Steve Stigmatic
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Steve Muhlhauser, or better known as Steve Stigmatic, is an American musician from Kent, in the state of Washington. He is best-known for his work as a guitarist and vocalist. His music resume included: Death Metal, Metalcore, Industrial, Street Punk, and currently he stepped out and started a folk influenced project with long time friend, Tyler Gibson. The music resembles mope rock, and influenced by his break up with a girlfriend. This conflicts with his whole music career of stating "Emo Fucking Sucks".
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[edit] Early Years
Steve began playing even before he bought his first guitar. When he was quite young, he would tinker around on his friend's guitar for hours at a time, rather than watch the television or play video games. He also began playing the alto saxophone at the age of ten, and played in his school's band.
After his parents divorce he looked up to his uncle, Tony Muhlhauser. He would be the influence towards his rock mind set, as he introduced him to Judas Priest, Meatloaf, Metallica, and Megadeath.
Thus at the age of twelve, Steve finally purchased his first guitar. "I picked up this old, beat up acoustic at a swap meet for something like ten bucks. The damn thing would never stay in tune, but all the same, I would sit in my room for what seemed like days on end, listening to the radio and trying to match the tones they were playing." Several months later, he bought an electric guitar at an inner-city pawn shop. From that point on, he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
[edit] The Stigmatic Era
A year later he started his first band, The Stigmatics, and adopted his stage name (which he professes is more like a second last name). For the longest time, it was just Steve on guitars and vocals, and his good friend Kevin Frees aka Shay Ken Babies, on bass and backing vocals. They shared a passion for politics and humor, so the majority of their first songs were about just those things. A drum machine accompanied the two on their first several demo CDs. "The first batch of demos were horrible. I couldn't sing at that point. I was actually trying to sing like Kurt Cobain or something, but the lyrics sucked, and so did our music. To be fair, I guess you could say it was pretty much my fault," said Stigmatic, with a hearty laugh in an interview for a friend's small internet magazine.
The Stigmatics saw many faces come and go. Eventually their self titled EP was released, and as the band started to get bigger so did their skills. The pop punk style they once had quickly turned to metal with the addition of long time friend James Johnson. Stigmatic and Johnson were both in the same street punk band called Band. Soon Stigmatic start to have a dual guitar with Johnson and had started to emulate growls of Cannibal Corpse and Hatebreed. One of their most heard songs of this time was released "Emo Fucking Sucks", a fast street punk like song, that would be their trademark of their career. This would result in the "Emo Sucks EP", six tracks of punk and death metal. Eventually they played a small show at The Penny Cafe in Ballard, Washington, with a fellow hardcore band called Four AM, and Johnson and Stigmatic's side project, dubbed DMOS (Dead Members Of Society). With the show Adam Wong of Four AM was on vocals for the only DMOS show to date. This period also brought about the friendship of Stigmatic and best friend Zakk Robbins, the duo would appear in over handful of bands over the years.
But one night as the band set out to practice, the practice ended with Steve, James, Kevin, and Zakk getting alcohol. Although Steve and James were the only ones drinking, this would eventually send Stigmatic to rehab. As he was drinking the next day on the way to school. With that Johnson and Stigmatic were both in rehab together and eventually destroying The Stigmatics, until they had a new line up opening for The Counted two years later with Stigmatic as the frontman and Robbins on drums.
[edit] The Counted
Steve's next major project was The Counted. Along with his friends Boone (guitar and vocals), and Zack (drums), they pursued a mutual vision of a fast, teen angst-fueled street punk band, loaded with DIY ethic. Even though they were but sixteen at the time, and their sound was anything but clean, they had a very strong local following, internet magazine interviews, air time on internet radio stations and the local college station, and even offers from several small, independent labels.
Soon the band rose to popularity among the Seattle punk scene opening for Stalin's War, Agent Apathy, Bristle, Dreadful Children, Mindy Candy, The Untouchables, Ted Dancin' Machine, and many others. The band was starting to be hailed by many of their peers. Known for their upbeat, fast, angry music, catchy choruses, and for their antics onstage (quite often the band would often offend so many people that the crowd would leave). Unfortunately, they had to turn down all the offers, as Boone moved to the Yakima Valley, which is several hours away from where the rest of the band was located. "We couldn't keep playing as The Counted if we replaced Boone," he explained to another small e-zine."[It] just wouldn't have had the same energy, and wouldn't have seemed right. The only proper thing to do was to call it quits." The fall-out of The Counted took the biggest toll of all on Stigmatic, not only because one of his favorite projects was coming to an end, but also because one of his closest friends was leaving.
