Hear new evil

“We started this band to celebrate everything evil,” says guitarist Ryan Young of the Reno band Countress. “We try to do Slayer and Sabbath every song.”

Countress incorporates references and styles from throughout the 45 years of heavy metal history that began when Black Sabbath formed in 1968. The band members of Countress are Young, guitarist Alex Garcia, drummer Jesse Johnson, vocalist Miles Lundahl, and bassist Joseph Stanislaus Küster VI, who swears that’s his real name and not just the results of some internet heavy metal name generator. These musicians move from slow, heavy doom metal into fast, upbeat thrash, and then into a midtempo metal groove, with a noisy blast beat thrown in there somewhere for good measure. But the music is not hyperactive genre-cutting. The songs are cohesive and what’s more, catchy.

“We try to make metal that’s written like pop songs,” says Young.

“We’ve always said that we want to write Motown hits, but in a metal way,” says Garcia.

The songs have pop song structures and recognizable hooks, with guitar riffs that stay humming in a listener’s head long after the songs are over. But it’s all delivered at high volume, with dense chunks of sound and aggressive energy.

“Transition from the machine gun to the shotgun—rapidfire to slow fire,” says Lundahl, adding that he plays a lot of video games.

His vocals are more of a hardcore punk shout than a Cookie Monster growl, but his lyrics are very metal, many of them inspired by horrors from movies or real life. “Origin” is about conspiracy of reptilian shapeshifters, “Black Glove” is about the Heaven’s Gate cult, and “High Moon” is a Wild West tale.

The band’s name was partly inspired by the 1971 Hammer Horror movie Countess Dracula. The band added the “r” to differentiate from the dozens of other bands using the name Countess. But the band members say the neologism has raised a few eyebrows since it looks like a typo. (Apple technology autocorrects the name to “Countless.”)

“We get a lot of slack for that,” says Garcia. “People say, [sarcastically] ’What is a countress?’ Whatever.”

“Torche isn’t a real word,” says Lundahl. “Metallica isn’t a real word.”

“Originally, we were going to be called Metallica Also,” says Garcia.

The band members are apparently charismatic. While standing outside their practice place during their interview with the RN&R, a bevy of good-looking women walked up to the band members just to give them free bottles of beer and wine. It was pretty baller.

They’ve been a band for more than a year, and have already recorded fairly extensively. They’ve recorded a full-length album, Ov Sin, which the plan to release before the end of the year. Last year, for Halloween, they released a two-song EP called Crawling from the Grave, which they recorded with well-known local producer and recording engineer Tom Gordon. They hope to add new songs to the EP every year on Halloween. The songs on Crawling from the Grave are inspired by famous crimes in Nevada history. One of the songs in the first batch was called “Mesmerizer,” about the two young men from Sparks who shot themselves in 1985, which their parents famously alleged was inspired by subliminal messages in Judas Priest’s music.

One of this year’s Crawling from the Grave songs was inspired by the Mizpah Hotel burning down on Halloween, 2006. At press time, the band members still hadn’t agreed on a title for the song, though “Destruction Miz Population” is a strong contender.