The story of Oblivion Knight begins in the sleepy southern U.S. city of Dothan, Alabama. With a population of just over 50,000 residents, this self-proclaimed 'Peanut Capital Of The World' isn't exactly a hotbed of heavy metal activity. As such, Dothan seems an unlikely place to witness the birth of a highly-regarded underground progressive power metal band, whose two self-produced demos are still coveted by collectors almost twenty years since their original release.
The core unit of Oblivion Knight was formed in 1985 when high school pals Steve Sexton (bass) and Chris Camp (guitar) joined forces and began writing tunes under the original band moniker Knight. Unsatisfied with the musician pool available in Dothan, the pair made the decision to look elsewhere for the talent needed to bring their musical visions to life. As fans of the Texas metal scene and aware of the musical proficiency in its ranks, the pair made contact with Syrus guitarist John Castilleja who promptly convinced the guys to make a trip out to San Antonio to witness the metallic onslaught for themselves. This trip in the spring of 1987 yielded the recording of Oblivion Knight's first self-titled demo. Following the lead of many San Antonio metal bands of the day, Blue Cat Studios was utilized for these sessions. To round out the studio lineup, Sexton and Camp recruited Ken Ortiz (ex-Syrus) on drums and Mike Soliz (ex-Militia/Assalant) on vocals. By fully immersing himself in the Texas metal scene and the talent contained therein, Sexton was able to pick up new influences in the playing of Watchtower's Doug Keyser and Karion's Pete Perez. These impressions can be fully heard on Oblivion Knight's next recorded effort: 1990's 'Forgotten Realm' demo. Still unable to find suitable musicians close to home, Sexton enlisted the help of friend Mike Portnoy who recommended Berklee School Of Music classmate Keith Ciaramello on drums and ex-Majesty singer Chris Collins to fulfill the vocal duties. A step forward musically and technically from the 1987 demo, the band now began to incorporate more complex time changes, prominent bass work, acoustic guitar passages, and harmonized guitar solos into their repertoire. Unfortunately, 'Forgotten Realm' would be the final publicly released material from Oblivion Knight as changing personal musical tastes and other considerations took precedence. Samples from both demos can be downloaded from our Audio section.
Texasmetalunderground.com is honored to present the following interview with Steve Sexton in which he sheds some light on the somewhat murky history of Oblivion Knight, a band definitely worthy of its cult status in the underground. Sexton also fills us in on his time spent in Texas during the spring of 1987, his personal connection to the classic Texas scene and the people in it, and his current musical endeavors. Read on...
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Texas Metal Underground: What originally drew you to heavy music?
Steve
Sexton:
Originally, at a very early age, it was Led Zeppelin.
Particularly Led Zeppelin IV & II and How The West Was Won,
the double live album. When I heard Iron Maiden for the very first
time, that was it! That’s what really took me over the edge.
TMU:
Steve Sexton: I would say Led Zeppelin and most definitely Iron Maiden. Maiden was really the big one. From Maiden I got into Fates Warning and Queensryche, particularly the first two or three Queenryche records and Fates Warning with John Arch. From there I got into WatchTower. The first time I heard those guys was really amazing. I was also very into a band called Majesty who is better known as Dream Theater now. Those guys were also a major influence. Those six bands were the big guns for me.
TMU: When did you first pick up an instrument and decide you wanted to play in a band?
Steve Sexton: I kind of fooled around on guitar a little bit at an early age. I used to pretend I was Jimmy Page. My dad had a guitar lying around the house so I would pick it up and fool around with it a little bit. I really got serious and decided that I wanted to play an instrument the first time I heard Iron Maiden and heard Steve Harris. That was probably the biggest influence in my life in terms of wanting to play music and really be serious about it.
TMU: Which instruments do you consider yourself to have at least a 'working relationship' with?
Steve Sexton: Of course first and foremost I’d say bass, but also a little bit of acoustic guitar. Back in the Oblivion Knight days I wrote most of the parts on an acoustic guitar, so I have a little bit of a relationship with the guitar. In these latter years I’ve been able to use a keyboard to get ideas flowing. It’s just easy to be able to pick up a keyboard and get some melodies and chord ideas down.
TMU: What year did the earliest incarnation of Oblivion Knight form? How did you originally get hooked up with Chris Camp?
