Time comes like waves, and your wave bounces off the shore and then heads out to sea while others follow it. You stay on your path, but now there are many more paths, and they may coincide with yours briefly, but you have to pursue your destiny, which is what the underground has done as metal bloats around it.

Adversary comes to us from one of the oldest waves of the underground and its most storied actors who were active not just in their own bands, radio, zines, and labels but in tying the underground together by writing letters and making calls around the world to keep the fragile, nebulous network of underground maniacs together.

We were lucky to get a few minutes with Ray Miller, who not only helmed Adversary but managed a metal distro and ran a legendary metal zine. He has taken this time to tell us about the Adversary re-issue that is tormeting the pious and altruistic across the globe!

It was gratifying to see “The Winter’s Harvest” back in print with a remaster. How did you make this happen, and was it a long battle?

First, thank you for this interview! I really appreciate it.

The original 1996 CD pressing has been sold out for 25+ years, and for a long time I had been thinking about reissuing the entire discography on Bandcamp. We recorded The Winter’s Harvest at the end of 1995, on ADAT, which is a digital tape format that has been obsolete tech many years now, so we had to have those tapes transferred to digital files before they could be remixed. For the past decade at least, but especially the last several years I was dealing with very serious family medical issues, unfortunately including the deaths of my parents, and far too many friends and close family members, so I never had the time or focus to get a remix done, or even just the digital reissues. In the months before my mother died, Ed (keyboards, samples, drum programming) contacted Jules Seifert at Epic Audio Media about doing the remix. Ed had worked with him previously with his solo project, Dead Agent. Jules has also done extensive work with Mortiis, and many Industrial bands. Ed and Jules put in a hell of a lot of time to really fine tune the remix and mastering, and we thought that the end result was such an improvement over the original that we should do more than only a digital release, so I started looking around for a CD manufacturer. Cursed Productions hadn’t had anything new come out since Thanatopsis in 2008, and I wasn’t sure what the best option would be in late 2024. After exhaustive research, I went with Duplication.ca, which operates in both Canada and the US. I highly recommend them.

What do you like about the sound of the new edition versus the original 1990s disc?

We loved the original version, and thought that it sounded great when it was first released. But as time went on, the band’s sound evolved when we got a human drummer, and over the following years, we started thinking that maybe the mix could be improved upon, with a fuller, heavier, more intense sound. Jules absolutely achieved that, and as far as we’ve concerned, this new remix is the definitive version of the album.

Have you stayed in touch with your other band members, and are they enthusiastic about the project?

Ed and Jack and I have never been out of contact with each other. Ed only left the band because he had to move away for a really amazing job. None of us wanted Ed to leave, but he couldn’t turn down such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The drummer we got after Ed left, Bob Burns, I had known for a few years, and he was also an excellent visual artist. He created the cover art for several issues of Metal Curse, as well as Jack’s zine, Portrait of Defiance. Bob was with us until after our second album, Forsaken, came out in 2001. Jack and I never really knew exactly what happened with Bob, but I guess that he just didn’t want to be in a band anymore, quit drumming as far as I know, and totally disappeared. I haven’t heard from him in well over twenty years. Since this area is a cultural wasteland, Jack and I weren’t able to find another drummer, and time kind of got away from us, as it often does. I am very sorry to say that Jack has had some severe medical issues in the last 15 or so years, and unfortunately can no longer play guitar. If I ever record anything else, I would want him to be involved in some capacity, maybe writing a few lyrics, or helping with arrangements. Adversary is as much Jack as it is me and Ed as far as I’m concerned, whether he’s recording with us our not.

Of course, we’re all very excited about the remix, CD reissue, and finally having our discography available to download/stream! I created all-new Bandcamp-exclusive cover art for Forsaken, We Must Be in Hell, and Lord of Chaos. New shirts are on the way, too! The initial response to the reissue has been very positive so far.

Does this mean you are planning on writing and recording new Adversary material?

I would love to! As I mentioned, everything has been an almost non-stop shitstorm for… nearly twenty years, I guess. It’s a big chunk of life to go so quickly, but I had to put my family first and take care of my parents. They didn’t have anyone else they could really count on. For the last year, my wife has unfortunately also been dealing with the fallout from a couple surgeries that didn’t go exactly as planned. But after a recent third operation, she is doing better, and we’re hopeful that she’s finally on the way back to 100%. So, I haven’t had time to do much work on any new material, but I do have a few ideas/riffs for new songs that have been trying to escape my brain for a while now. I need to flesh them out more fully into complete songs. I don’t know how or when I’ll ever record them, but there are more songs in me that I don’t want to leave unsung. Since collaborating remotely is much more possible now, I think that Ed would be back in for any new recordings, and I have recently been talking with some of my other guitarist friends. A new Adversary album after twenty-five years? Crazier things have happened!

Have you ever been to Ray Miller Park in Houston, Texas? Is Houston really the hot, flat, humid, and cockroach-infested wasteland that is commonly described, when people have absolutely nothing else to talk about so they mention Houston?

I’ve never been to that park, which obviously must be awesome, but I have visited Houston several times, although not recently. The last time I was there, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was so hot and humid that it was almost like trying to swim through lava. I may have seen a few monster cockroaches, too. I’ve heard that everything is bigger in Texas, and that seems to be especially true about the bugs! That said, all the people I have ever talked to in Texas are very friendly, and I’ve always thought that it’s a great place to visit. But I was also always glad to get back home.

What were your influences on making this album? I can pick out Motorhead and Venom, but what about the death metal side? Any hardcore or industrial bands factor in too?

