Deadsplinter Up! All Night: Diamond Fist

11/6/20 Loveshaq 26

In 1989, Todd Werny moved to Seattle to try to fulfill his musical ambitions and soon formed a band with Seattle local Axel Mundi (a bass clarinetist) and drummer Tim Soba.  Right as they were forming, Seattle became the hotbed of the grunge music scene.  They quickly established a large following and lots of club bookings but not because they sounded like the popular bands of the day (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Alice in Chains to name a few) but because they sounded so different.   Todd once said “We could get shows because all the bands sounded the same, but we stood out by being unique. We knew that there were people interested in something new, refreshing, different. That was our goal from the start: to be true to an artistic approach, to sound different. It’s hard to objectively judge whether we’ve succeeded in that, but at least it was our intent.” They were also one of the first bands in the area to work with visual artists to create a full multi-media experience. What also made them so unique is Todd learned how to “Tuvan” Mongolian throat sing and incorporated it in his singing to create another layer of sound.   Much of the studio work they produced incorporated layers of this into the vocals.  I was fortunate enough to catch them at Seattle’s greatest venue for live music with a visual experience, the Sky Church at the EMP.  An ever changing 50ft screen of constantly changing lights and video in a state of the art concert venue created by Paul Allen.  The band stopped playing around 2000 and strangely enough, Todd now owns a vintage furniture shop called Space Oddity Furniture and doesn’t play music in public anymore.  I once contacted Axel to ask about buying some of the music I couldn’t find anywhere and he reluctantly sold me some really poor recordings of some really interesting stuff (he warned me about recording quality issues)  but sadly they have no plans to get together again that I am aware of.

In this song Todd used his throat singing and nasal tones to give it a Native American vibe that matched the themes of the song,  Snowfallingthrusmoke

Todd uses much more of the Mongolian style throat singing in this tune, Enchanted Parkway

Alex’s bass clarinet adds an ominous feel to this song for me, Plato’s Cave

This song takes a journey to get going but is a great song on headphones, especially when combined with your favorite drug of choice, The Man Who Lost His Dreams

Axel still makes music, though much different than DFW, if you are interested:

http://axelmundi.com/index.html

Thanks for your continued support of DUAN and letting me rant about obscure bands!

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26 Comments

  2. Really like the first song. Sadly, not on Spotify. Here is a mostly instrumental called Snow Falling Through Cedars. To go with Snow Falling Through Smoke.

  8. Interesting, I never heard these guys, thanks.

    A couple of short ones.
    Captain Beefheart – A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond

    And John Prine – Diamonds In The Rough

    • Okay, that is tremendous. 1.) I want the grey boots he’s wearing in the first video. 2.) This, played incredibly loudly, is my new “work is driving me mad” band. Thanks!

      • “The Hu” also went to the top of my, “turn it up LOUD on the way home from work”, playlist too! It’s some good “get the frustration out” head banging.

    • So think about how far ahead of his time that Todd did this in the 90’s, this was not a thing and you couldn’t go on the internet to find this kind of thing. This is awesome and sound just like what they were doing.

      • Yes, Todd and Diamond Fist was ahead of their time! It is amazing what they were doing and at the time they did. Thanks for making that point and thanks so much for bringing them to the DUAN.

        On an unrelated note, I don’t know why but the first video I posted seems to be rotating to something else and every time I refresh (I may have accidentally posted a playlist URL and not the song URL?).

        What should be showing is The HU – Yuve Yuve Yu:

        • Hey Ellie,

          is this the video with the grey boots? when you mentioned the grey boots yesterday I couldn’t remember them, so I replayed the video. nothing. played again. nothing again. now I get it!

          but how… wait a minute…

          hey, every time you reload this page you get a different playlist! so each one gets the same first song but the rest of the songs are different. I didn’t knew that. now it all makes sense. damn…

  13. Slightly off topic, but I know we have a lot of John Prine fans around. There was an online tribute to him tonight:

    And they premiered the last song he recorded. Get your tissues handy.

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