Steve Sexton: That would actually be in 1985. The band was originally called Knight and it was a group of friends who were in high school at the time. We were really just starting to learn our instruments. I got introduced to Chris Camp by a good friend of mine named Gary Oppert who I’m actually working on my new project with. That was really the beginning of Oblivion Knight. We were all just really young and new on our instruments at that time and I guess Chris and I had been playing a little bit longer than the rest of the guys. We just kind of took off from there.
TMU: You were originally from Alabama, correct?
Steve
Sexton:
Yes, that’s correct. I’m originally
from Alabama. My family is from Florida
but I was born here in Alabama. I grew up
in a city of about 100,000 in the southeastern corner of
TMU: Was there a metal scene in Dothan when you were growing up?
Steve
Sexton:
(Laughs) Not really. I’d pretty much say
it was non-existent until we got Oblivion Knight going.
We had a very humble and small following from the
TMU: When and how did you first find out about the Texas metal scene?
Steve Sexton: Probably the first band I heard from Texas was Helstar. But to get into this a little bit deeper, the way I originally got into the Texas metal scene was through a old-time good buddy of mine John Castilleja, the guitarist from Syrus. I had gotten in touch with him through one of the fanzines and had ordered the Syrus demo. I immediately became a fan and contacted John through the contact info on the demo tape cover. John and I became pretty good friends, as a matter of fact. In the summer of 1986 Syrus was opening for Fates Warning and John invited Chris Camp and I out to Texas. So Chris and I took a little trip out to Texas and stayed with John, met the Syrus guys, and watched Syrus open for Fates Warning in Austin and San Antonio. The lineup for those shows was Syrus, Omen, and Fates Warning as the headliner. It was a great introduction to the awesome metal scene that was happening there in Texas. (See a flyer for these shows here.)
TMU: Why did you and Chris decide to record the 1987 Oblivion Knight demo in San Antonio? Was there an actual relocation or did you guys temporarily come to Texas just to record the demo?
Steve Sexton: It was just a temporary trip to record the demo. We didn’t actually move to San Antonio. Chris and I flew out to San Antonio and spent about a week there rehearsing and recording the demo.
TMU: Were Ken Ortiz and Mike Soliz already involved with the project before the trip to Texas, or did you plan on looking for musicians when you got there?
Steve Sexton: We had been in contact with Ken via telephone and mail. When we heard Ken had left Syrus we asked him to record the demo with us and he agreed. Once we had Ken in place he got us in touch with Mike.
TMU: Where was the demo recorded? Which studio did you use? Do you remember how long it took?
Steve Sexton: It was recorded in San Antonio at Blue Cat Studios and I believe that’s where Syrus had recorded their first demo. We were in the studio for about three days. It took a couple of days to record the music and a day to record the vocals and mix it.
TMU: What do you remember about the recording sessions?
Steve Sexton: Looking back, the thing I remember most is how blown away I was by Ken Ortiz and how great he sounded on the songs having just learned them. He was the driving force for me in the recording session. He was just extremely professional and a super guy. He did a great job. I thought Mike Soliz did a great job as well, but I was blown away by Ken.
TMU: Do you have any particularly fond (or not so fond) memories of your time spent in Texas?
Steve
Sexton:
I can honestly say our time spent in Texas was super.
Spending time with the guys in Syrus was great.
Ken and John and their families in particular were very hospitable to us.
The shows with Syrus and Fates Warning were just really,
really neat to go to. Meeting all the
different bands from around the Syrus guys’ neighborhoods was exciting
as was meeting
TMU:
The tape-trading
underground was going strong when the first Oblivion Knight demo was
released in 1987 and lots of Texas bands were getting feedback from
Steve Sexton: Actually, almost all of the response was from overseas. John Castilleja from Syrus had given me a bunch of magazines to send the tape to and once they reviewed it we started getting a lot of positive feedback. I remember a lot of interest for Oblivion Knight came from West Germany.
TMU: Was Oblivion Knight strictly a studio project? I’ve heard the band only had one live performance but that you had no drummer. Why was it so difficult to find a suitable drummer?
Steve
Sexton:
We were pretty much just a studio project. If
it had turned into something more it would have been cool, but we pretty much
thought of it as a studio project because of the fact that we were located in
south Alabama. Actually, the truth of the
matter about that one live performance was that it was without a vocalist.
I was me, Chris Camp and Keith Ciaramello
TMU:
How did you hook up with
Keith Ciaramello and Brian Givarginski
Steve Sexton: When it became time to record the second demo we wanted to use Ken Ortiz again, but at the time he was in the process of moving to Los Angeles. We then got Rick Colaluca from WatchTower lined up and he was going to record the drum tracks for us. Well, about three weeks before the scheduled recording session WatchTower got signed to Noise Records and went over to Germany to records 'Control And Resistance'. We were really excited about having Rick record the demo with us, but as fate would have it he wasn’t able to do it.
