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Steve Stigmatic
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Steve Muhlhauser, or better known as Steve Stigmatic, is an American musician from Kent, in the state of Washington. He is best-known for his work as a guitarist and vocalist. His music resume included: Death Metal, Metalcore, Industrial, and Street Punk. Although of recent times the music has been morphing into mixtures of indie and electronic in which has spawned the "indietronic demos". As of July 2007, he is set to work with Seattle based rapper Truancy. Early Years Steve began playing even before he bought his first guitar. When he was quite young, he would tinker around on his friend's guitar for hours at a time, rather than watch the television or play video games. He also began playing the alto saxophone at the age of ten, and played in his school's band. After his parents divorce he looked up to his uncle, Tony Muhlhauser. He would be the influence towards his rock mind set, as he introduced him to Judas Priest, Meatloaf, Metallica, and Megadeath. Thus at the age of twelve, Steve finally purchased his first guitar. "I picked up this old, beat up acoustic at a swap meet for something like ten bucks. The damn thing would never stay in tune, but all the same, I would sit in my room for what seemed like days on end, listening to the radio and trying to match the tones they were playing." Several months later, he bought an electric guitar at an inner-city pawn shop. From that point on, he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. The Stigmatic Era A year later he started his first band, The Stigmatics, and adopted his stage name (which he professes is more like a second last name). For the longest time, it was just Steve on guitars and vocals, and his good friend Kevin Frees aka Shay Ken Babies, on bass and backing vocals. They shared a passion for politics and humor, so the majority of their first songs were about just those things. A drum machine accompanied the two on their first several demo CDs. "The first batch of demos were horrible. I couldn't sing at that point. I was actually trying to sing like Kurt Cobain or something, but the lyrics sucked, and so did our music. To be fair, I guess you could say it was pretty much my fault," said Stigmatic, with a hearty laugh in an interview for a friend's small internet magazine. The Stigmatics saw many faces come and go. Eventually their self titled EP was released, and as the band started to get bigger so did their skills. The pop punk style they once had quickly turned to metal with the addition of long time friend James Johnson. Stigmatic and Johnson were both in the same street punk band called Band. Soon Stigmatic start to have a dual guitar with Johnson and had started to emulate growls of Cannibal Corpse and Hatebreed. One of their most heard songs of this time was released "Emo Fucking Sucks", a fast street punk like song, that would be their trademark of their career. This would result in the "Emo Sucks EP", six tracks of punk and death metal. Eventually they played a small show at The Penny Cafe in Ballard, Washington, with a fellow hardcore band called Four AM, and Johnson and Stigmatic's side project, dubbed DMOS (Dead Members Of Society). With the show Adam Wong of Four AM was on vocals for the only DMOS show to date. This period also brought about the friendship of Stigmatic and best friend Zakk Robbins, the duo would appear in over handful of bands over the years. But one night as the band set out to practice, the practice ended with Steve, James, Kevin, and Zakk getting alcohol. Although Steve and James were the only ones drinking, this would eventually send Stigmatic to rehab. As he was drinking the next day on the way to school. With that Johnson and Stigmatic were both in rehab together and eventually destroying The Stigmatics, until they had a new line up opening for The Counted two years later with Stigmatic as the frontman and Robbins on drums. The Counted Steve's next major project was The Counted. Along with his friends Boone (guitar and vocals), and Zack (drums), they pursued a mutual vision of a fast, teen angst-fueled street punk band, loaded with DIY ethic. Even though they were but sixteen at the time, and their sound was anything but clean, they had a very strong local following, internet magazine interviews, air time on internet radio stations and the local college station, and even offers from several small, independent labels. Soon the band rose to popularity among the Seattle punk scene opening for Stalin's War, Agent Apathy, Bristle, Dreadful Children, Mindy Candy, The Untouchables, Ted Dancin' Machine, and many others. The band was starting to be hailed