Gore, Guts, and a Little Bit of Soul
I recently added Poda on Facebook. He's the guy who booked POPIK's gig in Novi Sad back in April 2017, and we lost touch after that. I didn't know his full name, so when he popped up in suggestions, I just hit add. This morning, scrolling through my feed, I saw Poda had posted some grim news: Mark Sawickis, guitarist of pioneering goregrinders Impetigo, had passed away.
The sadness grabbed me immediately, twisting me into a knot. The shock sent chills down my spine, and the heaviness that followed felt unusually strong, yet completely expected. My first instinct was to check if the story was actually true, because you have to do that in the post-truth world. I didn't find anything on news outlets, which doesn't really surprise me, but I saw many people posting about it, including Billy Nocera from Razorback Records and bands like Nasum. That was confirmation enough.
For me, Mark wasn't just the guitarist of one of the most influential bands in the worldwide metal underground. He was a kind soul who paid attention to a twenty-year-old kid twenty years ago, and quite possibly his kindness led me down the path I chose.
It was 2006. My radio show ISK was only a year and a few months old. I was guts-deep in the metal underground, specifically old-school primitive death metal and grindcore classics. I was never into technical music. Early Carcass, Repulsion, Impetigo, Napalm Death, all those bands had a fuck-off attitude, a hardcore punk approach to metal that was essential for me to even accept the genre. When you listen to those old records, you can sometimes hear the musicians struggling with their instruments, but the sheer emotion, the youthfulness, the unrestrained energy is what made that music matter. That is what connected me to it.
I'm not even sure how I first discovered Impetigo, but what worked for me was how they introduced the connection between horror movies and metal. Unlike Mortician, whose importance I appreciate but find quite sterile, Impetigo was a beast of its own. After heavy, long samples came the musical menace: rotten noise and gurgling vocal lines masterfully delivered by vocalist and bass player Stevo Dobbins.
As a young journalist and a fan with too much time on my hands, I wanted to understand what made these people tick. Impetigo was long gone by 2006, but before social media destroyed the internet, people used to set up fan sites for the things they loved. Someone, believe it or not, had built a page for Impetigo. Discography, artwork, and even a contact form. So I sent an email asking if the webmaster knew how to reach the band.
A few days or weeks later, I can't recall exactly, I got a reply. Not from the address I had written to. The person writing back was Mark Sawickis, guitar player of Impetigo. Turns out the webmaster knew him, forwarded my mail, and Mark wrote back. I genuinely couldn't wrap my head around it. Why would this man want to communicate with me at all? We exchanged a few emails, and of course, I asked if I could interview him. When he said yes, I was through the roof. We did a mailer interview, which you can still read at the ISK Web Magazine, published in March 2006.
After the interview went up, Mark asked for my address because he wanted to send me "something." I gave him the address of my old radio station, knowing the post came regularly there and I wouldn't miss the postman. Weeks passed. One day, Josip, the man who brought us mail, found me in the office and told me something had arrived for me. My memory is fuzzy on the details. I can't remember if it was a white or a yellow bubble wrap envelope, but my heart rate skyrocketed the moment I saw Mark's handwriting on it. I ripped it open fast but carefully, and out slid the CD version of Giallo/Anteffato, a compilation featuring Impetigo's demo and additional recorded material that didn't make it onto their two absurdly good full-lengths, “Ultimo Mondo Cannibale” and “Horror of the Zombies”.
That was the first of many CDs I received as a journalist working for ISK. What made it more special than anything else was the dedication on the cover: “Sharan - Thanks for your friendship and support!!! Stay sick, your friend Mark.”
To have someone almost twenty years older than me pay attention to what I do, call me a friend, suggest music and movies, actually pack a CD, go to the post office, and spend money to send it across the world to some kid. I can safely say all of that was a blend of crucial moments in the development of my character.
What I find fascinating is how many sides of a man I never met in my life, someone I only knew through his art and a handful of text emails, no photos, no videos, managed to shape so much of who I became. Impetigo was a colorful, bloody, violent introduction to many things that inspired and entertained me at least for a time, and it reverberated through everything I did. Out of my love for Impetigo, I launched a series of B-movie horror screenings in Sarajevo. The art of Stevo Dobbins encouraged me to draw for myself, to express myself, regardless of any actual talent.
In 2008, when local fanzine Presuda asked bands to record a song for their compilation, my old band Motherpig covered a true classic: Impetigo's “Boneyard.” I listened to it for the first time in a long while today. It still holds up pretty well, especially the bass section. I sucked hard back then, for the record.
Mark's kindness and open-mindedness were the complete opposite of the ugly, degenerate art he and his friends were making. In metal, this is actually quite common, and those were some of the most important lessons that shaped my expectations of what community is.
I grew up in different times, places, and conditions than Mark. I was part of the underground, but I never really got what I hoped for from it when I was younger. A lot of what I did back then, Motherpig, ISK, was me giving the middle finger to people who laughed at me and said I couldn't or shouldn't. I was a provocateur with good aim. A friend of mine, Džemal, says I'm a high-conflict personality. That urge to be a contrarian, an agitator, is at my core, simply because I don't settle for anyone's bullshit. Including my own. But that part of me was never present when I met Mark, or people like Mark. The ones who were supportive, open-minded, ready to share art, to inspire, to teach. Those people are always a minority, in subcultures and in the mainstream world alike.
As I write these lines, I keep asking myself why the sadness feels so immense. I think there are a few reasons layered on top of each other. When someone who gave you art dies, it is the death of inspiration and emotion. When someone who gave you kindness dies, it is the death of a certain blissfulness you didn't even know you were still carrying.
And when someone who was important to one particular chapter of your life dies, it is, in a small way, a death of you too. A piece of you starts withering. Where once my temples stood tall, the temple of ISK, the temple of Motherpig, the temple of my love for death metal, now there's one more chamber that turned to dust.
So today I feel sad for Mark Sawickis. I consider him a friend, and I feel genuinely saddened by his passing.
A friend of mine told me yesterday he came to one of my gigs when he was fifteen, and seeing me perform made him think that “starting a band isn’t such a bad idea”. When you influence someone to make art, that is as close to a divine intervention as it gets. You become the rod for that lightning strike.
Mark was one of the inspirations for the music, sure, but the biggest thing he showed me was that compassion and friendship go beyond all of it. Because gore and guts ain't worth shit without a little bit of soul.
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