RIP ERIC COOK: DO U JAM LETHAL?

Around 1990, thrash metal was hot enough for my hometown to have a radio station that programmed exclusively like Maiden and heavier. It was an AM frequency — its FM sister the major butt-rock station — so bad clarity muddied jamz and impeded identification of their authors. (And fuck dude, AM is not the medium to get artsy with on-air talent; one daytime “personality” flabbered song titles and band names in a Cockney brogue obscured by heaps of echo and reverb. Couldn’t hear shit!)

So more formidable than usual were our searches for certain jamz that, thanks to this otherwise awesome music source, we had come to love. I fucking remember taping bits to play for store clerks, all like “Have u heard this? What band is this?” That’s how we got into stuff like Artch, Heathen, Kinetic Dissent, Iron Maiden’s awesome live version of “Public Enema Number One,” and one jam that we swore had to be a Queensryche b-side. Well, after an exhaustive ID & Procure initiative, my budz and I learned it was Lethal (above) and that Lethal was pretty awesome!

Despite this key support from crappy radio lol, the Kentucky quartet was quick to disappear; but as recently as 2007, Lethal was playing fests and collecting overdue plaudits for their snappy 1990 debut, Programmed. This weekend came the sad news of founding guitarist Eric Cook’s death from cancer so let’s use 0.43% of our Monday to honor him, Lethal, and awesome bad metal radio. Crank it!

-ADF