LEE HARRISON And MONSTROSITY Continue To Bring The 'Steak And Cheese' To Death Metal

By David E. Gehlke

After 36 years of being in business, MONSTROSITY has yet to achieve the same level of success as their Floridian death metal peers in CANNIBAL CORPSE, DEICIDE, MORBID ANGEL and OBITUARY. That hasn't stopped founding member, songwriter and drummer Lee Harrison from trying. Harrison is, without question, a death metal lifer who has committed himself to his craft and band despite the rather obvious lack of benefits that a career in extreme underground metal offers. He was so dedicated to the scene that he was often found hanging out in the control room at the famed Morrisound Recording during numerous legendary death metal recording sessions. Best of all, his memory is like a vice, with plenty of stories to tell.

"Screams From Beneath The Surface" is MONSTROSITY's first new studio platter in eight years and finds Harrison joined by new frontman Ed Webb (ex-MASSACRE) and returning original bassist Mark van Erp. (Guitarist Matt Barnes fills out the lineup.) The LP is another ode to the band's trademark technical, brutal style, and also serves up a brilliant, epic opening number, "Banished To The Skies". "Screams" is perhaps the band's most well-rounded and expansive effort since 1996's "Millennium", a reminder of how good MONSTROSITY can be when they're at the top of their game. With this in mind, BLABBERMOUTH.NET snagged Harrison for a chat.

Blabbermouth: Mark was one of the original members of MONSTROSITY and has since found his way back into the band. How did that come about?

Lee: "I met Mark in '88, I want to say April 28, 1988. He borrowed 67 cents from me when he was in CYNIC. That was our first interaction. [Laughs] But, yeah, we've kind of been through a lot. We lived together back then. I was helping CYNIC get their thing going, then I moved up to Fort Lauderdale and joined MALEVOLENT [CREATION]. Not long after that, he got kicked out of CYNIC, and he ended up back in New York. I was in MALEVOLENT, and I did my nine or ten months there, and right when I was leaving, kicked out, whatever, he was calling [MALEVOLENT CREATION guitarist] Phil [Fasciana], trying to come back down to Florida. He ended up in MALEVOLENT right when I was leaving. [Laughs] We didn't get that chance to jam together, and then he did his thing with MALEVOLENT. That was probably another nine or ten months. Then, when we got kicked out of MALEVOLENT, I had already been talking with [original vocalist] George ['Corpsegrinder' Fisher] and another guitar player about putting the band together. Basically, he said, 'Phil kicked me out.' I was like, 'Give me a minute.' I packed my drums up again, went back to Fort Lauderdale, and we started writing the material that would become 'Imperial Doom'. We were brothers for sure. He would kind of keep me going. We worked together at a place called Picture Perfect Painting, going door to door with door hangers, trying to solicit work for a painting company. They would give us ten dollars for anyone who could fill out the card. We'd go out and walk the neighborhoods of Coral Springs and the rich neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale. We'd go out for an hour or two, then we'd have five or six, maybe ten of these things done, then we'd go back and start jamming again.

"We went through our trials and tribulations in '95. He ended up going back to New York and parted ways with us. There were situations going on with him. From there, I'd say in '99, we were talking then, and he actually went on the road, he and Rob Barrett [CANNIBAL CORPSE] were bored, or I don't know what it was, but they both went on the road with us in '99 and did a full U.S. tour with us, just hanging out, helping load equipment. We had a good time going from town to town. We hung out with him then. We've always kept in contact. Then, around 2010, we did a show in Mexico City called Metal In The Forest, and I don't know what the situation was, but we needed a bass player. I called him, and he flew down. He learned the material, and we played that show. There were a couple of instances, like 70,000 Tons Of Metal, where he played that show and went on the cruise. California Death Fest was another one. Our bass player, Mike Poggione, the one we had been using, ended up moving to Ukraine. He met a girl, I guess, on the Internet. For whatever reason, he decided to move to Ukraine before the war. We did a couple of European tours where it didn't matter. He was able to hopscotch over to the first date of the tour and did it with no problem. We had some one-off shows in the U.S. where it didn't make sense to fly him from Ukraine to play them, so we ended up using Mark. He's a great bass player. He's an old brother, so it made sense that we start working together, and the fans dig it."

Blabbermouth: You also have a new frontman in Ed Webb. He's a familiar face since he was in MASSACRE. Was he a guy on your radar for a while?

