Tolmie Hell House - 11 Years in Hell

Article released in Absolute Underground December 2005 edition

Blood, booze and brutality at it's finest. The Tolmie Hell House has been doing an all-out assault on the local Victoria metal scene for 11 years and is still running strong. Surviving through Y2K and innumerable Halloween shows, the Tolmie Hell House has been a staple in the Victoria metal scene since 1994. The driving force behind this continuous massacre are a pair of freaks named Flee and Shane (Vocals and Drums for S.I.C.K.). Through 11 years in Hell, these two S.I.C.K. bastards have survived. Through dozens of crazy ragers, countless amounts of beer and blood on the walls, it has left them with a thirst for more and an obcession to keep this house of brutality pumping out more metal until the end of days.

Over the years we've been asked a million times "Why do you do it?". The answer is simple, we fucking love it. Originally, the house was started by someone else, but Flee and Shane took over in 1997. What developed was to become the biggest local metal venue for Victoria. Many times we've been told that we should be charging admission at the door, or maybe sell beer at our bar. The answer to that is simple as well, no. We decided long ago that trying to make a profit from this house was the wrong way to go. We just want to promote metal in Victoria, so we offer free shows to all comers. All the bands that have played here understand that they're not getting paid for the show. What they do get out of it is a crazy, pumped up audience of hardcore metalheads who want to hear some brutal music. In turn, the local metal scene flourishes, giving up and coming bands a place to start out and open for some of the more established bands. The way we see it, every good metal band in Victoria should play the Tolmie Hell house at least once in it's life. When bands play here they have total freedom to put on whatever type of show they like. In short, we do it because we love metal, and there's alot of kickass metal coming out of Victoria right now.

The first show we ever did here was Halloween of 1994. Back then, the basement looked nothing like it does now. The first bands ever to play here, if my foggy memory serves me, were Punish and Jeffery Sez. I remember Jeff Sez being painted entirely blue for one of those. And over the next couple of years, we had bands like Smoked Out Brainzzz, Special Olympics and of course, Birth of Sickness. Soon after, we started doing shows on more of a regular basis. Shows like New Years Y2K, where we brought in the new millenium with Gorilla Monsoon and Meatlocker Seven. Since then, we've had a wide assortment of freakshows run through here. To name a few: Throne of Ashes, Christ Punchers, Decay, Mitochondrion, Desensitized, Riot Starters, Self Inflicted, Friday Night Murder, Sooke Skids, Peruke, A Stellar Collapse, Enchanted Faeries and Seasons of Sorrow. Nowadays, we're putting on four shows a year, usually running three bands in a night, four on New Years.

Throughout our history there have been a few bands spawned from the Tolmie Hell House. Bands like Decay, Christ Punchers and Birth of Sickness. But over the last couple of years, it's been all about S.I.C.K., Society Is Creating Killers. S.I.C.K. is a combination of Flee on vocals, Shane on Drums, Justin on guitar and Ken on bass. Put them together in a confined space, and you'll hear a roar of brutality with such songs as Modern Human Art, Worst Enemy or Beg to Suffer. With a huge variety of influences coming together we combine ripping death metal vocals with shredding, thrash guitar and a battery of brutality from the drums to make a sound that is truely S.I.C.K. The lyrics S.I.C.K. writes tackle such topics as chemical addiction, suicide and serial killers. All in all, our lyrics are about the things that make us sick. The parts of society too brutal to comprehend. Basically, we parody the darker sides of life with songs like Worst Enemy, which is all about heroin addiction or Modern Human Art, which is the career of an artistic serial killer. It all culminates into four twisted miscreants called S.I.C.K. Due out at the beginning of December is our first release "Society Is Creating Killers" which will be available on our new website www.Sicktoria.com.

Our most recent show at the Tolmie Hell House was Helloween 2005. This was actually one of our smaller shows we've had recently, with only about 100 people showing up. Friday Night Murder put on an awesome show to open things up. With ripping, hardcore vocals and some chunky metal guitar behind it, these guys tore up the basement and got the whole thing started with a bang. Next up was Desensitized. Shredding thrash guitar and some dominating vocals kept the crowd riled right the fuck up. And headlining this one was none other than us S.I.C.K. fucks. We were pretty shitfaced when we got on the stage, but of course that didn't stop us at all. All night long there were beers, bottles of tequila and big fat joints flying all around the house. Can't think of a better way to spend the Devil's night.

Another thing we get asked all the time is "Why do your neighbours put up with you?". Well, with a church next door and an old folks home across the street, we simply keep on a friendly basis with all of them. The church/day care next door doesn't care what we do at night, it's not like we're offending God, now are we? The old folks we give complete respect to. They even come knocking on our door once in a while asking to pick fruit in our back yard, then come back later with homemade goodies they made with it. Our only real neighbour that counts is right next door. As it turns out, they're just really cool people who sometimes even come on over for the party. Hand a beer on over to them and they're perfectly satisfied. It all comes down to having a good relationship with our community. We don't disrespect our neighbours, and they put up with our shit.

So whats in the future for the Tolmie Hell House? Well, next up we've got New Years Eve - The Death of 2005. We're still working on finalizing the bands. We've got a few plans for the house itself as well. We're planning on putting a recording booth downstairs, so we can record each show that comes through here. As well, we want to put webcams in a few places and webcast the parties via www.Sicktoria.com. A few bands we'd like to see playing here in the upcoming months are 3 Inches of Blood, Splatter, Gremory, Iskra, Hunting Humans, Abuse of Power and Allfather. Any other metal bands that want to take a crack at the Tolmie Hell House, drop an email to SickFuck@shaw.ca. We'll be continuing the shows here for as long as we can get away with it. Keep checking our site, as well as www.LiveVictoria.com and Absolute Underground.

Tolmie Hell House - Brutality at it's finest.