Dan Bellinger, Mike Brickman, Katon W. De Pena, Roberto Carrero, Glenn Roger
2003
BIOGRAPHY 2003
For the people who don’t know who
HIRAX is, welcome to the show.
You’re a little late, the band started in the early 80s and today still features original vocalist - Katon W. DePena, along with Roberto Carrerro (ex-Barbaric) - lead guitars, Glenn Rogers (ex-Deliverance) - lead guitars, Mike Brickman (ex- TChildress) - bass and Jorge Iacobellis - drums.
HIRAX has played the Los Angeles/Orange
County/Bay Area club circuit along with the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Exodus,
Possessed, DRI, Megadeth, Venom, Exciter, C.O.C., Dayglo Abortions, Reagan’s
Youth,
HIRAX is known all over the world with
records released in Malaysia, Indonesia, U.S.A., South America, Canada,
Australia, South
Africa
and
Their legions are die hard and MANY!!
The HIRAX army marches on!!! HIRAX records released on Metal Blade
Records/Roadrunner Records - Raging Violence, 1985/Hate, Fear and Power,
1986/Not Dead Yet CD,1987 and Angelican Scrape Attic compilation 1985 on Earache
Records, UK.
Also available PHANTASM “Wreckage”
1987 featuring HIRAX vocalist Katon, Ron McGovney - the original bassist for
Metallica, and Gene Hoglan drums ex- Death, Testament, Dark Angel and now with
Strapping Young Lad.
HIRAX pull-out poster from 'Forged in Fire' fanzine, early 1985.
San Francisco, CA 1985 - Mabuhay Gardens.
Paying our dues, working our way up the ladder. One of our favorite cities to play in. If you go over well there, anywhere else in the world is child's play. San Francisco has got a tough crowd. You get respect there by earning it. We'd rather play San Francisco than Hollywood.
Some of the magazines that covered Hirax in the early days.
Sooner or later the underground lifts it's ugly head.
Scott Owen, 1987 circa.
The shows were insane. Scott was the only guitar player I knew who could still play guitar with so many kids running across the stage, diving into the crowd. It never phased him. I know deep down inside he loved it. The Back Stage Pass is for a show we weren't even playing. Mike Muir, from Suicidal Tendencies invited Hirax to a show he was putting on at the Balboa Theater in LA. We had no idea how popular our band was at that time, but I think Mike did. He brought us in through the back doors and walked us into the concert hall. Once we walked through the curtain that lead into the hall kids started chanting "HIRAX, HIRAX, HIRAX, HIRAX" We were blown away! It was the first time we had heard our band's name chanted at a concert that we weren't even playing at.
HIRAX 1987 with drummer Eric Brecht (far right). His brother, Kurt from DRI, suggested we give Eric a call. Eric moved down from San Francisco and joined HIRAX. We knew he had toured before and could handle going on the road. That's all we cared about, touring.
Photo on the left -We were one of the few bands from our genre of music to be featured in Maximum Rock n Roll magazine.
I did an interview in SF for Maximum RnR Radio with Pushead and Tim Yohannan (the man behind Maximum Rock n Roll). Tim had a great vision of music. When he died underground music lost a great contributor.
Photo on the right-is me preparing for a photo shoot.
A little booze always made me feel a little more comfortable ... or maybe it was just my excuse to get drunk.
Left photo-One of the few promotional photos that Phantasm ever did.
Phantasm was a band that I did in-between HIRAX with a very close friend of mine on bass, Ron McGoveny. Short lived band, but we had a lot of fun. We did a six song demo and broke up just before we got signed. The original drummer for Phantasm was Johnny Tabares... a little bit of trivia. On the right is the artwork for the Phantam's six song demo. Cover done by Rot Flesh from Germany. The line up in the Phantasm photo is: (left to right) Nathan Williams-16 yrs old (guitars), Katon W DePena-23 yrs old (vocals), Rodney Nickelson-18 yrs old (guitars), Jim Korthy-17 yrs old (drums), Ron McGoveny-23 yrs old (bass). Ron and I had previous experience in our other bands. Between the age differences, experience and excessive alcohol consumption egos clashed. The bigger the band got the more we didn't get along. It was like a Molotov Cocktail just waiting to explode.
