis Party, Catbutt, Malfunkshun and a bunch of other bands that would wear the grunge label later– after it was identified. The scene back then was more integrated– with the possible exception of metal. Metal is metal is metal—that has always been the case. People who don’t specifically like metal often go out of their way to avoid it; and by the same token metal fans often only consume metal shows and records. That said, Panic was always embraced to an extent by the unmetal community, and we billed up with lots of bands from outside our genre. It wasn’t a Thinking Man’s Metal shtick like BÖC—more like Drinking Man’s Metal…

I’m sorry to say it, but in those days there was quite a bit of self-aware competition between the bands in our class. Sanctuary, Queensryche and Metal Church had already graduated, of course– they had major label deals and tour support. Panic and Forced Entry and Bitter End were left to jockey for position and though there was much comradery (much of which endures to this day) there were also some conflicts. Forced and us in particular were pretty competitive. They hailed from a suburb north of Seattle and we came from the southend. So Panic’s mantra was “Northend Metal Sucks”—a phrase I still use on a regular basis to this day, even if I’m just in the supermarket or riding my bicycle. Northend metal sucks!

Culprit and Overlord and TKO were a half-generation before us, and those guys were gods to us. We were just kids going to metal shows at rollerskating rinks, and they were fuckin’ Culprit, man—the heavy metal sentence! There’s a whole coffee table book on that scene & period coming out by some guys out of Portland going by NW Metalworx. They’re putting out records, too—a real cool movement. I’ll connect you with them. I can definitely say that Culprit and Overlord and Wild Dogs had as much of an influence on my personal development as a performer as any NWoBHM band. Possibly that was because I had such great access to them—any given weekend ‘82-‘85 I could go see one of these kickass local metal bands. Those really were heady days.

I think the Melvins and particularly The Accused hold a special place in NW Heavy history. There’s never been another band like either of them—true crossover genius, both.

Early Days of Panic

early Cold Steele promo– Auburn, WA. L-R: Rondo, Braimes, George, Gary

Cold Steele had been practicing in the loft of George’s parents’ barn in Auburn, 25 miles south of Seattle. He & Gary (Allard) were juniors in high school and Rondo (Middleton) was a college sophomore like me in Bellingham, 100 miles north. I had done some college radio and some promoting and fanzine writing and thought I was already a rock star even though I’d never been in a band. My ego was developed enough to try singing, though, so I went down to Auburn with Rondo on Saturday, May 18, 1985 and joined the band. George likes to recall that I was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette at 9am—and I’m not sure that’s true. But we ran through some Iron Maiden and Raven covers and there was no question about it. Instant chemistry!

We were pretty stoked. The guys were committed and they had real gear. It was hard to rehearse, though, because of the distance and because George & Gary worked on weekends. When we were able to get together it was rad– and we practiced hard and started writing some songs, the first of which was called “High Noon.” We played our first gig at a grange hall in the woods and ironically Marty & Jack’s band Strychnine was the headliner but they ended up not getting to play because we blew out the PA. Our second gig was at a kegger in the woods and Strychnine was on that bill, too– but they couldn’t play that time because the party got busted by the Kent Police.

Those were high times. None of us had been in a band before except for Rondo, but we knew we had something special. Rondo & I liked to drink beer and smoke pot in those days, but the music was always first. Lots of bands (including ours to an extent) lose that focus after time, but in those days we were very focused and totally intense on the music. The first demo from ‘87 was with Terry and then we made another one (Sex & Violence, which featured the song “911” which eventually ended up on the first record) in ‘88 with Michael Tortorello at Triad Studios. That tape wasn’t quite as even, but still had some great moments. Jeff Gilbert played the spots off it, too. And– like the first tape– it failed to land us a record deal.

Next week: personnel changes, Metal Blade, the Elton rule