It’s a late Tuesday afternoon and headbangers of all ages are lining up outside of Reggies for a stacked lineup featuring Exciter, Midnight, Wraith, and Hellwitch. Inside the friendly confines of the Joint, the restaurant/bar side of the Reggies experience, I find myself face to face with none other than Hellwitch mastermind and death metal forefather, Pat Ranieri. With such pedigree to his name, I couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit nervous. After all, I’m just a fan with a webzine. That said, Ranieri is old school, not just in terms of music, but personality as well. There was no rockstar ego to be found as we shot the breeze on touring with Exciter and Midnight, amassing one of the world’s largest live/promo footage collections, and 40 years of Hellwitch.
Greetings Pat and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Pat Ranieri: I’m doing pretty good! We’re winding down our last four or five shows with Exciter and Midnight and Wraith. Then, we start our own headline tour which extends from New York to Atlanta, Georgia right after we finish these shows. It’s going good! I’m a little tired, but you know. It is the longest tour I’ve ever done in my life, but I’m happy to do it and beyond honored to play with Exciter who I grew up with via tape trading in ’82. The bands are all good. Everyone’s super cool. I wasn’t super familiar with Midnight. Now I am and I like them a lot. We’ve had 4 sold out shows out of 12 so far, and 2 of them on a Monday night! The response has been great. It’s going great. No complaints!
You’re currently hot off the heels of a ripping new album, Annihilational Intercention. When did work start coming together on this album and what did the band set out to achieve with it?
PR: Well, Annihilational Intercention is interesting in that it contains songs from 1985 to 2022. It actually has things from ’85 like “Torture Chamber”, which has appeared on other releases of ours, but how it appears on Annihilational Intercention is how it was meant to be. Due to budgetary and technological obstacles, it never got the recording with effects and certain sound things I wanted to do, until now. Now, you’re hearing the definitive version of that song. A song like “Hellwitch”, which I wrote in ’85 and just scrapped it because I thought it was kind of lame, I revisited that a few years ago, probably 2017 or 2018, and realized that it had potential. It just needed a little reworking. It needed a few parts. It needed a little bit of spark put into it. We got that together and I think its one of our most epic songs ever.
Of course, there’s songs in there between ’85 and ’22 like “Delegated Disruption”, “Epochal Cessation”, and stuff we wrote mostly between 2015 and 2022. There’s a bunch of those songs like “At Rest” from our 2015 7 inch, which had “At Rest” and “Megalopalytic Confine”. Those are both on there. Again, newer versions, better versions than the previous recordings. I like that it spans the decades. I think it’s a really cool thing to have an album where something doesn’t sound brand new. It may have hints of an old classic feel to it. Then you have songs that do feel a bit more modern. We’re really pleased with it, and that’s not what we set out to do. It just came out that way. Those are the songs we were working with and jamming and had not yet been recorded. We just went with it and I think it’s worked out real well.
How does this incarnation of Hellwitch compare to past incarnations of the band?
PR: I don’t wanna be cliché, but J.P. Brown who’s our rhythm guitarist, playing bass on this leg of the tour, he’s been in the band 30 years and he’s always been a comparable player to my style and my ability of playing. It’s great to have him. He’s the best second guitarist I could vote for. Brian (Wilson), replacing Joe “Witch” were big shoes to fill, and Brian’s done great with it. He’s nailed it. He gets all the ideas I come up with and he really gets the sound and the idea. I had to mold him a little bit into the Hellwitch style, but he’s worked out great.
Our new bass player Jason Flippo, he’s been in the band about 8 months and I wanna say he is the best bass player we’ve ever had in the band. His picking is precise. His timing is impeccable. He knows bass tone. He’s a guitarist, so he knows how to time it and all the other intricate stuff with string instruments, he gets all of that. Playing bass for him is easy and he excels at it. This is the best lineup I think we’ve ever had. As far as musicianship, this is the best lineup we’ve ever had.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Hellwitch’s formation and subsequent debut demo, Nosferatu. What bands were you listening to back then and what events led to the band’s formation?
PR: I started tape trading in ’81 or ’82. I met a couple guys in South Florida who were probably the only two guys in South Florida who were into that. I was fortunate enough to meet one of them at a record store. Anyway, I got into tape trading and immediately heard Metallica’s No Life ‘Til Leather, which was a game changer for me. Then, I heard Angel Witch, Venom, Mercyful Fate, Satan, Raven, a lot of bands of that time, and a lot of the more obscure ones like Future Tense, and also Sacred Blade! Holy shit, when I heard fuckin’ Sacred Blade, that was a life changing experience. Of course, Slayer came along and that was, for all of us, for everyone at that time, that was next level. No one was doing the level of intensity that Slayer had achieved, so Slayer really impacted me to the point where I ramped up my guitar playing and was like, “Man, I wanna play like these guys! I wanna do what they’re doing!” That’s kind of where, in ’84, that’s what really got it off the ground.
From there, when did you first hear the term “death metal” used to describe Hellwitch’s music?
PR: Back in ’84 and ’85, when we were in Gainesville, people would call Slayer death metal and people would call Slayer thrash. People would call Possessed death metal and people would call Possessed thrash. People would call Death…you know, Death, I think people refer to them as death metal. I didn’t hear them called thrash, but what I’m getting at is it was very interchangeable. Those two terms were, you could use either one and everyone knew what you were talking about. There was no debate or difference of opinion. Everyone was like, “Yeah man! It’s thrash metal, death metal! Hellyeah, it’s the same thing!”
Hellwitch are often mentioned as an influence on the development of technical death metal. Do you view yourself as a technical player?