I was pretty good friends with Mike Portnoy at the time and I was telling him what was going on in hopes that he would step in and volunteer his services. Portnoy was good friends with Keith Ciaramello from school and he told us Keith would be the perfect guy to record the songs with us. So that’s how we got hooked up with Keith to record the second demo.
Brian Givarginski never actually recorded with us. He was playing with Keith at the time. Brian is just a phenomenal guitarist and we were trying to get him to come down and record some solos and stuff for the second demo. I’ve got some rough four-track recordings of him playing over the songs and he’s a tremendous guitar player but he never officially recorded with us.
We actually recorded the 1990 demo in Baltimore, Maryland. I had a friend up there named Drew Mazarik who played with a band called Marching Blind. He had a real nice home studio and he’s the one who actually recorded the second demo for us.
TMU: How did the collaboration with Chris Collins come about? Was he a permanent member of the band?
Steve Sexton: We met Chris Collins through Keith Ciaramello. Keith and Chris grew up together and of course we knew of Chris from the Majesty days. I sent him a tape with the music and he actually auditioned over the phone and got the gig.
TMU: The 'Forgotten Realm' demo from 1990 was a major step forward in terms of songwriting and musicianship for the band. Very progressive but at the same time still raw. Do I detect some Doug Keyser influence in your bass work?
Steve Sexton: Absolutely! I’ve got a story actually of how I was introduced to the bass playing of Doug Keyser. John Cassieja of Syrus had sent me a cassette tape and on one side was the WatchTower 'Energetic Disassembly' record and on side two of the cassette was the Karion demo with Pete Perez on bass. One night after practice Chris Camp and I drove around in his car and listened to this tape for the first time. Talk about a life altering experience for a bass player! To be introduced to Doug Keyser and Pete Perez in the same night, having never heard them before…I’ll never forget it.
TMU: What was the response in the underground scene to the 'Forgotten Realm' demo? Did the band ever get any offers to sign with a label?
Steve Sexton: Actually the response was very favorable. I thought the 'Forgotten Realm' demo was much, much better than the 1987 demo. Those songs on the ’87 demo I guess you could say were written when we were kids. The songs on the 'Forgotten Realm' demo were really the first songs we had written after being exposed to a wider variety of music, particularly WatchTower. That particular demo had a lot of the Fates Warning & John Arch influence along with the WatchTower and Texas metal scene influence as well as the older Iron Maiden and Queensryche influences. So yeah, that demo was a big step forward for us. We just had a lot more influences to draw on when we were writing that group of songs.
We
actually did get some interest from a few overseas labels. I can’t remember
any specific labels now but we were warned by the guys in WatchTower to
be wary of some of the smaller overseas labels because we didn’t want to get
into any weird contractual situations with a small label so far away from where
we were based. So we just decided to stay away from that sort of situation and
market the demo independently.
TMU: What caused the eventual demise of Oblivion Knight? Was there any particular thing that caused you guys to call it a day?
Steve Sexton: Well, to be honest I wouldn’t say it was any one particular thing. Part of it was realizing that with this type of music you probably weren’t going to be able to make a living doing it. We were getting older and realizing that there was more to life than just playing this style of music. The other thing was Keith Ciaramello, the drummer on the second demo, opened me up to a whole other world of music with jazz fusion and guys like Chick Corea and Alan Holdsworth and all these unbelievable players that were mind boggling. I just went through a stage of really getting into the instrumental side of music and these tremendous jazz players and what is known jazz fusion. These guys that are ultra talented and at the same time bring out the fire and passion of the underground metal world but with a precision and expertise that is mind boggling. That’s really the best way to put it, just absolutely amazing.
TMU: Are you surprised to find that there are still a lot of metalheads (both in the US and especially Europe) who are still trading and listening to the Oblivion Knight material after all these years?
Steve Sexton: I am really surprised that there is any interest in Oblivion Knight after all these years. It's a pleasant surprise I must say. I would think we would be gone and forgotten by now...haha!
TMU: Have you been contacted over the years by people interested in officially releasing the old demos on CD? What are your thoughts on giving the old Oblivion Knight material a proper modern release? Any plans to do so?