Lee: "Our last singer [Mike Hrubovcak] basically didn't like touring. We had a tour lined up right around the last album's release. That was my goal. 'Millennium' came out in '96, but we didn't get to Europe until the end of '98. We recorded 'In Dark Purity' at the end of '98, so it didn't make sense to go right back to Europe since we were just there. We didn't get to Europe for another two years. I don't remember exactly, but it wasn't timed with the album. The goal was to time the last album — I purposely took the band off the road. In 2010, the idea was not to take eight years, and it became eight years. The idea was to come back with a new album, tour, bing, bang, boom and come in with more of a punch. Anyway, our singer, 'Oh, I'm going to be a best man in a wedding on one of those weekends. I can't do it.' I went back to our booking agent, and he said, 'How about a VADER tour in October?' I went back to him: 'Oh, I'm going to the Keys with my wife for a weekend.' I was like, 'Dude, come on. You're killing me.' Again, we didn't get to Europe until eight months later. Finally, in the end, he confessed, 'Hey, I don't want to tour anymore.' I tried to make it work with him: 'Covid is hitting. I realize we're not going to be doing as much. Why don't you stick it out?' He said he was done, so he forced my hand in finding a new singer.

"I tried a couple of local guys. Ed didn't register. I've known him forever. He was in DIABOLIC back in the day. I knew him when he was in EULOGY and obviously MASSACRE. We tried some local guys, and they were good. We were kind of moving forward with one of them. It looked like he was going to be the guy. I was on tour with INHUMAN CONDITION and Terry Butler. I was telling him the situation, basically, the singer we were working with was a younger guy and didn't have the high screams. It was going to be one of those things where he'd have to learn that technique and get it down. We've been through it before because Jason Avery, our second singer, didn't have the high screams when he joined. By the end of it, he was nailing it. I know they can learn it, but it's a case of me figuring we'd have to go through that learning phase or growing-pains situation again. As soon as Terry mentioned Ed, it was like a lightbulb went off. When we got back from the INHUMAN tour, I called him up, and pretty much ever since, we've been working, and everything has been great. He's right here in Tampa, so we don't have to fly anyone from New York or have some guy from who knows where. He knows everybody; we have a lot of the same friends. He understands the Tampa scene. He's old school like that. His favorite band isn't some new, young band; there's not that thing. It made sense. He's killing it. He really fits the bill. We're happy for sure."

Blabbermouth: Are you at a point with MONSTROSITY where it's important to evolve while staying true to your core sound? "Screams From Beneath The Surface" has some nice twists to it.

Lee: "I've seen a split on this album where people are confused by 'Banished To The Skies' being the first song."

Blabbermouth: Because it's melodic?

Lee: "It didn't register to me. To me, it's like 'The Angel's Venom' cousin because it has that melodic feel. It's something in the verse that is similar to 'The Angel's Venom' to me. I didn't realize that it was even a thing. I've seen reviews where they say, 'It was brilliant how they did that with the most epic track first.' I've seen other guys: 'This album confused me.' It wasn't something I picked up until after the fact. To me, I won't say it's the first song because I wrote four at the same time, but it was always the frontrunner, back in 2018, when I wrote the song. It made sense to me in the way it sounded."

Blabbermouth: It's one of your better "epic" songs.

Lee: "It's not like we're changing or going off in some direction. I guess 'Imperial Doom' or 'Millennium', there weren't those kinds of songs, but definitely on 'In Dark Purity', where [BRUTALITY guitarist] Jay Fernandez brought that in. Ever since, even a song like 'Remnants Of Divination' has that melody, but to me, it's the same, maybe because it's the first song, and it's not as brutal and fast. That was one of the differences with this album. There's 'The Colossal Rage', 'Spiral', 'Vapors' and 'The Thorns'. There's definitely some 'brutalizers' here, which is what we call them."

Blabbermouth: How much are you pushing yourself as a drummer these days? Is it still important?

Lee: "Sean Reinert [CYNIC] and Pete Sandoval [MORBID ANGEL], a mix of them is kind of my thing. I'm a fan of the old CYNIC, the thrash band CYNIC. 'Focus' is cool, but it's not my thing. I was there for the recording of the 1990 demo and 'Reflections Of A Dying World'. I was in the studio with those guys when they were doing all of that stuff. To me, that was the CYNIC that I like. Obviously, Sean Reinert went to the New World School Of The Arts, which was basically a high school where he would spend all day drumming. They were listening to a little jazz, maybe, but all of a sudden, he started going to that school, and he's listening to jazz. The next thing you know, they're playing jazz. You could see it in the crowd's response. I remember we played a warehouse party with WRECKAGE, and I remember seeing MALEVOLENT, WRECKAGE and then CYNIC. It was a warehouse party, but you could see CYNIC was starting to get so technical that the fans were like, 'What am I doing?'"

Blabbermouth: You can't always bang your head to it.