I’m glad that you can hear the Motorhead and Venom influences! If Cianide weren’t already the death metal Venom, I might try to claim that title for Adversary! I’m not sure how interesting a page full of names is going to be, but here we go: All of the early Swedish bands like Nihilist, Entombed (their first two albums especially), Carnage, Dismember, Grave, and Unleashed. And absolutely Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Immolation, Deicide, Brutality, Deceased, Cianide, Slaughter [Canada!], and Nocturnus! Another huge influence for us was Impetigo, and we covered “Boneyard” on our second album, Forsaken. I can’t forget Death, and Jack would kill me if I didn’t mention Katatonia and Bloodbath. Of course, we also were inspired by the classic Greek Black Metal: Rotting Christ, Necromantia, Varathron, Thou Art Lord, Zemial, Kawir, Nightfall, etc… Plus bands like Onslaught, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Slayer, Rigor Mortis, Num Skull, Candlemass, Paradise Lost, and too many others to list… Everyone is influenced by Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, Judas Priest, Dio, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden, right? I’d add Accept, too.

There were also some amazing bands from Chicago and surrounding areas that we knew and admired (and still do!), such as Avernus, Dysphoria, Abolisher, Shades of Grey, Neurotoxin, Snap Judgment, Experiment, Aftermath, Morgue, Macabre, Master, Maimed, Dead Fetus, Contagion, Fleshgrind, and The Dead Youth. I’m forgetting so many, but this list is already ridiculously too long…

As for non-metal bands, Dead Kennedys and Jello’s other bands like Lard, plus many other punk bands such as Ramones, Bad Religion, The Exploited, NoFX, Suicidal Tendencies, The Misfits, and a bunch more…

Ed is the guy to ask about industrial bands, but I’m sure he would want me to mention <PIG>, KMFDM, NIN, Ministry, Mortiis, Chemlab, and probably Throbbing Gristle, at the very least.

Really we were influenced by almost everything we have ever listened to, in one way or another.

I have a ton of non-music influences, as well. Too many books and movies and people to list.

You also run a metal zine, Metal Curse, and a distro, Cursed Productions. Based on what you see in those, how is metal doing these days?

I haven’t updated MetalCurse.com since Lemmy died, but I do seek out and listen to as much new music as I can find. It seems as if there is just as much new metal being released now as ever. Maybe more! It’s so much easier to record now, and to get a very high quality sound/production, that lot of what I hear is underdeveloped. Some bands would benefit from things being more difficult, since that could weed out the less serious and committed. I know that we learned invaluable lessons from playing shows for occasionally very aggressive, hostile crowds, as well as endless hours with an ancient 4-track tape recorder. However, I have heard some excellent newer bands like Vulvatorious [black metal, Denmark], BalashToth [death/thrash, Ireland], and Vanessa Funke [Gothic death metal, Germany]. Those were just the first few I thought of!

What is the theme behind The Winter’s Harvest and how does it fit in to the death metal mythos of war, pain, death, disease, sodomy, and evisceration?

The theme is life and death. Mostly death. I mean, death is the winter’s harvest. You have the seasons of your life, and at the end of winter, the reaper takes us home. You don’t always know how far along you are, or how close to that end, so you have to make every moment count, even the bad ones. Maybe especially them.

I always found it difficult to write lyrics that were more interesting and meaningful than just gore or whatever, but that was what I tried to do. Not always very successfully, I have to admit. Thankfully, Jack wrote at least half of our lyrics.

How did you write tunes and revise them? It seems like a lot of attention was paid toward transitions that maintained atmosphere.

I consider that to be quite a compliment! Thanks!

Jack and I would come to band practice with riffs, or sometimes more completed songs, and then we’d work on them together to try to figure out a coherent structure. In the beginning, Ed would get a basic drum track ready for us, and we’d practice playing to that until we had all the kinks ironed out. Meanwhile, Ed would enhance the drum programming, making it more complex, and figure out how best to incorporate the keyboards. And all of us had ideas about the movie samples we used. We tried to play live as often as possible back then, and that helped us refine the songs. After The Winter’s Harvest was released, Ed started to contributed some tremendous riffs for a song that would have been called “They Live,” which we never recorded or really finished, but played an embryonic version of live once. When Ed had to leave the band, we didn’t feel right about recording his song without him, so we never finished it. But on Forsaken, there’s a song called “They Live II,” which isn’t musically related, but was intended to be, among other things, a way to still have a little Ed with us.

When Bob was in the band, the writing process was mostly the same, except of course that when Jack and I had some riffs ready, he could start playing along with us immediately, and had some excellent ideas about how to translate the older songs to work with a human drummer.

What is next for Adversary and your projects, and how do fans out here in internetland stay on top of what you are doing?

I’m not sure what’s next. Like I mentioned, I am slowly working on some new songs, and hope to record them some day.

In the meantime, our entire discography is now available digitally with exclusive new artwork on Bandcamp at TheAdversary666.bandcamp.com.

And Forsaken and the We Must Be in Hell EP are both still available on CD, along with The Winter’s Harvest reissue, from Cursed Productions.

I do still have a couple ancient cassettes left of our first demo, 1994’s Lord of Chaos, but the Wild Rags CD reissue is long out of print.

If anyone reading this is interested in licensing our releases for other formats or territories, don’t hesitate to contact me at miller@CursedProductions.com.

Tags: adversary, bob burns, cursed productions, death metal, ed finkler, jack botos, jules seifert, metal curse, ray miller