Scott Ian

História da banda, simplesmente, por Scott Ian, em “Live At Budokan” (1992):

“‘Speak English Or Die’

I never thought four words could cause so much schism. From these four words S.O.D. was born.

It was Spring of 1985 and Anthrax were in the studio recording ‘Spreading the Disease’ up at Pyramid Studios in Ithaca, NY. I was done with all of my guitar tracks and I had a lot of free time on my hands. So, instead of doing something constructive, I drew comics. I invented this guy, well not really a guy, more like a living skeleton that smokes cigars, hates everyone and everything, with an insane sense of wrong and right, who was called ‘Sgt. D’. (Actually, he’s not much different than your average right-wing gung-ho American) I would draw his face and then put a slogan next to it. Ex: ‘Don’t smoke, I’ll rip your lungs out for you, your caring friend, Sgt. D’. Or, Sgt. D says, ‘I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally, so fuck you’. Or, of course, ‘Speak English or Die’. The lightbulb lit over my head and I started writing. Feverishly working, spewing hatred from my pen, day and night, seeing the world through the eyes of a living, breathing, dead, decaying pillar of hatred.

I took a break after I had written ten songs or so. This was too much hate for one person to bear. I played it for Charlie, I played it for Dan, I played it for Billy. Sgt. D approved. S.O.D. was born.

We wrote the rest of the album, rehearsed it the day before we were going to start recording, and banged the record out in three days. Two days recording, July 2nd & 3rd, one day mixing, July 6th. It was hard, fast, furious, mean, controversial, ridiculous, funny and, most of it all, it was heavy. HEAVY. Just think of the album’s opening riff in ‘March Of the S.O.D.’. This is the sound of death. This is the sound of Sgt. D.

**

The show you are about to see or hear (depending on whether or not you have the video or the album) was the first headlining gig in S.O.D.‘s history. It took us seven years, yep, seven year to headline a show. In 1985, when the S.O.D. album came out, we played seven shows.We did four shows with Overkill, the first three over one weekend at the Showplace in Dover, N.J., L’amour in Brooklin and City Gardens in Trenton, N.J. The fourth was at the Rising Sun in Yonkers, N.Y., and that show was my personal favorite S.O.D. gig. It was our first and only annual S.O.D. Hawaiian beach party. Imagine stagediving with surfboards. Then we did two shows with Suicidal Tendencies at L’amour once again and City Gardens again. I think it was around that time that we started playing Suicidal‘s ‘War Inside My Head’. Our last show, the big farewell Xmas blowout, was at the Ritz in December of ’85 with Motorhead, Wendy O and the Cro-mags. That was it. Short but sweet to quote Billy.
We got together once in 1988 to play the Megaforce fifth anniversary, but that was more of a fuck-up than a gig. Sooo, this show at the Ritz on March 21st, 1992 was the culmination of seven years of nothing. How’s that for contradiction. Actually, this show came about for no other reason than the fact we wanted to play these songs again. We missed ‘em. Billy called me up and told me how misty eyed he would get when he would think about the bad old days of S.O.D.

(He’s gonna kill me now). No really, we did miss them. For the four of us. S.O.D. became a bond that can never be broken, something that only the four of us could share. The Stormtroopers Of Death. The right time, the right place, the right people. A once in a lifetime band that could never be, but will last forever.

See ya soon,
Having a good cup of joe,

Scott Ian,
Huntington Beach, CA

P.S. SGT. D LIVES!!!!!“