PR: Absolutely. Not right away, but by the time Syzygial Miscreancy was recorded, I had a plan in my mind of how I wanted to write music that was unlike all others and wasn’t a ripoff or derivative of anyone else’s ideas or styles. I really stuck to that. One thought that always came into my head was, going back to my roots, Led Zeppelin, all their songs kind of sound different. There’s totally different sounds. You know it’s them, but everything’s different. They don’t have one style that they repeat. I’m like, “I wanna do that.” I wanna have it where each of the Hellwitch songs are identifiable as Hellwitch, but they all are different. The arrangements are different. The sounds are different. The types of riffs are different. I always wanted to have it that Hellwitch does not sound like any other band. Being technical, I wanted to show that I could play fast. I could slide my hand across that fretboard faster than other guys at that time and Hellwitch is above a lot of that, I thought.
On Syzygial Miscreancy, you’re credited with playing a 12 string guitar. What drew you to that instrument and what did it add to the songs that a 6 string simply couldn’t?
PR: Again, Led Zeppelin used 12 string guitars on a lot of things. I always noticed that the doubling of each string, when picked, was a pretty cool sound, a little kind of ethereal, weird, strange tone to it. When we had acoustic parts, I immediately thought, “Led Zeppelin used a 12 string. I need to up my game and not just use 6 strings to do acoustic passages, but use 12 and give it that full, weird quality. Make it sound really ramped up and really different, original sound.” That was mainly it, Zeppelin. Plus, I had a 12 string, so I’m like, I gotta use this for something!
You boast one of the largest collections of live and promotional footage in the world. When did you start collecting and what are some of the prized pieces of your collection?
PR: As I mentioned, I started cassette trading in ’81, ’82. Then, in ’84, I started to hear about VHS. One of my tape trading friends locally, he said, “You know, Venom has three songs of promo videos: “Witching Hour”, “Countess Bathory”, and another song.” I was like, “Wow man! I’d love to see what Venom looks like playing live!” Back then, there was no video. There was no way to see a band playing. My buddy and I, he bought a VCR. I bought a VCR. He got the Venom promos from someone he knew in South Florida, and then we got the Motörhead, it was like the same thing. There were 5 songs that they made videos floor, and that was our list. We reached out and, through tape trading, found guys who had other videos, and started video trading. The big thing was now you could see and hear what the bands you love are doing, rather than just hearing it. I abandoned audio cassette trading in favor of video trading and just stuck with it, starting in ’84.
I think that’s something younger generations take for granted. Through the ’70s and early ’80s, outside of the album covers and going to catch these bands live, you didn’t see these bands.
PR: Yeah, there was no way. There was no way to see, especially Venom or Motörhead, there’s no effin’ way you’re gonna see them! What do they look like? How do they move around onstage? Do they make faces? Do they jump around? You were like, “Holy shit! What’s it like?!” Seeing Slayer, we were all like, “Man, I wonder what it’s like to see Slayer play!” That was the big goal. When we got the first Slayer video, I’ll never forget it. It was Blondie’s in Detroit ’84, shitty quality, and we watched it over and over and over and over. It changed my life. When The Ultimate Revenge came out in ’85, my roommate, he ordered it from Metal Blade. The VHS was like $69.99. He pre-ordered it and we had The Ultimate Revenge VHS. We watched that everyday. That was like, “Holy shit! Great quality and great bands!” It just fueled everything that came next, our desire to keep collecting.
Then, guys started getting cameras and filming in the States. I started trading with guys who filmed shows and it just went on and on. Now, it’s at the point where my list is over 12,000 titles, meaning concert videos, one song promo videos, rehearsal videos, interview videos, overseas and domestic music television videos, and stuff I filmed with my 8mm camcorder. I have at home 2,100 VHS tapes, 2,000 DVD-Rs, because around 2003, it transitioned from VHS to DVD-R, and 350 8mm tapes of shows I personally went to and recorded.
If somebody told you in 1984 you’d be performing and touring with Hellwitch in 2024, how would you react?
PR: I would say, “Yeah, no. I’ll be 60 years old then and I’m sure that I probably won’t be in any condition to be doing anything like that because that’s old, man! 60 years old? You’re not gonna be doing this when you’re 60!” *laughs* I was gladly mistaken.
A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to catch The Rolling Stones right down the block at Soldier Field. I was watching them and I thought to myself, “Man, these guys are 80 years old and Mick Jagger is running around, jumping up and down, shaking his ass.” What can I say? 80’s the new 40!
PR: It’s so funny you just mentioned The Rolling Stones, because I always tell people, “If Keith Richards can do it, I can still do it!” I always say that, so I’m glad you and I, we both went to that go-to, The Stones. If they can fuckin’ do it, I can do it!
Speaking of “doing it”, what does the rest of 2024 and going into 2025 have in store for Hellwitch.
PR: It’s going pretty good now. I was just telling my friend the other day, “By the time I’m 80, Hellwitch will be a household name.” The rest of ’24, it’s going good. We’ve got 2 songs ready for the next album and we’re thinking of bring back “Fate at Pain’s End” from the ’86 demo (Transgressive Sentience) to also be on the next album. We head to Germany for the Keep it True Rising festival in October, and then we return to Belgium in November to play another festival there. Then, on December the 7th, we play a show with Morbosidad. We’re playing with them in South Florida on December 7th.
May of ’25, we’re doing a 12 show, 5 country tour of South America. So yeah, we’re working on songs for the new album, doing those shows, and hopefully more. There has been talk of another US tour with a legendary NWOBHM band in ’25. I can’t really mention who yet, but there’s talk of that happening as well. That should be pretty badass. Hopefully that can happen. I have a fractured foot and it’s healing. I’ll be able to run around more and get even crazier in ’25 than I am in ’24.
The new Hellwitch album, Annihilational Intercention, is available now on Listenable Records. For more information Hellwitch, visit www.hellwitch.com.