Victor Venom & Sacrilege NY

   Victor "Venom" Dominicis was a founding member of Sacrilege NY. He's played in Nausea, Reagan Youth, Hellbent, Damage Kase, Chaos UK & currently leads the surf combo Coffin Daggers.
Parts of this interview were used on the booklet of the Sacrilege 1985 Demos Lp.
http://wardancerecords.bigcartel.com/product/sacrilege-ny-1985-demos-lp



Victor outside CBGB's 1984.

Give me some background on Sacrilege’s beginning: how did you meet Adam Mucci, who the other members were & when did the band start?

 All that stuff happened really fast. Sometimes when I think back I’m really shocked at how much happened in such a short time. The whole history of the band is like a year & a half. We started Sacrilege in 1984, don’t remember exactly how I met Adam, probably from going to shows when he was in Agnostic Front & Murphy’s Law.

He was also in Rat Poison (pre-Warzone) right?

 I don’t remember them! Adam was going through all these stages when I met him. He went from the Skinhead thing to this ’82 British Punk look & that morphed into a total Peace Punk thing. This is right around the time I joined Reagan Youth. I was hanging out with him plus Tim & Clay (Sacrilege drummer & singer) & whoever else was around back then.

Where were Tim & Clay from?

They were originally from Virginia Beach. I joined Reagan Youth & went on tour with them cross-country. A little before that, Adam had like freaked out, sold all his stuff & said he was moving out to California. He sold everything, took a sheet of acid, hopped on a Greyhound bus & just left. I went on with Reagan Youth across America & when we got to San Francisco, Adam was out there. He was like living on rooftops out there & wanted to come back to NY.

Was he playing in a band out there?

He was playing drums in this band called Almost Human? I think it was with 2 girls, a song of theirs appears on the P.E.A.C.E. comp. Actually Barely Human was their name. Adam is not on that recording, we wasn’t into  living in SF & wanted to come back to NY. Reagan Youth wasn’t everything I envisioned it was going to be. So I said “Well, why don’t we make a band when we get back to NY?”. Sure enough, when we both returned, we started Sacrilege up & it progressed really fast, did the demo & started to play out.

How many shows did you play all together?

I don’t know, it’s hard to say, maybe 7 to 10 total.

I know Sacrilege went up to Montreal with Reagan Youth, how did that come about?

We went up there because this guy was doing a thing called Connection 85, trying to connect the Montreal & NY scenes.

He did a compilation Lp with that concept right?

Yeah, we weren’t on it but SCAB, Vomit & The Zits, Krakdown were. We just went up to play a gig & that was a fun adventure.

Was Sacrilege a conscious decision to be different from other Punk/HC bands in NY at that time, by going in a more Discharge/Crucifix direction?

When we started the band, NY at the time was in a weird state. The Skinhead/Nazi thing was starting to get popular. When I got into the scene, it was more Punk Rock, HC/Punk you know? To me HC was HC/Punk. All these people in the scene were becoming dumb skinheads. We were a bit isolated, we didn’t have a clique or group to be around with.

No bands that sounded like you guys in NY?

There was nothing like us going on at that time. It was a bit strange in that sense. We weren’t exactly accepted, that’s what I’m getting at. Adam had been a Skinhead in Agnostic Front, so we were tolerated, like a stepchild kind of thing.

 

You had also played in Hellbent & Damage Kase previous to Sacrilege right?

I was in Hellbent while it lasted, for like 6 months, before starting Sacrilege. Damage Kase was a dumb High School cover band, mostly Motorhead songs. No recordings exist of that!

How big was the Discharge & UK bands influence?

That’s what we were into. I never liked American HC. I only liked Black Flag & the Dead Kennedys, but not into most USHC bands, especially not the whole straight edge stuff.

Were you going for the whole bullet belt/spiky hair look?

Oh yeah, absolutely! Total textbook example, we were one of the few people doing that stuff in NY.

After you did the 9-song demo in early ’85, how did the deal for the 7” with an Italian record label come about?

The Italians in that band I Refuse It were going to put it out. An Italian girl was in NY for the summer, hung out with us & when she went back home started writing to us saying “yeah, we’ll put your record out”. We recorded 4 songs from the demo for a 7’ ep, got hung up on the cover art & dragged our feet on it. Adam did get test pressings & I heard them only one time, thought it sounded good. Clay quit the band & we got his friend Fish to sing, but we never finished the cover design, Then Tim quit & they both went back to Virginia Beach. The record went into limbo & it was never finished.

The label didn’t want to put it out?

Since we never finished the artwork, they got stuck holding it. Adam was dealing with them & everything just drifted apart.
The cover we are using for the Demos Lp is the same 7” artwork?

Yeah, that was supposed to be the front cover of the 7”. Clay drew that, after he quit, it remained unfinished. A lot of stuff was happening really fast in those days. This was all probably in a matter of months & then it fell apart; well it morphed into Nausea.

We’ll get to Nausea in a minute! The 2^nd  Sacrilege demo, recorded at Bolt Studios, is more in a Metal direction, why is that?

That was because Tim & Clay started listening to a lot of German Metal that was coming out at the time, the real raw early stuff like Sodom. None of those bands could really play, so it was barely Metal, don’t know what to call that music. It was loud & obnoxious. I liked Venom & that stuff seemed like a natural progression.

Good segway into why are you called Victor Venom?

That’s because of a Venom piece on my jacket that I wore for like forever. The main thing I didn’t like about that 2^nd demo we did at Bolt Studios is the singing. Clay was trying to do the Metal style vocals & he really wasn’t cutting it.

Did you ever play those songs live?

Nah, I don’t even remember them. It was just a studio thing. We were probably hoping that would be our next phase, but everything fell apart then.

