by Oliver Sheppard
Before Slimy Member co-founder and guitarist Malcolm Williams committed suicide in 2019, Dallas’ most ferociously dark punk band of the 2010s toured nationally, released a critically-acclaimed LP (2017’s Ugly Songs for Ugly People, which I reviewed at CVLT Nation upon its release HERE), an EP, a few split releases, and an influential demo. Now that it’s 2020, and a new decade beckons, Slimy Member’s legacy is due for a serious reappraisal.
So—this is something I decided to write up about this important 2010s Texas band. Included at the end is an interview I did with Slimy Member before their 2018 dissolution.
(Full disclosure: I was, and am, fortunate enough to have a personal connection to the band: Slimy Member’s bassist, Austen Eby, founded our DJ night Wardance Dallas with me in 2012. (That DJ night began as “Atrocity Exhibition”—but that’s a completely different story, for some other time.))
It’s a bit telling that when Slimy Member founder Malcolm Williams ended his own life in 2019 that his death was not picked up in local Dallas music media, even though Malcolm’s band had been nominated for a Dallas Observer Music Award in 2015 and that same publication had mentioned Slimy Member a few times before that (for example, in a 2014 article, here). (Individual musicians in Dallas, it is important to note, did in fact hold their own tributes for Mal.)
But Dallas is notoriously bad about keeping its own history; it’s why few Dallasites know much of this city began as a French socialist commune, or that much silent film history exists here, or that Robert Johnson recorded some of his spookiest blues stuff here, or that horror novelist Anne Rice met her husband, the poet Stan Rice, while at high school in Richardson around here; or that legendary British DJ John Peel, of Peel Sessions fame, actually got his start in Dallas. The list goes on and on about everything Dallasites (often) don’t know about Dallas. (In fact, this situation has caused me to mull over the idea of starting a blog or writing a book called something like North Texas’ Hidden Reverse.) Many folks in North Texas, it seems—including the media, especially—prefer a shiny new object to the actual strange—yet, all the more fascinating—history of this area. Slimy Member, like punk band Stick Men with Ray Guns, are now a part of Dallas’ fascinating dark cultural and historical landscape.
2013 – THE BEGINNING
Slimy Member began in November, 2013 from the ruins of Dallas hardcore punk band Dead Line. (Not to be confused with DC hardcore band Deadline!) Slimy Member started as a 4-piece, with Cesar Perez (of Pink Thing, and other bands) on vocals, Austen Eby on bass, Malcolm Williams on guitar, and Matt Preston (of Steel Bearing Hand) on drums. I was at their first show, at a punk-friendly taqueria in East Dallas that is now—thanks to the rampant gentrification of East Dallas—a CVS drugstore. I took some photos.
The band’s first show in late 2013 at the taqueria-cum-sometime-music-venue was an exciting affair for me, and I wrote about it at CVLT Nation after their self-titled demo was released in 2014 on North Texas’ own Punk Alive Records:
Slimy Member’s performance was powerful, and while a lot of bands’ first shows can be wobbly and the musicians seem like they’re suffering from a lack of confidence, Slimy Member were tighter than a bolted coffin lid from the get-go. They’ve remained that way each of the times that I’ve seen them since that first show. Their subject matter, again as with Rudimentary Peni, alternates between the political and the macabre, and even the purely social commentary stuff comes filtered through a kind of graveyard fog of Lovecraftian allegory that recalls their kindred spirits in the creepy occult-obsessed anarcho-punk band Part 1. Or the Sinyx. A song like Slimy Member’s “Flesh and Blood” is pretty much a perfect deathy punk/deathrock song, while track 2, “Prisoner,” is an uptempo rager that recalls early 80s Southern California punk, like early TSOL or maybe even a hint of Final Conflict.
I also described the overall music approach of the band at this point (again, late 2013/2014):
The band as a whole is powered by a rhythm section schooled on Scandinavian and Japanese hardcore, but this is not a d-beat band; rather, it’s a more measured and deliberate approach to punk that successfully tries to capture the vibe of the darker side of UK anarcho-punk. Track 4 on their demo, “Sacrifice,” for example, employs a gothy flanger on the guitar and drummer Matt Preston’s heavy-on-the-toms style recalls the tribal style of drumming used by a lot of British proto-goth/”Positive punk” bands. “Slaughter the Pigs” is a tad reminiscent of Rudimentary Peni’s “Hearse.” The demo is a great mix of songs for folks who like the muddled middle ground between early Southern California hardcore punk, deathrock, and 80s British anarcho-punk.
