BONES is a three-piece Death Metal band from Chicago, Illinois. They formed in 2009 and released their debut self-titled album two years later in 2011, following up with their next full-length, Sons of Sleaze, in 2013. Six years passed before they would release their next record titled Diseased in 2019. Fast forward to 2022, they released their most recent album, Vomit, on October 28th of 2022 through Disorder Recordings.
The band is made up of bassist & lead vocalist Jon Necromancer, guitarist Carcass Chris, and drummer Joe Warlord. The trio used to be in a band called Usurper, who dismembered in 2007. When they decided to start a new project two years later, they were looking for a one-word band name because they didn’t like the fact that in the late 2000’s bands were coming up with what seemed like paragraph long names, and thus, they came up with “BONES” and were happy to find out on Metal Archives that nobody else had the name at the time.
BONES is a very underground band, to the point they don’t even have any Music videos released, they only have a very obscure Facebook page, and a Bandcamp page. “We really don’t care so much about putting ourselves out there. We rehearse twice a week, we’re always jamming, always working on new material. That part we Love. We play shows when we can. The whole promoting ourselves and all that kind of stuff, we just can’t really be bothered. We’re not really big social media people, we’re not only old-school, we’re also old.” Jon Necromancer said while laughing.
When you listen to their albums, BONES has a very raw and gritty sound. They recorded their first two albums in a live style to get that vibe. “With Sons of Sleaze, I think we went a little bit too far, I think it was a little bit too raw.” Jon continued, “We always wanted to keep it simple, sleazy, and basic, because that’s kind of how we are.”
Even though the band doesn’t usually print their lyrics anywhere, the words that are sang, or rather screamed, are described as gross and sleazy, which goes along with their Music, “The Music is rough, it’s nasty, and it’s abrasive. And it’s just kind of sleazy. There’s kind of a Rock ‘n Roll edge to it, but it’s also kind of drunk and haphazard to really qualify as anything like that in a way, and literally it just kind of fits. And we’re all just old Death Metal guys, before that, 80’s Thrash guys, and it’s just.”
Jon writes most of the lyrics, even though the band does contribute to everything. “I don’t like writing lyrics, I don’t even care for it, I don’t even like singing. It’s just one of those things. We didn’t want a singer in the band because singers are not fun to be in a band with a lot of the time. We wanted to stay a three-piece ’cause we’re three old friends and we didn’t want an outsider in the band, so I got kind of stuck singing.”
BONES is not at all political when it comes to the lyrics, they want to stay away from all of that because when Jon listens to Music, he wants to be somewhere else in his head, “It’s like the sonic equivalent to sparking up a joint and take it away somewhere else. It’s not realistic in any, way, shape, or form, it doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to do anything, except just make me zone out. It’s a Musical version of Candy Crush or something like that, you listen to it, and get something cerebral that you can’t really put your finger on.”
Their most recent album, Vomit, was named after the fact that Jon always wanted to write a song about vomit, “In the back of my mind, I always thought, “wouldn’t it be cool to have a song about that?'” It just kind of came together, and I thought it was a cool…It was one word… It’s gross and fucked up, and we’re gross and fucked up. It just kind of fit the overall theme of how we are. We’re not really focused on selling albums anyway.” Vomit was recorded between Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio with Jon San Paulo, who’s worked with Neurosis, and Hypercube Studio with Sanford Parker, who has worked with Darkthrone. It was mastered by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room, who’s discography includes EYEHATEGOD and Ministry.
To go along with the gross vibe of the song and album, Vomit even features Jon gagging into the microphone, “Why not?” Which just kind of completes the whole BONES vibe, that gross, kind of nasty thing going on.”
Beware of Ghouls was released as their first single, which is the first track off of the album as well, “It starts off with a cool riff. The drums come in, Joe is a really bizarre drummer and Joe gets in with this beat that only Joe would come up with. And then on bass, I write something that would complement it. Our comfort zone is we’re a train that would come so fast, it almost would come off the tracks, and that’s like what we’re kind of going for. The idea is to put it right on that edge, to me that song is right on the edge from beginning to all the way to end, we’re like maxed out, just trying to keep up with the song. That’s just the vibe.”
The album Art is quite a bit different from their previous three albums, as this one focuses on having color. It was created by Artist XNA Casperson. XNA is the one who made their logo back in the day and he wanted XNA to be the Artist for them, even before the band was together. She also used to be Jon’s neighbor. “To me the logo is the best part of the band. It’s fuckin’ cool. I can look at it and see a different thing in it every time. And it’s great. The first cover that she did was together with Putrid aka Matt Carr was for their first self-titled album. Matt then did the next two, Sons of Sleaze, and Diseased.
In between that time, XNA wasn’t really doing Art for Metal projects anymore, instead drawing corpses and cadavers for the local police department. Jon asked her if she would be willing to come out of retirement for them for Vomit. After listening to the album, she decided she would, and she also had free reign to interpret her own vision of what Vomit was all about. “I think it’s cool, a nice departure. It’s got color in it and it’s weird. It’s gross, pastel colors. She wanted it to look like vomit gas or fart gas, just nasty, ugh, you don’t want to breathe that in if you look at it.”
