Blood Duster

History

Blood Duster got its start in 1991, with Jason Fuller (sometimes called Jason PC) on bass, Anthony Barry handling vocals and guitar, and Andrew Brown on drums. After they finished their first demo, Barry left the band, and Troy Darlington and Callum Wilson came in to replace him. In 1992, they put out a self-released demo called Menstrual Soup. By the time they were ready to record their first EP, Wilson and Darlington were out, replaced by Tony Forde, Shane Rout (who later founded the black metal act Abyssic Hate), and Brad Johnston. That debut EP, Fisting the Dead, came out in mid-1993 and was a straightforward grindcore release with 25 tracks. According to Rosemary Overell, the band is widely seen as the group that set the gore- and porno-grindcore style for Melbourne. The songs were originally cut for a planned split album on the Wild Rags label alongside Impetigo and Meat Shits. One track, "Derek," references a character played by Peter Jackson in his 1987 cult film Bad Taste, a movie that took heavy cues from late-80s grindcore acts like Carcass and Napalm Death on the Earache label. In 1996, Fisting the Dead appeared in the US as bonus tracks on the CD version of the band's 1995 EP Yeest, released through Relapse Records and Drug Bust Records. It got a vinyl reissue in 2001 with Yeest on the flip side. In 2005, bassist Jason Fuller's label Goat Sounds Records put out a reissue called Fisting the Dead... Again, which added bonus tracks. A 2008 reissue on Stomp Records bundled it with Yeest, compilation tracks, and live recordings from a show at the Great Britain Hotel on August 18, 1993. AllMusic's Tom Forget said that version seemed to come with a splatter effect every time you played it, and he thought it captured the band's early-90s grindcore peak before Southern and stoner rock grooves started creeping into their sound. In 1995, Blood Duster released the EP Yeest, which showed them leaning more toward rock. They toured Australia that year, including a stop in Canberra in November. Their 1998 album Str8 Outta Northcote mixed Southern rock riffs with blasting grindcore. That same year, they toured Australia again with Brutal Truth and recorded shows for a planned double live album. The next album, controversially titled Cunt, came out worldwide in 2001 and marked a return to a more percussion-driven grind style.