2015 – THE EP
Slimy Member—still a 4-piece by late 2014—gathered together material for an EP and began recording in earnest. The resulting 6-song, self-titled EP came out in 2015 on Austin’s Todo Destruido label (home to bands such as Vaaska and The Impalers), limited to 500 copies. It’s this EP—featuring cover art by singer Cesar Perez, a gifted visual artist in his own right—that put the band on the map nationally. The band got a coveted opening slot for UK dark punk pioneers The Mob in Austin in Spring, 2015, for example. Track 3 off the 2015 EP, “The Corpse,” would quickly become familiar to Slimy Member fans as their traditional opening number at live shows.
2017 – THE ALBUM
Later, Slimy Member became a five piece, and this was when they were at their most deadly. During this period, they were beautiful.
The backstory: Some time in 2015 through 2016, Slimy Member’s lineup changed dramatically. Matt Preston left his spot on the drums to concentrate on drumming for Steel Bearing Hand, another of the most important heavy acts of Dallas throughout the 2010s. Chris Reeves stepped in to fill Preston’s shoes, and he did that ably: Chris’s powerhouse drumming is all too evident on Slimy Member’s debut (and, sadly, only) LP, and live videos evidence his galvanizing rhythmic presence as well. And then there was the addition of second guitarist Sean Connolly.
Sean Connolly (of SSTD and noise project Sleep Colony) came on board on second guitar, turning Slimy Member into that rarest of punk bands: A dirgey, driving 5-piece act. The dual guitar assault of founder Malcolm Williams, on the one hand, and Sean Connolly, on the other, on opposing electric guitars added an undeniable burliness to the band’s sound. Sean even added some Rikk Agnew-style leads on a few new Slimy Member tracks, like the opening, Christian Death-y “Nightmare World” song on the band’s LP. At this point, from 2016 ’til late 2017, Slimy Member were an unstoppable juggernaut of brutal Dallas punk rock power. (See my video of them playing with this lineup at Three Links, opening up for Brazil’s RAKTA, up above.) And there was an undeniable electric charge from seeing, visually, multiple guitarists hammering away in a live punk environment. The band got down to work and slam pits and stage diving were not a rare sight at their shows, even if the band rarely played actual thrash.
When it came time for Slimy Member to record an LP—which they chose to call Ugly Songs for Ugly People, and which also, they told me, was NOT a reference to The Cramps Bad Music for Bad People (hah)—they chose Jack Control, of Texas hardcore band World Burns to Death, to master it. It was recorded at Cool Devices studios, who have also recorded recent North Texas deathrock band Blood Bells. The LP initially came out on Europe’s Drunken Sailor Records.
Unfortunately, not a year after their well-reviewed debut LP, in 2018, Slimy Member broke up.
More tragedy happened later: Almost a year after their break up, founding member and guitarist Malcolm Williams committed suicide in an Arizona hotel room. Malcolm was a shy and big-hearted person, always smiling, a diligent worker at Spiral Diner in Oak Cliff. Although he was a founding member of Slimy Member, and even though we share the same Rudimentary Peni “skeletal fetus” tattoo on our biceps (not intentionally), I never felt I quite knew Malcolm as well as I should have, and in fact I knew him the least of all the members of the band. But I did know that he was an incredibly sweet and caring individual. He preferred to stay in the background of things, and I feel his reticent modesty may have cost him the tribute he deserved, and does deserve, in the Dallas music scene. He was incredibly humble; but, for all that, he was an incredibly special and important person. He still is.
In the long run, Slimy Member will go down with The Huns, The Dicks, Stick Men with Ray Guns, World Burns to Death, Butthole Surfers, Really Red, AK-47, The Hugh Beaumont Experience, Wayward Girl, and others as among Texas’ most important punk bands.
Below is an interview I did with Slimy Member in 2015, after their first EP came out. An interesting sidenote: I submitted this interview to Maximum Rock-n-Roll, who decided not to run it. Why? I’m not sure. I’ve written for, and had interviews published by, MRR in the past. Why they chose not to publish Slimy Member’s interview is a question for the ages. Ultimately that won’t reflect very well on their part.