[edit] Post Counted
Years passed, and so did many other musical endeavours, including bands such as The Dickheads, Surgeon General And The Warnings, and Jason And The Golden Fleece.
Surgeon General and The Warnings would be the same line up as The Counted only this time it was Steve Stigmatic (lead guitar), Zakk Robbins (vocals), Shay Ken Babies (bass), and Boone Sinsel (drums). The band was loyal to the roots of early hardcore, resembling Agnostic Front and Minor Threat. The band only created a buzz, mostly due to The Counted resembelence. The band had Kerry King-like solos, mixed in with Oi type of gang vocals, and hardcore vocals. The band was set to headline a show at Studio Seven, but eventually it came to a close and the show was cancelled.
After the fall out of Surgeon General and The Counted. Steve Stigmatic was the bass played with Choke On Glass, but eventually he laided low for a year.
[edit] Dead Members Of Society
When entering the year post-Counted, Steve Stigmatic looked for something heavier in song. He started back up his old band, Dead Members of Society with Austin Verdi and Drew Cummings. The band was just a studio band and gained mostly in popularity in LA, as they recorded two tracks, "Lack Of Vanity", and "Betrayal" for Skratch Magazine Compalation Vol. 28. It was pressed at 2,000 copies. The band would take a back seat as Steve Stigmatic would eventually look forward into a new direction of music. Although this music direction would show off Steve Stigmatic's song writing and vocal range, eventually he looked for nothing new. All of their songs can be downloaded at their website DMOS's Website
[edit] Industrial Days
With a year without performing music, he still remained active in music, by starting a column for a newspaper called, "The Underground Scene", it with this he achieved connections with bands around the United States, and also gaining respect as a journalist by writing a two page article on Chris William, the guitarist for Champion. It was also at the early point in 2006 that Steve Stigmatic released a glimpse at his industrial, trip hop solo project entitled Steve Stigmatic. His work went unnoticed, as he wanted. Only a full length song titled "CJW", standing for Courtney J. Williams, was officially released, it was a collectiong of movie clips that resembled his mood.
[edit] Steve Stigmatic's Tri Hop
All the beats he was working on would eventually turn into his most successful project to date, dubbed Co/Dec(Compression/Decompression), with metalcore vocalist Tyler Wolverton. The two met at a party through mutual friends and discussed their varying musical tastes and influences. The discussion outlasted two campfires and many, many beers, and would lead Wolverton to show Steve some of the different elements of industrial music.
[edit] Compression/Decompression
The two decided to make a mixture of noise, metal and industrial this leading to Co/Dec (Compression/Decompression). Soon Wolverton decided to make lyrics and added his own touch of heavy metal vocals. After only a few practices, the two quickly made a demo entitled “From Hell”. Co/Dec became a regular on the local Auburn radio station KGRG. “From Hell” became their first single on KGRG's industrial show, System Overload. Shortly thereafter, the duo produced the song "Plague" as their follow-up, but were unimpressed with the overall sound of the song, and so it became an internet-only release. After several weeks, there became a collection of over 30 unfinished songs, and three remixes of “From Hell”. To go along with the rising amounts of songs to complete, there was a phenomenal spike in Co/Dec's popularity.
Allegedly, Steve found Wolverton was in pretty bad shape on a day of a show, without a shirt, covered in his own vomit, and passed out, sitting against a dumpster. This would lead to the cancellation of other future shows at other local venues such as Neumo's and Studio Seven.
[edit] N.R.N
[edit] Brief Jam
With Co/Dec on a holt, it left Steve Stigmatic with much free time and he had not played a show in over a year and half. Eventually with Wolverton going to Matt Mayhem and The Murdercats, Steve Stigmatic would oped for the band on May 15th, 2006 with a band called The A.I.D.S, featuring Plaid Lad, Tyler Wolverton on drums, Steve Stigmatic on guitar, and Jarre Owens on bass. The group did a jam on which Stigmatic mostly improvised his solos and a few improved punk songs, it was a great performance, but it was only a jam.