 

Moving on to Nausea. I know a couple of Sacrilege songs, like “Fallout”, became Nausea tunes. Which other ones?

Well, “House the Homeless” from Sacrilege became the template for the Nausea song “Smash Racism” which later became “Here Today”, same riff. “Productive Not Destructive” is another tune that was carried over from Sacrilege. I can’t remember which Sacrilege song became “Right To Live” in Nausea. “Fallout” of course & just various riffs & ideas were carried over.

“Fallout” seems like it’s the song that stayed pretty much the same in both bands?

When we started Nausea, that was the 1^st tune we jammed on & when we started playing out; it became a staple in our set. Nobody really remembered the Sacrilege stuff. Here’s another thing: We were going to change the name of the band of the band to Nausea towards the end. We found out that there was UK Sacrilege & another one from Vancouver. That was one too many Sacrileges. I came up with the name Nausea. Adam was cool with it but Tim was like: “I’m never playing in a band with a name like that” & this is coming from a guy that wanted to be know as Vomit! Those guys left NY after the band broke up. Adam was losing interest & he joined Raging Slab.

I think he played in an early incarnation of Raging Slab & appeared on a compilation cut?

Yeah, that sounds about right. I took the good concepts of Sacrilege & used them for Nausea. This guy named John Guzman (John John Jesse) was the biggest Sacrilege fan, he interviewed us for his fanzine called “Living Free”. He must have been like 16 yrs old. Don’t remember how we met him, one day he started hanging out with us & started printing our lyrics in his ‘zine. This is before he became known as John John Jesse. So when Sacrilege fell apart, I wasn’t too thrilled with joining Reagan Youth again. John was trying to start a band with Neil Robinson & this kid Brian who was also friends with Tim & Clay. He was playing drums, this guy named Kemo played guitar & it was going nowhere. One day we were hanging out & I said let’s jam. John had the basics for 4 songs & had 4 songs that I brought over from Sacrilege. It seemed like a “you got your peanut butter in my chocolate” kind of deal, an easy transition.

Why do all the flyers of the band that I’ve seen always spell Sacrilege differently?

Well, the proper way is without the D or edge at the end. If we ever spelt it wrong it was because of pure retardation on our part & whoever did the flyers messed it up too.

Whatever happened to Tim & Clay?

They moved back to Virginia Beach & that’s the last I ever saw of them, dropped off the face of the earth as far as I know. I think they dropped out of Punk Rock & moved into a more Metal direction.

Anybody ever asked you Sacrilege throughout the years?

Not really because it was a bit of an obscure kind of band, it was really short-lived.

When I made you a copy of my Sacrilege demo, you hadn’t heard it in a while right?

We were looking for it for years; I hadn’t heard it or had it for ages!

I got my copy off your old college buddy Big Marlon in 1987.

That’s another thing; I’m convinced Adam had the masters to the original demo, who knows how many generations ago that is. Like I said, as soon as it was done, it was out of sight & out of mind. I just focused on my next project.

What do you think of revisiting all this stuff now?

I like it because it was one of those things that never got finished. Nausea ended up being what we tried to do with Sacrilege. When Sacrilege was around, we felt like we were alone in the wilderness. About 6 months after Nausea started, the whole Squat Or Rot scene started. Not that we’re taking credit for that, but there were a lot of people that were disenfranchised from the scene. A lot of them felt that there was no place for them if you weren’t a Skinhead or a HC Straight Edge person.  They said: “Hey, we’re not alone”. Bands like Public Nuisance, A.P.P.L.E., Apostates, Insurgence plus others all of a sudden came out of nowhere & started a scene outside of the HC scene.

I’m sure you are aware of the whole D-Beat tag. You guys seemed to be ahead of the curve by doing that style in 1984.

Yeah, we were one of the earliest “D-Beat” bands. We were copying Discharge, Disorder & Chaos UK plus those Swedish bands like Anti-Cimex. They (Anti-Cimex) should get the credit for D-Beat, even though it wasn’t called that back then. I think the Minneapolis guys in the late 80’s named it as such. There was Appendix & Anti-Cimex. They were the progenitors. We were the first East Coast D-Beat band: that was our thing, that’s what we were into.

Bring us up to date. What have you been up to these days?

I’ve been doing Surf music for the past 10 years. After Nausea broke up I joined Chaos UK & did that until I got deported from England. I wasn’t playing music for a while until I started this Surf band called the Coffin Daggers & now all this Punk Rock stuff is popping up again.

Any talk of a Nausea reunion?

I saw Roy the other day. I think him doing Amebix  for the past couple of years has inspired him to play Punk again. John (John Jesse) Guzman is around & Al has resurfaced so we’ve all discussed the possibility of doing a new record.

Is Amy involved? I heard all these rumours about her throughout the years, they range from her becoming a doctor to a stripper?

Amy wants nothing to do with Nausea. She has Doctor’s career now so the stripper rumour wasn’t true, she is  a Doctor! The one about her being a Republican & hanging out with George Bush hasn’t been corroborated yet. She’s at George Washington University hospital. When we did the Nausea anthology, the guy that put it out wanted to give her some money for it. She wouldn’t take it, she was like: “If I take it, I’ll be investigated” & all this shit. Any reunion we do will be without her.

OK! Thank you for the interview, anything else you want to add?

When I think about it, it seems like a lot of stuff happened in such a short period of time. I always looked back at it like: “Well, it didn’t quite pan out, but it was a stepping stone to something else”. I’m happy that this is coming out now. Back then, it hadn’t come to fruition yet, it wasn’t fully formed. The ideas were there but it wasn’t the right cast of characters. Thank you guys for bringing it all back.

Check out Victor's current band:
http://coffindaggers.com/

Victor holding the Lp in 2013.