spiralofhope

Commodore 64 >

Shadowmaster, co-founder of the Carcass Creation Service, is often regarded as one of the most innovative and talented artists in the history of NTSC. His mastery of 3 colour pictures, his obsession with death, his strange sense of humour and the Carcass Creation Service will be his scene legacy the day he decides to call it quits.

• This was probably written for the Domination paper edition, just as The Secret of Fast LZW Crunching was.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010222030553/noquake.de/domination/SHADOW.htm

• What’ll we talk about?

  • Dunno, what do you want to talk about? It is your interview

• Well, Candy tried to make me jello and put it in the freezer instead – but that’s not that interesting… unless I try to drink it later.

  • Reminds me of the time Dave (Asmodeus) thought he was cool and made beersicles ..

• bahaha… I’m sure he loved licking them.

  • Those things were fucking putrid .. He wasted two perfectly good bottles of beer on those.

• Well, start by introducing yourself or something ..

  • I entered the scene as a bbs‘er back over 10 years ago when 300 baud RULED!

• What have you done in those ten years?

  • Started a board, then a board group (LAW – Legion of Associated Workshops), then found that the most interesting warez were demos, not games. Beat off alot to commodore porn. bahahah.. Seriously though, I started drawing when crackers and importers started asking for intro logos and pics for their lame intros. I said I could do them and started working in Koala painter and Doodle.

• What groups did you start doing art for?

  • I did some stuff for DSI (Damage Soft Incorporated) and TGI (The Guardians International) at first.

• Yes, both local 416 groups at the time ..

  • My first demo stuff was for Fantasy in a Xmas demo.
    Maverick and I hooked up through the warez scene and gravitated to demos.

• I remember that demo (Fantasy Xmas/Fantasy) .. one of the first C64 demos I ever leeched!

  • Yea, it was actually cool for the time. It got me interested in meeting more people – Fantasy had alot of friends at one time. There was some cheesy personal demo stuff in between there, but nothing that got noticed.

• When did you decide to start your own demogroup?

  • When I realised how lame it was trying to put a demo together with group members all over the globe. It was far easier (and the hidden talent was there) to find locals and put something together. Besides, it would be easy to meet and party.

• Tell me about the group you founded. Who was involved with that, and what was it called?

  • Lethal Software Demons (LSD) was Thee Iron Maiden (TIM) and I screwing around with leftover art from intros and shit. We put together some lame demo stuff that never got around much. I dont think I even have any of it on disk anymore.
    Fortunately, I moved to Peterborough soon after TIM took up hardcore drugs, so LSD was dead.

• Did LSD actually have a coder?

  • No way – Eric the Red had taught TIM how to rip like a champ and we started experimenting with ripped routines. (shame, guilt – it all comes out!)

• So what happened after the death of LSD?

  • I met Starlost (Eli) on the high school bus when I got into an intellectual argument with him about something pretentious. He was ALOT younger than me and pissed me off.

• Cool .. did you kick the crap out of him?

  • There ain’t much of Starlost to kick the crap out of – he weighs about 90 pounds. But he had a Commodore, which soon came out.

• Okay, so you and Starlost eventually became friends, right?

  • Yes, I taught him about the 64 scene. There were a few REALLY lame bbs’s in town and he became interested in the demos right away. I think he just wanted to score Commodore porn off me!

• God knows he wouldn’t be the first to score porn from you ..

  • He just lived down the road from me too, which was weird. I used to walk to his house with my cordless phone while talking to him. If I had a telescope, I could probably see his naked grandparents in their bedroom window at night. Somewhere in there we got into phreaking as well – Lakefield is pretty lame and no one was local, so it was a necessity. We started the Astral Software Krew (ASK) and we were back to square one – he had to teach himself to code by ripping (try finding a coder in Lakefield). But he had lots of time, being young with no social life and he quickly became pretty good – he had the same ethic as me; do the weird shit that no one else can or will. He was also a self taught piano/guitar player and became a wicked musician. We changed the group’s name to FATAL (not realising that there was a soon-to-be-dead group in Toronto going by the same name).