Lee: "Right. When I was in MALEVOLENT, we always had that 'keep it brutal' kind of thing. You could see there was a shift in the scene, so to speak, about the brutality and keeping things not simple, but always pummeling, but making it so that you can bang your head. When we formed MONSTROSITY, van Erp and I, one of our little sayings was 'steak and cheese.' You want your steak and your cheese. The steak is the easier, more basic riffs, which is where the crowd can bang their heads. Every song would have a little bit of that, but we'd also put something in there that was more intricate that musicians could get into. That was our formula since day one to have the brutality, but a little bit of technicality to keep it interesting for us as players.

"As for the drums, it's something I've always done. I've been playing since I was seven years old. I was playing spoons on magazines, listening to KISS, just possessed, completely possessed by KISS. I ended up taking lessons from a guy named Steve Rucker. He played drums, taught and was in the University Of Miami jazz band. A friend of my father's had an apartment complex, and he rented it to Steve. He told my dad about this guy who lived in this apartment complex, and he had gone to Berklee College Of Music. I'd go over there and get lessons every Wednesday when I was eight or nine years old. Right out of the gate, I was getting drum lessons and doing that. He ended up becoming the BEE GEES drummer from 1990 to 2000. He had a good little career there."

Blabbermouth: How did MONSTROSITY make it out of the mid-1990s? That era, where death metal was struggling, gets referenced a lot now, since it was 30 years ago. Was it hard for you?

Lee: "Yes and no. In '95 or '96, when things had fallen apart with Nuclear Blast, we were talking with Borivoj [Krgin]. He was working for Century Media at the time. We were trying for a record deal with Century Media. We were trying to get signed. He basically told us, 'Look. It doesn't matter how fast your band is or how killer you are. The fact remains that labels are not signing death metal right now.' It was disappointing, but it didn't make me want to quit. Everyone was off on the black metal thing, which is what the labels wanted. It took us a minute. I formed my label, Conquest Music, because of it. We had a deal with Pavement Records, and the money was pathetic. It was signing your life away for pathetic money. It just didn't make sense. I could do what these guys are doing. Relapse Records gave us one interview for 'Imperial Doom'. I did 30 on my own for that record. What I didn't realize with the label was how hard it would be to get distribution. That was the one thing that was hard. We were able to print the CDs and run advertisements, but securing good distribution proved challenging. It wasn't until later on that we got good distribution."

Blabbermouth: MONSTROSITY's staying power through it all has to feel nice, right? You're practically a death metal lifer.

Lee: "It kind of makes me scared that we are becoming commercial. [Laughs] The responses [to this record] are so good. I think we deserve it. We've been pushing for so long. I feel like people are catching up to what we're doing, and it's so hard because OBITUARY, MORBID ANGEL, DEICIDE, they were a little bit older than us. They were a generation ahead of us."

Blabbermouth: Which is weird since they started just a few years ahead of you.

Lee: "They had the albums out. They're the 'Big 4' [likely referring to CANNIBAL CORPSE as the fourth band]. I'm not saying we're even close to them. They're the 'Big 4'. They're the bands that were first. Our first album wasn't released until 1992. Those guys came out in '89. There's a full generation, almost. We're at the top of the second wave of Florida death metal. A lot of our contemporaries would have been BRUTALITY and RESURRECTION, and out of all those bands, we're still going. The rest have fallen by the wayside. Some of them are still going in a way, but they're not working like we are."

Blabbermouth: You are known to be quite the ubiquitous figure at Morrisound Recording during its heyday. And simply being there was what led you to helping SUFFOCATION with lyrics on 'Pierced From Within'. How many sessions did you manage to catch?

Lee: "I was there when [pre-DEICIDE outfit] AMON did their demo [1989's 'Sacrificial']. I was there for 'Cause Of Death' [OBITUARY] pre-production. SUFFOCATION was in the A room [recording 'Effigy Of The Forgotten'] when we were doing overdubs for 'Imperial Doom'. Actually, there were three different bands there: ATHEIST was there when we showed up to set up our gear [tracking 'Unquestionable Presence']. They were walking out the door. PESTILENCE had just flown in [to record 'Testimony Of The Ancients']. I was there in '94 for when SUFFOCATION was doing 'Pierced From Within' to help with some lyrics. That was a fun thing. I remember writing two songs, but only one made it. I finally figured that out later. I was like, 'I know I wrote two songs!' They re-recorded 'Breeding The Spawn', and I re-wrote the lyrics and changed the patterns. [Laughs] I got in the room with Frank [Mullen]. He's staring right at me, and I'm doing the vocals. [Laughs] It was fun times."

Photo by Tim Hubbard