Interview with Jason Dost from MOROS, ANTIHAELIX and more

Jason Dost is a Philadelphia-area rocker who hits harder than Satan's bong rips. His doom band Moros recently released a crushing EP, entitled High As Fuck And Ready To Die. He's a conspirator in the new black metal band ANTIHÆLIX, who released their debut demo in early August 2021 on Dost's own business enterprise, Putrid Hammer Conspiracies. He's also played a role in bands like Sunburster and Krieg. So many riffs, so little time!
 
I recently spoke with Mr. Dost via email about his various acts of debauchery in the Philadelphia and east coast metal scene at large. Read on if you dare!

What was the creative process like for High As Fuck And Ready To Die? Or does the title explain it all?
With Moros, John or I will often come to practice with a song skeleton or what ends up being half of a song and we sorta fill in the gaps together and refine the music as a band. The two original jams on the cassette were two songs from a larger group of songs we intend to record all together down the line as a more definitive album or ep. For this release we felt it was a good time to put out something small like this, a few songs to sorta bridge us from "Weapon" to the next release. A big aspect of this was that we recorded it all ourselves at my home studio, I think that gave us some freedom to mess with our sound a bit more and push it to an even more extreme tone in my opinion. It can be hard to get a professional sound engineer to let you make shit sound broken.

What is your secret for crafting seriously heavy sludge?

Only being worried about being heavy and making songs sound heavier.

Who are your heavy metal heroes? And why?

I'm not much of an idol worship person, but I will say due to their fearless pioneering of heavy metal people like Tony Iommi, Rob Halford, Quorthon, Fenriz, Tom G Warrior and King Diamond come to mind as all people I admire for their contributions to music and bands I love.

What was your relationship like with your parents growing up?

Much of my early childhood was pretty normal for a kid growing up in what I guess people might call a declining working class neighborhood in Philadelphia. My parents both dealt with a number of mental health and addiction issues, and I can't lie and say I wasn't affected by that. However, it could have been way worse, and I still got to live a pretty normal childhood and teenage years. My father especially was essential in peaking my interest in music, and while he wasn't much of a metal head, he was definitely into all the great guitar rock of the seventies. He bought me my first guitar and my first drum set.

What inspired you to launch Putrid Hammer Conspiracies?

Putrid Hammer Conspiracies was created as a promotional hub to all my musical endeavors, whether its releasing physical media with bands I'm involved with, digital releases, visual media, and live events. Or at least that is the overall plan. I kind of want to reject the term record label since as of now both releases are more or less self released and handled by the bands themselves. The idea is to sort of create a DIY promotional collective of sorts.

Putrid Hammer Conspiracies is involved with ANTIHÆLIX. Can you shed some light into the personnel behind this grim black metal project, and any instruments you might have played?

My vessel was overtaken by Omega, who performed drums and vocals on this record along with nefarious conspirator Imperatus who plays guitars in addition to producing and engineering the recordings. All the music was arranged and written together during several sessions of alcohol, herb and guitar worship.

What influences did Omega channel for ANTIHÆLIX?

The bleak state of affairs this planet is facing, the uncertain chaos waiting in the cosmos, and the elite second wave of Norwegian black metal

Was there a moment in your life when you decided to be a rock n roll lifer? If so, when?

I don't know if there was a point in time when it clicked. I sorta just reached an age and realization that everything cool and everyone I love in my life sort came by way of the riff.

You've played in many bands throughout the years. Is there a project you're most proud of? Or, a "deep cut" project you feel is underrated, or overlooked?

I feel like it's still hard for me to top Krieg "Transient", it was an exhausting 2 days of drum tracking with many songs being finally buttoned up and finished in studio, so it was pretty stressful for me. Then the end product coming out the way it did and the reception it got, I really feel like I got to play on a future USBM classic with that one.

What else is on the horizon that you're excited about?

Moros has our live return planned at the end of November with Come To Grief here in Philly. I think plans for us at this point is new Moros LP 2 in 2022. My old band Sunburster dusted off some unreleased songs and we will be putting that out soon on tape through Knife Hits records and will be announcing a show shortly. In talks about recording some tracks with Krieg this fall. Lastly, ANTIHÆLIX has a massive amount of material that will likely end up a debut album that could see a 2022 release.

What's one of your most memorable concert memories, good, bad, or strange?

I think seeing Neurosis at MDF 2011 is one that sticks out for sure. They played outside and closed with their "Through Silver In Blood" while a storm cloud started to open up over top of them... It just felt insanely apocalyptic and dramatic. 

Thanks for going one on one with the GRIM-1. Any last words you would like to say to the heavy metal freaks in closing?
Stay filthy, play music with your homies, eat shrooms and commit blasphemy!

Listen to ANTIHÆLIX's debut demo at Invisible Oranges, with words by yours trvly!