Steve Sexton: It's been several years (10 or so) since we have had any contact from anyone about releasing the Oblivion Knight stuff. Someone from Germany...I don't remember who. It's funny you ask though, as I just recently had a couple of guys I used to know 'back in the day' ask me if we gave any thought to releasing the Oblivion Knight stuff on CD. At the moment, I'm working on getting the first OSV project released. It will feature two excellent guitarists: Mathias Holm from Sweden & Paco Hernandez from Spain. We have a Myspace page set up where you can listen to some sound samples: http://www.myspace.com/osproject. We should have the album ready for release sometime this summer. Right now there aren't any plans to release the Oblivion Knight material...but who knows, maybe in the future.
TMU: Did you stay involved with music after Oblivion Knight? What were you up to during the 1990’s and early 2000’s? Where are you currently based?
Steve Sexton: Chris Camp and I stayed involved in music after Oblivion Knight. We were always experimenting with an instrumental style that was a cross between our progressive metal days and trying to lean more in the jazz-fusion area. Once again it was just Chris and I and between jobs and getting older and growing up, we tried to write and record as much as we could. We actually recorded around eight to ten songs that I would say were somewhat incomplete. It was a growth period for us. We just never really got serious enough to nail down something that you could call a real project.
As far as where I’m currently based, I moved away for a while but I am actually back in Dothan, Alabama now.
TMU: You presently have a heavy guitar-based instrumental project going. Who’s in the band? Do you have a name for the project?
Steve Sexton: I’m working with a drummer named Gary Oppert who is a very good friend of mine and who actually was an original member from the old Oblivion Knight days. We are writing bass and drum tracks and trying to incorporate some different guitar players to add parts. The project is in the early stages and we’re trying to have some fun with it but at the same time be serious about the music. I think it will be interesting and I think it will have some new and old influences, but it’s still definitely a work in progress.
TMU: Are you planning any live appearances with this new project? Any plans to release the material currently being demoed? You mentioned you might approach Ron Jarzombek about recording a solo or two.
Steve Sexton: We have no live appearances planned. We are planning to release the material but I’m sure it will be some time before we get to that stage. We would love to be able to get Jarzombek to lay a couple of solos down, but he’s a very busy guy. If we could get him to put anything down we would be honored and it would only add to the project.
TMU: The mid 1980’s – early 1990’s Texas metal scene is revered worldwide to this day. I get email daily from people all over the world who are absolutely fanatical about this music. In your opinion, what made the Texas scene so different and unique?
Steve Sexton: I can really say it was the people made it different and unique. All the guys we met from Syrus, WatchTower, Militia and Mike Solis and all the guys that were around at that time were first and foremost talented musicians who were very serious about what they were doing. They seemed to have a sense of purpose that was unlike the LA glam metal scene. These guys in Texas were 'real guys' and they did it not for the money obviously since the money wasn’t there. They did it for the love of the music that they were playing, writing, and performing. I just can’t say enough about how we felt we were a part of that family. I can’t thank those guys enough who made it such a special experience and made it such a special part of my life being a part of the Texas metal scene. It is a special part of heavy metal music history.
TMU: What’s your take on the metal scene (or lack thereof) of today?
Steve Sexton: I would just say 'lack thereof'. I long for the days of Watchtower. I’m a big fan of Spastic Ink and I would love to see those guys continue on. Ron and Bobby Jarzombek, Rick Colaluca, Doug Keyser, and Pete Perez are too good not to be continuing their musical legacy.
Probably the biggest metal disappointment to me over the years was when Dream Theater decided not to hire John Arch to be their vocalist. I think Arch with Dream Theater could have been the ultimate heavy metal band. For me it’s been hard to listen to Dream Theater without John Arch, knowing that he could have been there. That’s a tough one for me.
TMU: The final comments are yours. Feel free to add any additional information I may have left out.
Steve Sexton: One thing I can say is that the people of San Antonio and the Texas metal scene as a whole were very hospitable to Chris and I. They took us in like family members, they put us up when we needed a place to stay, they fed us. I really can’t say enough about the people of Texas and especially the metal scene. There is such a stereotype about all of us 'heavy metal guys' that we look a certain way or act a certain way but I can tell you that the people that we met in Texas were genuine, honest, good people. When I look back on it I can only offer the highest praise for the people we met. I will always remember that time in my life and it will always be a very special memory. It’s also one of the reasons I’m still pursuing music as I do now. The Texas metal scene will always have a part in my life and I can’t thank all of those people enough.
TMU: Thanks for your time Steve!
