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Devils without a pause
How local rockers Devil to Pay survived and thrived

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.

Devil to Pay, from left: Rob Secrist, Steve Janiak, Chad Prifogle, Matt Stokes

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.

Stoner rock?

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.

Triumph at the Vogue

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.

Rob Secrist (left) and Steve Janiak wail at a recent DTP show.
Internal complications

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/.

Steve Janiak timeline

1990: Publiminal Sigs play Tipton High School talent show, three original songs, go separate ways
1991: Neurotic Box is formed
1992: Neurotic Box is rock and roll college party madness in the Muncie hoo ha
1993: Neurotic Box gigs in Indy with Acid Green, Soulpaint, Gravelbed and others
1993: Neurotic Box and other bands put out Incinerator CD compilation
1994: Neurotic Box signs a publishing deal with Interscope Music (who then had Tupac Shakur, Possum Dixon and SWV as artists and was eventually sold to MCA)
1994: Neurotic Box releases Parables of the Esoteric CD
1994: original Publiminal Sigs members get together and jam out
1994: Neurotic Box breaks up, Pub Sigs becomes focus
1995: Pub Sigs record Satisfried
1995: Neurotic Box gets back together, an entire state yawns
1996: Pub Sigs go to Los Angeles and play the Roxy, labels can’t find our phone number
1996: Pub Sigs come home to Muncie and watch the scene turn into poo and people move away
1996: Graduates from Ball State University with a bright future in forklift driving
1997: Steve wins second place in the Billboard songwriting contest, takes home guitar and some sunglasses
1997: Pub Sigs move to Indianapolis to make rock music
1997: Neurotic Box breaks up, no one notices
1998: Pub Sigs win Patio’s “drunkest band in Broad Ripple” contest, equipment is broken, livers are damaged
1999: the Patio stops having original bands, Pub Sigs argue and stop playing music
1999: depression rears its ugly head
2000: Pub Sigs realign with new drummer
2001: Pub Sigs record some jams
2002: Pub Sigs are gigging again
2002: Pub Sigs place second in X103 Battle of the Bands, after Extra Blue Kind
2002: Devil to Pay forms
2002: Blood clot No. 1
2002: Benchmark-Patio battle of the bands
2002: edition finals: Pub Sigs sixth, Devil to Pay fifth
2002: Pub Sigs guitarist Larry King moves to Maryland, band breaks up
2003: blood clot No. 2, Steve near death
2003: recovery, benefit show, Battle of the Bands 3
2003: Devil to Pay wins Benchmark-Patio Battle of the Bands
2003: edition, $10,000, releasing album


December 10, 2003  /   Comments (2)  /    top