• Any memorable releases around this time?

  • We did a couple of smaller demos as Fatal, one of which was actually cool (Cancerous). Cancerous was the start of Carcass as we know it today.

• So, Fatal renamed to Carcass?

  • Yea, Carcass was Fatal. We got in touch with Style and soon formed a co-op. I had gone back to Toronto for University at the same time, so I grabbed some old buddies of mine for the group. Jim (Bane) and King (Thor) were old comic store working friends of mine that I didn’t even know had 64’s.
    They were on the scene by this time as distributors for other groups. Somehow we hooked up and they joined Carcass. We also formed Tormentors Incorporated, which terrorised the Toronto BBS scene for a long time. You can really see the making of Carcass in its history here. Our first release was the Style+Carcass coop demo Fresh Air.

• Tell me about the Style+Carcass co-op .. are you bitter in regards to this?

  • Nope. They suck. We rule. End of story. Seriously though, I was only pissed because the Fairy Tales demo was never released. Firefoot got into dope and out of coding and sat on my artwork forever.

• It still sits around unused to this day, does it not?

  • Yea, the art for Fairy Tales is still here and Carcass is going to release it, damnit! There was alot of time (and beer, for Starlost) put into the art and music for it.

• Alright, so this brings us to about 1992 or so. What happened then?

  • We split with Style and started looking for some GOOD coders and other group members. We picked up Asmodeus (Dave) from the two man wonder band importing crew Whisper. Somewhere in there Black Death (Adam) stumbled into Dave’s place and got loaded. He must have fallen on the keyboard and created something because he joined Carcass as an artist. That’s when we ran into you, but I don’t remember how.

• I was with CIA (Crime in Action) and was doing intros for the UG (Underground News).

  • You were alot like Starlost. Very young, very eager, and stuck working with lamers. I think we started buying you beer underage and working on your corruption as a pastime. Anyhow, Jim and King dropped off the scene when the boards died, cuz they basically were left with nothing to do. We still talk though – Jim called me the other day. He and I have played paintball for years together.

• Carcass had a few other notable members in that period (92-94), namely Replay and Intense.

  • I never knew much about Intense (he mostly dealt with the other members) but Replay (Ryan) was cool – whitest black guy I’ve ever met. A great musician.

• I had a beer with him a few months ago .. He’s still as white as ever.

  • I think his women finally ate up all his time and he left the scene. His grades were slipping thanks to Carcass and he lost his machine for a while.

• Yes, his parents took his modem away to be precise. I gave him a 1200 baudder that he hid from his parents so he could keep sending us stuff.

  • That’s about the time I dropped off the scene to finish my education and get a job. You took over and grabbed alot of good talent, including Necrophobic (who I had done logos for in the past) from Legion.

• What brought you back to the scene?

  • I came back to the scene for the group therapy. Carcass is and always has been a collection of people who need psychiatric help. Together, we get loaded, beat off to commodore porn, and get over our daily problems. I also noticed that something was missing from my life and I had to come back. Now, thanks to Carcass’ help, I’m a well-adjusted individual who is thinking of settling down with his girlfriend and starting a family.

• What are some of your favourite scene memories over the past 10 years?

  • You getting hammered and smashing Dave’s toilet at a meet. I never heard the end of that. My girlfriend telling Dave to fuck off and never come back without calling first was funny too. Adam drowning was cool too. “Drowning”. But that’s an inside joke. Oh! when TIM and I went around Canada’s Wonderland (an amusement park) finding everywhere that Eric the Red put his name and putting LSD over it.

• Thanks for your time Martin. Any final words?

  • I could babble forever, but there’s one thing that always holds true – Carcass: dismemberment has its privileges.

• Uhh, is it not “Dismembership”?

  • Sure – whatever. hehe.. I’ve started drinking that jello and it is making me feel funny.