When longtime GWAR guitarist Cory Smoot, aka Flattus Maximus, passed away last fall at the too-young age of 34, he left behind a strong body of work with GWAR, Mensrea, and other local groups. But one project he’d been working on for years had yet to see the light of day. Recorded over a period of about two years, Smoot put the finishing touches on his solo project, The Cory Smoot Experiment, just before he left on his final tour with GWAR. Now, thanks to the good people at Metal Blade Records, The Cory Smoot Experiment has been made available to the world.
When longtime GWAR guitarist Cory Smoot, aka Flattus Maximus, passed away last fall at the too-young age of 34, he left behind a strong body of work with GWAR, Mensrea, and other local groups. But one project he’d been working on for years had yet to see the light of day. Recorded over a period of about two years, Smoot put the finishing touches on his solo project, The Cory Smoot Experiment, just before he left on his final tour with GWAR. Now, thanks to the good people at Metal Blade Records, The Cory Smoot Experiment has been made available to the world.
Originally intended for a concept album to be called “Religion Is Fiction,” Cory recorded these tracks at his Karma Studios. An accomplished guitarist, Smoot laid down all of the instrumental tracks himself, and planned to bring in various metal vocalists from the Richmond scene, including GWAR frontman Dave Brockie and Lamb Of God vocalist Randy Blythe, to record the vocal tracks for the album. However, due to scheduling problems, this wasn’t able to take place, so Smoot ended up doing even the vocals himself. Judging from the results, this was another area in which he was quite talented–growling and screaming with the same kind of fury he could have expected from Randy Blythe, Smoot is also an excellent melodic vocalist, at times resembling both Ozzy Osbourne and Layne Staley of Alice In Chains on clean vocal parts here. In fact, When Worlds Collide, the final product of Smoot’s labors, is an excellent piece of work, fundamentally based in the brutal American metal sound but incorporating many different styles as well. From technical death to progressive metal and even some Sabbath-ish stoner doom moments, When Worlds Collide is a wide-ranging musical creation. It retains some of the conceptual touches that were first planned for the album as well, with many of the songs running together and carrying musical themes across multiple tracks.
In the words of Dave Brockie, “Cory Smoot is one of the great unsung heroes of metal. His musical abilities transformed GWAR from a splatter-thrash phenomena into a top metal act. And though he may have left us way too early, he left us a lifetime of music to listen to.” When Worlds Collide is an excellent addition to Smoot’s legacy, and purchasing it will help provide for the family he left behind. Metal Blade records will donate all proceeds from the sale of the album to the Smoot Family Fund, which GWAR and Metal Blade Records set up after his passing to ensure that his family would be taken care of. You can do your part by picking up a copy of When Worlds Collide, which is out today on Metal Blade. To order your copy, or for more information about donating to the Smoot Family Fund, click here: metalblade.com/smootfamilyfund And check out one of the tracks from the album, “Countdown To Oblivion,” below:
