New Zealand Metal Scene Murder/Suicide

Make you sure you let people know Will told you about this first.

This is Matt Hall aka Blaps Warmonger.

 He was the lead vocalist for New Zealand brutal Death/Grinders Backyard Burial for over ten years until he was tragically and brutally stabbed to death in bed earlier this year. According to news reports he brewed his own beer and did some kind of social work for a living. Judging from old photos compared to this one, he apparently discovered weightlifting at some point, to. Blaps was a Death Metal hero and valued member of New Zealand society. We salute you Blaps. Tonight I drink to Backyard Burial. All you wannabe Death Metal singers out there can watch Blaps display the fine art of distancing the mic to accomodate the change in volume between guttural vocals and screams right here. Step your game up.

This is Timothy Parlane.

Bulletbelt. That's Tim on the left.

Blood Of The Moon

He allegedly confessed to a female friend that he entered Matt's house during the day and waited for Matt, apparently until Matt was sleeping, then stabbed him with two knives repeatedly. None of this can really be proven though, since Tim was hit by a train a few days later. He was reportedly definitely suicidal at the time.Though not as accomplished and straight forward with his contributions to Metal, he had an interesting resume, including  Bass and backing vocals in brutal Death Metal band DEFILOGEN (that's him in the Deicide shirt.), and live guitarist for extremely obscure black metal project, Blood Of The Moon. His latest undertaking was bass and vocal duties in Bulletbelt. That is apparently where the trouble starts. At some point following the recording of Bulletbelt's debut EP, "The Black Army Stands", Tim parted ways with the band. According to witness reports in the New Zealand press, following the split,Tim was called out by Matt of Backyard Burial at a show for being a "Narc" and sent a song out "against narcs". This is possibly the first known case of someone being hunted down and stabbed to death for shit talking on stage in the underground scene. Eventually a real metal journalist will discover this story (almost a year ago now, guys...) and inevitably try to portray this as some sort of modern day guttural version of the Euronymous-Norway thing. Pretty funny considering this Encyclopaedia Mettalum review, which predates both the murder and suicide, praises Blood of the Moon as a band for people who miss the black metal of old times. Who knew it'd be the guttural Death Metal guy you hired to play live guitar that would really keep it necro and kill a death metal icon then jump in front of a train.

At least the music is better this time.