Today we bring you the story of David DerMinasian, the guitarist and mastermind behind Retched who recovered a lost 30-year-old demo and relaunched his career in the metal scene, delivering a true classic in present days.
Here’s the backstory: The 1980s were not very kind to DerMinasian and his band Retched, as internal disputes and ill-conceived record deals eventually brought forward the end of a band that was making a name for itself on the West Coast of the United States. Almost three decades later, the guitarist recovered a lost recording from 1988 that could have been a true heavy metal classic and decided to release it. DerMinasian comments on the EP: «The Overlord Messiah was originally recorded in 1988 and we quickly became a headliner band in our hometown of Fresno, California, as well as Hollywood. At the end of 1988, due to some misunderstandings and poor management, we called it quits. Retched had been abandoned for 28 years and I was the only one who had a copy of those recordings.»
The Overlord Messiah EP was finally released in 2016, which encouraged DerMinasian to give a second life to his project. Fast forward to 2021 and we get to see Retched relinquish its heavy metal identity and evolve into a thrash metal outfit with the new single Horrific, a lesson of survival and old-school determination. Horrific is also the title track of the band’s upcoming debut full-length, which DerMinasian hopes to release sometime in 2022. «I never saw my other bandmates again», the guitarist comments on the fate of the other musicians. «Soon after that, I quit playing professionally and just played for fun until I wrote Horrific and wanted to come back to the metal scene again.»
Horrific is available digitally on all major streaming platforms. You can listen to it below:
FOLLOW RETCHED
Bandcamp: https://retched.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theoverlordmessiah
