In this band’s infancy, its frontman faced mortality. More recently, they won the 2003 Benchmark Records Battle of the Bands, and have shared the stage with Clutch and Alice Cooper. Now, Devil to Pay has its first full-length record, 30 Pieces of Silver, ready for release this month.

Devil to Pay is Steve Janiak, guitar/vocals; Rob Secrist, guitar; Matt Stokes, bass; and Chad Prifogle, drums.

Although Janiak is the undeniable Indianapolis poster child for doomy stoner rock, the inception of this heavy rock and roll band was the invention of Devil to Pay’s original drummer, Chris Gordon.

The definition of stoner rock is most simply summed up by Secrist: “Big riffs, heavy groove.”

Janiak sees the term “stoner rock” to be a pretty ambiguous term. “Unlike some bands, who will pop an artery if you call them that, I think no matter what, it’s been a way for me to find some fanfuckingtastic music, so who cares what you call it? If you wanna call it ‘shit rock’ then just don’t do it around me.”

Janiak believes Devil to Pay is an accessible heavy rock band that loves the riff. “We’re doomy but not doom. We’re metal, but without the cheese. I like ‘black collar rock’ ’cause of the uniform.” In this case, the uniform is black shirts, beards and long hair.

Drummer Prifogle adds, “We all love stoner and doom rock, but I think I speak for all of us when I say we are influenced by all kinds of music, from Black Sabbath to Radiohead, Bob Marley to Queens of the Stone Age and everything in between.” Prifogle pulls triple duty as the drummer for Acid Green and for Indianapolis surf rock monolith Destination: Earth!

So, what’s the difference between stoner rock and doom rock?

Janiak’s basic classification is that stoner rock normally envelopes doom, whereas doom is more specific in imagery and sound.

“The term started with bands like Monster Magnet and Sleep toting bongs onstage at shows, since then it's mushroomed (no pun intended) to include most things riffy, jammy, and heavy," Janiak said.

In 2002, Janiak had two bands in the second running of the Benchmark Records Battle of the Bands contest finals. The Pub Sigs were his original entry and main project at the time, while Devil to Pay made its way into the competition by chance.

“I signed us up as an alternate, and our number was called,” Janiak recalls. “We never even paid our entry fee. That was our first show ever. We called Matt and told him we had three rehearsals to arrange five songs and a Kyuss cover. We were sloppy, but pretty good, like barbecued ribs.”

In the final standings, the Pub Sigs ended up placing one step behind Devil to Pay.

In the 2003 Benchmark Battle of the Bands, DTP once again ended up in the contest finals. This time around, the finals boasted a lineup that didn’t have the same feel of titans going head to head as it did in the previous Battle. What it did have were several bands with a thriving buzz and drawing power: The Malcontents, Rhymefest and 7 Degrees from Center. Stokes remembers, “We knew we had a good shot at it, I think. But there were so many great performances.”

There has been some controversy in the music community that DTP’s win was directly related to sympathy support due to Janiak’s near-fatal condition. Although Janiak believes that the curiosity and support may have helped them advance in the first round, he can’t imagine that anyone at the finals three months later would have voted for Devil to Pay because of his medical experience.

“I mean, at the point you realized I’m not going anywhere, you stop feeling sorry for me. I thought we brought our A game and we played in the right time slot, and The Slurs weren’t there to hand us our behinds.”

With the $10,000 grand prize they bought a van, new equipment, paid off merchandise bills, finished their record and threw a party that featured Indianapolis legend Otis Gibbs playing Stokes’ living room.

Janiak suffers from a genetically-related blood clotting disorder that will require him to take preventive medication for the rest of his life. The trouble started during the summer of 2002 when a blood clot which started in his leg broke into five sections and ended up in his lungs.. After an 11-day hospitalization, he was released without a diagnosis. By February of 2003, Janiak was suffering from stomach pain caused by a blockage to his intestines. Two feet of his intestines were dead and needed to be removed. After sewing him back up, the doctors found that he had compartment’s syndrome, where the heart and lungs are being pushed upon from the pressure. They opened his wound in order to relieve the pressure for an elongated period of time.

“At some point after that I woke up in the bed and pulled all the tubes and wires out of me and tried to get up. I have no recollection of that incident, and it took me a couple weeks to realize where I was, why I was there, what happened to me.” While in intensive care, Janiak developed an infection that made his prognosis dire. Friends and family prepared for the worst, not knowing how Janiak’s weakened state would battle the complication.

Eventually he came to, healed up and went home while still having a huge hole in his stomach — with his abdominal muscles separated. Janiak could be seen running around town towing a machine that sucked out the drainage from his wound. The wound was eventually covered by a skin graft.

“Now I just need to have my muscles put back together so I can get on with my life.”

Although friends and family feared for his life, Janiak says that he himself never thought he wouldn’t make it. At the time, Janiak didn’t realize the serious nature of his condition. When he finally grasped the severity, he was stricken. He was unable to walk, eat and could barely laugh. “I just wanted to get back to playing again,” Janiak recalls. “My mom said that when they first juiced me up with the morphine, on the way into the surgery, I was telling the doctor to make sure to do a good job, I had a show that following weekend and I wasn’t planning on missing it.”

He remembers having several Syd Barrett-like hallucinations during this time. “I thought I was in Vietnam. I thought I joined the Chili Peppers. I told my mom I was a porn star, and I thought our country was at war with the Sandinistas from a country I’d made up.” Janiak was also convinced he was a ’70s SNL cast member with a heroin addiction. “Shit, if you told me I was on the starship Enterprise, I’d have believed it.

“The main thing, though, was that I had to evaluate myself and my life to that point. Like how some people claim their life flashes before their eyes in a minute when they believe they’re going to die, I had hours to agonize over every stupid decision I’d ever made, who I was mean to, why I acted like I had — those sorts of things. I felt awful. Nothing will make you more humble than lying in bed, shitting yourself and being completely helpless. I felt like I was 90 years old.”

After a hernia surgery in the spring of 2004, Janiak should finally be through with hospitals for a while.

Janiak’s near-death experience hasn’t limited his plans for the future. “I would be in 13 bands if I had the time. I’m sure we’ll always be thinking about creating music. I want to be a comedian someday, then a movie star, then governor of some state, with an accent and some muscles. Then later a burnout who wanders around homeless, rambling about government conspiracies and aliens.”

As a Lax Wax/Benchmark Records release, 30 Pieces of Silver is available now with a College Music Journal (CMJ) Loud Rock radio campaign to follow in January. They also plan on “crossing the ocean to spread the doom” with the possibility of licensing the record in Europe, Japan and Australia. Prifogle sees the plan as getting as many people to hear it as possible, and hopefully creating some major label interest.

The album was recorded at Azmyth Studios in Carmel, Ind., by Ryan Adkins. More information can be found at http://www.deviltopay.net/ and http://www.benchmarkrecords.com/.