LESION
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LESION

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"The One Inch Punch (2006)"

Spend a typical day with the most masculine band in contemporary German music as heavy metal rockers Lesion do their very best to overcome a series of monumental obstacles and get to the gig before the house lights go down. Soon after drummer Venison is accused of terrorism and spirited away to Guantanamo by overzealous FBI agents, group bassist Mr. Pod signs up for an Internet dating service in hopes of breaking his involuntary, week-long celibate streak and recapturing his ailing mojo. Meanwhile, lead singer Dr. Gustav Hurtz has declared himself an alcoholic in a misguided attempt to land a television deal and make a few industry connections, and shock-haired guitarist Piss Promise finds himself forced to reside in the cramped quarters of a small storage locker. With time running out and the fans already lining up for the show, it's going to take more than a small miracle to get Lesion to the venue in time for the big concert. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide - New York Times


"Piss Promise, Doktor Gustave Hertz, Mr. Pod, and Venison machen sie metall"

by George Smith
November 1st, 2004 3:00 PM
Lesion
666
Lockdown DVD

Annoying guitarist Piss Promise of NYC's Lesion promises to ram a fist of rock down the throat of fans at Madison Square Garden on the band's 666 DVD. The vow comes with a Hogan's Heroes or Where Eagles Dare clown-German flavor.

Piss has it down in high style, but Doktor Gustave Hertz is the favorite of the bunch. He's Klink to Piss's Schultz. Lesion's bass player, Mr. Pod, checks in as a pipe-smoking gentleman with a sweet tooth for overacting hookers. Venison, the drummer, is inexplicable. He talks electrically and mostly unintelligibly through an anodized box meant to convey the vocalizations cancer patients make after they've suffered radical oropharyngeal surgery. Maybe he was stolen from the supporting cast of Lexx or Farscape.

666 is laff-riot low-rent entertainment for stitch Nazis and assorted fans of Teutonic efficiency. There's Hertz getting a massage to the strains of "You Only Live Twice," Piss smoking what's supposed to be Napoleon's pickled dick after it's been appraised on Antiques Roadshow, and Pod on a make-believe Fox-channel dating game. (I would have picked Number 3, Pod; her teeth were scintillating.) Even though pilfering from Alice Cooper and Judas Priest, the video episodes of 666 would alienate the red states where consumers think everyone who sounds like they're from the city and can speak with good diction is a fag or a foreigner to be tied to a pole and flogged. I don't know if Lesion was aiming for bizarre gemütlichkeit and the avuncular good fellowship of four cartoony debauched rock and roll buddies, but that's what's achieved. The DVD box says one of the productions won an award for best-of-something at Arlene's Grocery, but I'd give them all trophies.

Lesion's CDs”Slaboratory, You and What Army, and Fantasy Dance Party”offer raging punk first, quickly moving into crashing hard rock. Rock kultur und kitsch as done by Ami's imitating sour krauts is the genre. Lesion own this field, perhaps started by Alex Harvey or anyone who enjoys being the stagy German host in order to make polite middle-class stupid people tense. "5-Inch Version of a 7-Inch Man," from Fantasy Dance Party, is a great song, sarcastic and glabrous. And they've issued a bunch of singles, too, one of which—"He Is the Rock"—is the perfect German Christian metal experience. Other numbers, like "You're Gay (But Not Like Homo)" and "Urinal," were big in Sweden. Or was it Niedersachsen? Scheisse, ich vergesse. - Village Voice


"Band that lives its own movie"

by Dave Richard
Staff writer

When Lesion's bass player quit, the New York City band figured it would pack it in, too, after a decade of creating goth-inspired, metal-punk music and movies.

Art Stephano didn't want to see one of his favorite bands end. After Lesion premiered its latest film, "The One-Inch Punch," last December at Arlene's Grocery in NYC, he stepped forward.

"The band was going to break up," said Stephano. "It was going to be the band's last show. I said, 'Don't break up the band! This is right up my alley.' And, in fact, it is.

" I'm classically trained. I play double bass in a symphony, and I have my own jazz quartet that I do aside from this. But I grew up a rock and roller. It'd been awhile since I'd done a rock gig. I liked the band, and I liked the concept of doing the movies and having comedy as an element. They always dress up in crazy costumes. It's just really fun."

Lesion has created nearly a dozen films, including many that involve the band's crazy, richly developed, highly fictional backstory.

First off, Lesion is from Germany, where lead singer Dr. Gustave Hurtz developed an early fascination with death. He assisted his father, a mortician with "the delicate skin of a geisha, thanks to all the embalming fluid he was exposed to," according to the band's Web site.

While in medical school, Hurtz caught a band that included guitarist P. Promise.

"They were terrible," Hurtz recalled. "I yelled up at the guitar player, 'Why don't you stop torturing us and go kill yourself?' He stopped playing, took his guitar, and smashed me across the face with it."

They became fast friends, expelling the other band members and starting Lesion. Venison joined on drums.

"He's a mute," said Stephano. "He had his tongue yanked out at age 9 by an angry reindeer in the Black Forest."

The bass player was Mr. Pod, but after he "died," Stephano joined. Naturally, he needed a character; he's known as American Art. "Stiffies," Lesion's new 24-minute film, explains his story. The film will be shown before the band's Saturday set at Docksider.

The plot is no less wild than previous Lesion films like "Zombie Puss" and "Eyes Bloody Eyes!"