During this time Steve Stigmatic rejoined his long time friend Zakk Robbins(drums) and Jarre Owens(vocals), and was reunited with Kevin Frees(bass)to form a hip hop influenced rock band called NrN. The four of them quickly made four songs and exploded on the scene with a three track demo. Soon they would played Kentwood's Variety show but would be the center of attention. This was posted on Steve Stigmatic's myspace after the show.
[edit] Spotlight On NrN
Monday, May 29, 2006
Who Took The Variety Outta The Variety Show
Last Thursday NrN was pumped to play a school event, despite having gotten 2hours of sleep within those two days prior to the show..cuz of journalism and other shit..but anyways outta my five years doing this none of my bands have played anything school related. Why? Mostly because I've always refused to have any of my bands apart of a school event, mostly because fear of them trying to tame our music, making us play stupid covers (since I know a lot of hip hop on guitar), and no one one would understand what we were about.
Sadly I was proven right.
I was excited to play I wanted to play for my peers and what not, especially since this is my last year might as well ya know? Anyways well NrN was suppose to be the closing act and have a maximum of 10mins. We were all cool with that and planned on playing for 10mins...
but when we did a sound check and Bryan Janzig listened more closely to our lyrics that had no swearing he said "Well... this is a family event and that song won't really fit" basically he told us that since the song was about death we couldn't tell little kids that everyone dies eventually...although Im not sure what the problem was considering I played him "No One's Safe" for the audition..but somehow I guess he didn't know it was about people who have passed......whatever it was stupid..
He actually told us what the crowd wanted and that song wouldn't appeal to the audience...I wonder how he knew...did he take a survey...was there a big fucking pie chart stating no one here likes NrN????? regardless after that we were pissed this meant we couldn't play our best song and furthermore Daughtry didn't like our 3rd song ...and refused to have us play anything more than 4mins...which was absurd..I mean you cant tell us we have 10mins than spit on us and tell us okay well you cant play your single and you have basically 5mins....
So at that point it looked like "Flow Session" was our only song we'd be dishing out....I said fuck that and lied through my teeth and told Bryan we had a song that didn't swear and was PG ..of course we didn't but I figured anything to get us more playing time
So at this point we'd been censored....although Kate's skit was about some girl committing suicide...but she did it in a more happier way..... we did ours dark...so ..this is a lesson make songs about death more up beat and happy so you can play them for the school
Anyways we were thinking about dishing out Flow Session and another song...and we were all still pissed I mean where's the variety???? It was THE VARIETY SHOW!!! Anyways so we're about to play in 10mins than we get another person telling us ..okay Daughtry only wants you to play one song....now that dropped the bomb...it was bad enough they wanted us to play a fucking 50 cent song to please everyone..if that wasn't bad enough they pretty much said fuck you guys you get one song
I was pissed far from words..and you could tell. My guitar sound was more rough and I looked pissed I put more effort into the show ...but right after my solo of Flow Session we suppose to end it...I did one last guitar tap looked at Jarre looked at Zakk and busted into "Seven Nation Army" of course they cut Jarre's mic so he couldn't rap but after they figured out Zakk and I wouldn't shut up they put him back on....
that felt good I kidna said fuck you guys we came here to play...after about 8mins of NrN Jarre ended it with "Who Took The Variety Outta The Variety Show" and slammed the mic down!..It was great
The crowd seemed to like us so that was good...ya know we didn't smile the whole night til we said fuck this and played what we wanted
Steve Stigmatic
[edit] Gaining In Popularity
After the Variety Show, the band would start making more heavier riffs and debut in front of an audience with Kevin on July 12th, 2006 with their performance at Studio Seven opening up for Lick Like A Lion. The band is set to play their last show on July 30th, 2006 at Hell's Kitchen, as both Steve Stigmatic and Zakk Robbins are taking their career to Olympia, Washington for college.
The band will release a live album and a seven track EP before the break up.
[edit] Today
Currently, Steve can be found playing guitar for the rap/punk NrN Music. Other recent projects include Steve Stigmatic (his solo project), Hammers For Hands (folk) and Dead Members of Society.
