RUSTY EYE
(Bio, 2020)
By Ryan J. Downey

“If this band isn’t already one of your favorites, they damn well need to be.”
–Hails and Horns Magazine

RUSTY EYE unleashes a powerful brew of heavy metal wizardry and stunning sonic storytelling.

Imagine a summer Saturday midnight-massacre movie, in a crusty old theater on the wrong side of town, as Lemmy’s ghost shovels fistfuls of your popcorn, Jerry Only kicks your seat, and Steve Harris hammers away on the old organ, and you’ll begin to understand what RUSTY EYE represents.

A fierce trio formed in Mexico City, who’ve made Hollywood their home, RUSTY EYE takes heavy metal storytelling to new heights of cinematic glory, passionately blending seemingly disparate styles into a unique mosaic, devoid of easy-to-spot seams. Theatrical epics and pissed off rock n’ roll collide. The RUSTY EYE sound gobbles up prog, thrash, punk, blackened death, and synthwave, all squeezed through a keyhole of grindhouse grime that utterly defies simplified classifications.

Hardworking DIY experts with blue-collar ethos and artisan flair, RUSTY EYE have cast themselves as larger-than-life filmland heroes and villains, with KISS-like stature. There’s drummer and co-vocalist Miss Randall, a student of prog-rock, in command of all that female-fronted diva metal entails. There’s the rasp and growl of bassist and co-vocalist Mr. Rust, recognized by the international metal community as resident DJ at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, whose Gene Simmons-esque delivery and business acumen has helped amass five studio albums and a catalog of EPs, live records, singles, and music videos, all self-financed through their own Epoché Records. And there’s guitarist Baron Murtland, whose headbanging guitar mastery blends technical prowess and doomy atmosphere with mystifying alchemy, in the tradition of the great titans of hard rock guitar.

RUSTY EYE has been featured in Noisey, Revolver, Metal Sucks, Metal Edge, Music Connection, Highwire Daze, Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, Zero Tolerance, Exclaim, and a number of other outlets, with favorable press in the horror world as well, like Rue Morgue and the defunct FEARnet.com. They’ve performed at legendary West Coast venues like The Regent, Roxy, Whisky A Go Go and the legendary Key Club, which once dominated the Sunset Strip. In the spring of 2020, they hit the Spotify-curated playlist Metal de Nuestras Tierras (Metal from Our Lands).

The essential elements of “the three Ms” – Misfits, Motörhead, and Maiden – were there from the band’s earliest rumblings, weaving through songs like “Mr. Cannibal,” “Cryonic Suspension,” and “The Entity (Ghostly Lust),” and across studio albums like Rust N’ Roll (2001), Stendhal Syndrome (2007), and the innovative horror breakthrough Possessor (2009). But there is so much more in play, from gentle undertones of The Cure and Depeche Mode, to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, to even the picking style of Norwegian black metal, without sounding overly complicated or confused. RUSTY EYE never emulates any one genre. It’s just purely Rust N’ Roll.

In 2014, the trio gathered together an album’s worth of Spanish language classics by Cuca, Amantes de Lola, Fobia, Caifanes, Café Tacuba, and Maldita Vecindad, alongside “Sr. Cannibal” (a new version of their own “Mr. Cannibal”), and put them through the RUSTY EYE blender of thrash, punk, stoner, and prog. Released together as the Saca el Cobre album, it caught the attention of famed Mexican musician and filmmaker Sergio Arau, who hired RUSTY EYE to be his backing band.

Dissecting Shadows, unleashed in 2020, is the most ambitious RUSTY EYE recording thus far, encompassing all of the strengths of the band’s past with a bold look toward the future. The entire album celebrates exploitation cinema, Italian horror, and grindhouse, executed with topnotch musicianship, songwriting, and creative originality. The fierce and fast “This is Permanent” disguises darkness in catchiness. It’s lyrics exam the perils of addiction, without being preachy; it plays with the idea of being “under the influence” (whether that’s of drugs, the media, other people…). “Hellbound Witch” delves into the band’s love of the occult, sensuality, and Halloween, with echoes of the Salem witch trials, draped in an ambience of persecution. The epic “Mrs. Baylock” is about the demonic nanny and devilish servant of the 1976 horror classic The Omen.

RUSTY EYE consistently defies expectations, boundaries, and trends, with the same drive of sweat and self-sufficiency that first ignited the band in Mexico City. The RUSTY EYE experience is a wild theme park ride of thrills, chills, and mischievous mayhem, stuffed with the theatricality and cleverness that keeps heavy metal music timeless, iconic, enduring, and gleefully reinvigorating.

LINEUP

RUST (Paul Casanova) – Bass / Vocals
BARON MURTLAND (Tony Murtland) – Guitars
MISS RANDALL (Julieta Randall) – Drums / Vocals