"It was [Mr. Pod's] last wish to be taxidermied and displayed in the band's practice room," explained Stephano. "Unfortunately, he was buried in Essen, Germany, so the boys had to go back to Essen. They were going to exhume his grave and bring his body back and have him taxidermied.

"We cut back to 1777, where American Art -- that's me -- was rebuffed at an audition for a baroque string quartet. After writing to his friend Ben Franklin, Ben suggested in order to amplify Art's bass louder -- because American Art has a very aggressive style and wants to be louder -- that he stand in a graveyard and tie a kite to his bass.

"He did that, was struck by lightning, and transported to 2007, where he met the rest of the guys in Lesion."

Saturday's Docksider show reprises the Halloween event that Lesion performed last weekend at Art's Grocery. "We try be as outrageous as possible," Stephano said.

"P. Promise was in full body make-up, head-to-toe green, like the Incredible Hulk. And he didn't have much on beyond that. Dr. Gustave had his typical mortician's outfit on, with the rubber apron.

"American Art was in his 1777 cavalry uniform with riding boots and tri-corner hat, the whole deal. Venison, he's kind of a brooding fellow. So he's usually in shorts and still sometimes wears the bloody apron from when he was a boy."

A few songs incorporate German lyrics. But the overall sound is more straight-ahead, riff-heavy hard rock, albeit with a shot of Bauhaus-like goth.

"It's kind of straightforward, but has some European influences," Stephano said. "It's been described as old-school Sabbath-esque. But we try to make it as interesting as possible. When we write, we don't just try to fill up time. We try to write interesting pieces that make sense and take on the personality of what the story is that's being told."

So a new song like "Jump Ramp," about a motorcycle rider, accelerates full throttle, while "Plain Jane Chainsaw" incorporates chainsaw effects.

The players in Lesion -- John Bergdahl (Hurtz), Mike Favire (Venison), and Christopher Tomas (P. Promise) -- also play in a side band, Boot Black.

That group won't play Saturday, but its single is paired with a Lesion song on a two-track CD that the band will give away on a first-come, first-served basis.

Lesion has never played Erie, but figures to see some familiar faces. Beth Newlin -- Stephano's wife, who also introduced him to the band -- graduated from Harbor Creek High School. On previous visits to Erie, they hung out at Docksider. After he joined Lesion, Stephano made sure the band put the Slider on its itinerary.

"I like Erie. It's a hard-rocking, hard-working town," Stephano said.

"I'm anticipating a big show."


Lesion, Berzerker, Beneath the Scars wil - Erie Times-News


Discography

Seniors Ball
LOCK020
1. I Am A Giant
2. Jump Ramp
3. Turn It Out
4. So Well, Oh Well
5. Witch's Tit
6. Hey Is For Horses
7. Back Of The Shed
8. Drop The Needle
9. Efficiency Expert
©2008 LOCKDOWN! Records LLC

Fantasy Dance Party
LOCK007
1. Polar Bear
2. Poor Charlie Horseface
3. Girls Night Out
4. I'm in The Industry
5. Peel Down The Rubber
6. Clash Of The Idealogues
7. Wrought Iron
8. Black Dashiki
9. 5 Inch Verision Of A 7 Inch Man
10. We Have Ways Of Making You Talk
©2003 LOCKDOWN! Records LLC

You And What Army?
LOCK002
1. Asstronaut
2. Plain Jane Chainsaw
3. Weak in the Knees
4. Friend in Hell
5. Clone Boner
6. Pod's Theme
7. Render Unto Lesion
8. Bloodbath
9. Urinal
11. Goliath
©2000 LOCKDOWN! Records LLC

Slaboratory
LOCK001
1. "Ladies and gentlemen..."
2. Amputee Co-Worker
3. Stump Love
4. Interview, part 1
5. I'm God, That's Why
6. Rock Pussy
7. The Executive
8. Interview, part 2
9. Lockdown
10. Queen of the Motocross
11. Sex Thistle
12. Interview, part 3
13. My Superpower is Sex
14. Interview, part 4
15. Fat American
16. Interview, part 5
17. You're Gay (but not like homo)
18. Beach Party Blood Buffet
©1998 LOCKDOWN! Records LLC

Photos

Bio

LESION!

You'll need an army and then some to handle all the ROCK that this band has to offer. Two thirds of this thundering quartet are strait from Essen Germany.

Lead Singer Dr. Gustave Hurtz, a former assistant to his mortician father, was born-to-rock and commands the stage with thundering vocals and devilish ass-shaking.

Venison, the bands mute drummer, who had his tongue yanked out at age nine by an angry reindeer, is like some unholy windmill, relentlessly pummeling his kit, a terrifying rhythm robot.

Lead guitarist Piss Promise wields his axe like a lumberjack. "Master of Fretboard Sturm und Drang" is his moniker in Germany and his popularity with the ladies is notorious.

Finally American Art, time traveler from the year 1777. Conducting an experiment in a thunderstorm to amplify the sound of his bass Art was struck by lightning and transported thru time to the year 2007. He joined the band after the tragic death of Lesion's former bass player Mr. Pod.

Lesion is fun, Lesion is fast, Lesion rocks like a "f......" steamroller. It's about time a band like this has come along, soaring guitar solos, fun lyrics, pounding drums, thumping bass. It's a nice change from the crappy music that is currently on the charts. Lesion brings ROCK back to the masses! Viva LESION!