Marysville band plays in the dark

The Dead Are Judged want to go on tour, and one day they might — but that probably won’t happen at least until summer vacation.

“Eventually we’ll get there,” guitarist Ben Burrill said. “School makes it hard.”

With an average age of 16, the Marysville-based hardcore metal act doesn’t need to hit the road anytime soon. Its members are busy in their own back yard, with shows scheduled in Arlington and Seattle.

The group’s Saturday show at Old Arlington High School will double as a CD release party for its self-titled EP. Then, on Feb. 2, the band plans to play the Experience Music Project in Seattle during Sound Off!, a battle of the bands. If the group wins, it moves to the final match and could win a spot onstage at the massive Seattle arts festival Bumbershoot 2008.

Since the friends’ first practice on Dec. 2, 2006, the group has come a long way, thanks to a mix of talent and a little help from a family friend.

Bud Burrill, Ben’s father, was a drummer in the 1980s metal band Culprit and, along with his wife, is friends with Jules Hodgson, guitarist for the industrial rock band KMFDM.

Bud Burrill hooked his son’s band up with Hodgson, who decided to record the group for a discounted rate at his Black Lab Studio in Seattle. For the first time, the group, accustomed to practicing in bassist Justin Bertilson’s garage, was in a professional space.

“It was just totally natural,” said drummer Mark Jagnow. “He made everything so easy for us. He made it comfortable.”

Hodgson’s expertise gave the group’s seven-song EP a professional sound without diluting its obvious aggression. The album, which the band is self-releasing, is filled with crushing guitar, hard-edged vocals and breakneck drumming on tracks like “Kill Me” and “Not for the Faint of Heart.”

“A lot of stuff sounds too clean to my ear, a bit wimpy,” Hodgson said. “And their stuff still has some real guts to it.”

The strength of that recording helped the band qualify for Sound Off! The Dead Are Judged was selected from 84 submissions as one of the 12 best bands, thanks to a couple tracks included on its EP.

That disc tells the story of a tortured young man trying to overcome difficulties. The lyrics, alternately sung and screamed by Alex Pasibe, were inspired by the singer’s nightmares. While the story is meant to be uplifting, “about trying to come out of a darkness,” Pasibe has difficulty distilling the plot.

“You know about nightmares,” Pasibe said, his bandmates fidgeting on a deep couch in Burrill’s living room. “It’s basically about losing the things that are closest to you.”

Nightmarish plots and a rough sound help give the group a dark image, something the members advance with black clothing and the occasional facial piercing. But that image is at least a little deceptive; these are basically clean-living teens.

The group considers itself straight edge, part of a subculture that abstains from drugs and alcohol and is popular in the otherwise rebellious hardcore and punk scenes. The lifestyle appealed to the friends who, outside of Jagnow, attend Marysville-Pilchuck High School.

“All our idols, pretty much, they all get into it (drugs or alcohol), and it totally just ruins everything,” said Jagnow, who is homeschooled. “We know that’s not what we want.”

The band also draws a little inspiration from the Bible, although other than Pasibe, the teens are not particularly religious.

For instance, the band’s name was suggested by Bertilson, who stumbled upon a passage in the Bible. It was probably from the Book of Revelation: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God … and the dead were judged.”

The idea of judgment also pops up on the group’s MySpace page. Visitors are asked to respond to a poll question: Will you go to heaven or hell?

“Really weird,” Jagnow said of the poll.

“It all comes from my nightmares,” Pasibe explained. “They’re just really crazy stuff.”

“Don’t get him talking about the nightmares again,” Burrill joked.

Despite the theme of doom and gloom, the group is hardly self-serious. Burrill, for example, described their sound as “pure awesomeness and metal core progressive.”

All that aside, The Dead Are Judged don’t expect to fare so well with actual judges during Sound Off! The music might please headbangers at the Arlington show, but has gotten a thumbs down from some judges in the past, Burrill said.

“We don’t expect to win,” he said.

“We just want to play,” Jagnow added.

Reporter Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 or e-mail arathbun@heraldnet.com.