SLIMY MEMBER INTERVIEW
Oliver: Can you give a quick introduction to Slimy Member for readers — when the band started, who’s in the band, and what instruments you play?
Austen: We started in November of 2013. Our first lineup was Cesar on vocals, Malcolm on guitar, Matt Preston on drums, and myself, Austen, on bass. After we recorded our demo, we got Chris Reeves to replace Matt on drums.
Oliver: For readers that might not know, can you explain the name Slimy Member? I’ve heard some folks, when I mention the name, react with disgust because I guess they’re thinking it’s a random gross name like Anal Cunt or something. Hah.
Austen: The band name did indeed come from a song on Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church LP. If people feel gross or upset from hearing our name, then all the better!
Oliver: And so a question about Rudimentary Peni — it seems obvious in your sound that that band has been a big influence. What other bands have influenced you guys?
Austen: Besides Rudimentary Peni, band influences would be Part 1, The Undead (the UK punk band, not the New Jersey band), Killing Joke, and Saccharine Trust’s first album.
Oliver: About the lyrics of Slimy Member, which I’ve yet to read. Are they primarily personal, political, neither? Is Slimy Member an anarcho-punk band, and if so, how do the lyrics reflect that? If not, what do the lyrics tend to be about, and who’s the primary lyricist?
Austen: Our singer Cesar writes all the lyrics. The lyrics are about all sorts of things. We have existential songs, songs about war, songs about sadness, songs about hatred, songs about the occult, songs about the darker, nastier aspects of life, ect… As far as the anarcho thing goes, the sound of the band is greatly influenced by anarcho punk bands, but the lyrics are way more nihilistic than they are anarchist.
Oliver: What are some of the better bands in the DFW or North Texas area at the moment and why do you think so?
Austen: It seems as though more and more bands are starting up now in our scene, which is great! Some honorable mentions would be Sin Motivo, the Sentenced, Collick, Pissed Grave, Tolar, Parantumaton, and Steel Bearing Hand. Each band has new releases coming out so be on the lookout for those.
Oliver: I saw that your EP is coming out on Todo Destruido, a label based in Austin. Who put out the demo (cassette-only, right?). Do you have any plans for any further releases? Have any labels expressed interest in putting out stuff by you guys in the future?
Austen: Our new EP came out in April! The demo was cassette-only and Punk Alive Records put that out. We plan to start writing a full length LP after our current tour.
Oliver: A question I ask all bands: If you were stranded on a desert island, but somehow had some mysterious way to play 5 LPs, yet would be stuck with those for the rest of your life on said island, what 5 LPs would those be, and why?
Austen: 5 albums is hard, but – Ramones S/T, Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church, Crisis’ Hymns of Faith, Big Boys’ Lullabies Help the Brain Grow, No Trend’s Too Many Humans…. Ask us the same question in a few days and I’m sure the answers would be completely different.
Oliver: Is it hard to juggle work schedules and being in multiple bands, as well as doing other stuff, while touring? How do you handle it? Also, what other bands are members of Slimy Member in?
Austen: Of course it can be difficult to juggle around several bands, work and everyone’s schedules, but you will always find a way to make it happen if you want it to. Drummer Chris and I (Austen) were in Lacerations; we played our final show the night of Slimy Member’s tour kick off show in Denton on March 12. I (Austen) also play bass in Parantumaton. And we all have a few new projects that are still in the works.
Oliver: Thanks guys. See you soon.
Slimy Member: Thanks Oliver!
2020 – THE EPILOGUE: WHERE IS SLIMY MEMBER NOW?
Most of Slimy Member’s er, members, moved to Austin in 2018 and there they comprise the band Mass Exhibit. Most members, including singer Cesar Perez and Austen Eby, and to a lesser degree Sean Connolly, are social media shy. So, good luck finding information on the band on the ‘net. I’ve seen the new lineup live—Mass Exhibit were a five-piece when I saw them in 2019 at San La Muerte Fest in Austin—and they play a very interesting, postpunk-influenced style of mid-tempo punk rock. But they’re an Austin band, now. Slimy Member drummer Chris Reeves is still in Dallas and is one of Dallas’ best bartenders at Single Wide on Lower Greenville Ave. Ex-drummer Matt Preston is still in Steel Bearing Hand.
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Words and most, but not all, photos copyright Oliver Sheppard and Grave City.
GRAVE CITY 