by many of their peers. Known for their upbeat, fast, angry music, catchy choruses, and for their antics onstage (quite often the band would often offend so many people that the crowd would leave). Unfortunately, they had to turn down all the offers, as Boone moved to the Yakima Valley, which is several hours away from where the rest of the band was located. "We couldn't keep playing as The Counted if we replaced Boone," he explained to another small e-zine." just wouldn't have had the same energy, and wouldn't have seemed right. The only proper thing to do was to call it quits." The fall-out of The Counted took the biggest toll of all on Stigmatic, not only because one of his favorite projects was coming to an end, but also because one of his closest friends was leaving. Post Counted Years passed, and so did many other musical endeavours, including bands such as The Dickheads, Surgeon General And The Warnings, and Jason And The Golden Fleece. Surgeon General and The Warnings would be the same line up as The Counted only this time it was Steve Stigmatic (lead guitar), Zakk Robbins (vocals), Shay Ken Babies (bass), and Boone Sinsel (drums). The band was loyal to the roots of early hardcore, resembling Agnostic Front and Minor Threat. The band only created a buzz, mostly due to The Counted resembelence. The band had Kerry King-like solos, mixed in with Oi type of gang vocals, and hardcore vocals. The band was set to headline a show at Studio Seven, but eventually it came to a close and the show was cancelled. After the fall out of Surgeon General and The Counted. Steve Stigmatic was the bass played with Choke On Glass, but eventually he laided low for a year. Dead Members Of Society When entering the year post-Counted, Steve Stigmatic looked for something heavier in song. He started back up his old band, Dead Members of Society with Austin Verdi and Drew Cummings. The band was just a studio band and gained mostly in popularity in LA, as they recorded two tracks, "Lack Of Vanity", and "Betrayal" for Skratch Magazine Compalation Vol. 28. It was pressed at 2,000 copies. The band would take a back seat as Steve Stigmatic would eventually look forward into a new direction of music. Although this music direction would show off Steve Stigmatic's song writing and vocal range, eventually he looked for nothing new. All of their songs can be downloaded at their website Industrial Days With a year without performing music, he still remained active in music, by starting a column for a newspaper called, "The Underground Scene", it with this he achieved connections with bands around the United States, and also gaining respect as a journalist by writing a two page article on Chris William, the guitarist for Champion. It was also at the early point in 2006 that Steve Stigmatic released a glimpse at his industrial, trip hop solo project entitled Steve Stigmatic. His work went unnoticed, as he wanted. Only a full length song titled "CJW", standing for Courtney J. Williams, was officially released, it was a collectiong of movie clips that resembled his mood. Steve Stigmatic's Tri Hop All the beats he was working on would eventually turn into his most successful project to date, dubbed Co/Dec(Compression/Decompression), with metalcore vocalist Tyler Wolverton. The two met at a party through mutual friends and discussed their varying musical tastes and influences. The discussion outlasted two campfires and many, many beers, and would lead Wolverton to show Steve some of the different elements of industrial music. Compression/Decompression The two decided to make a mixture of noise, metal and industrial this leading to Co/Dec (Compression/Decompression). Soon Wolverton decided to make lyrics and added his own touch of heavy metal vocals. After only a few practices, the two quickly made a demo entitled “From Hell”. Co/Dec became a regular on the local Auburn radio station KGRG. “From Hell” became their first single on KGRG's industrial show, System Overload. Shortly thereafter, the duo produced the song "Plague" as their follow-up, but were unimpressed with the overall sound of the song, and so it became an internet-only release. After several weeks, there became a collection of over 30 unfinished songs, and three remixes of “From Hell”. To go along with the rising amounts of songs to complete, there was a phenomenal spike in Co/Dec's popularity. Allegedly, Steve found Wolverton was in pretty bad shape on a day of a show, without a shirt, covered in his own vomit, and passed out, sitting against a dumpster. This would lead to the cancellation of other future shows at other local venues such as Neumo's and Studio Seven. N.R.N Brief Jam With Co/Dec on a holt, it left Steve Stigmatic with much free time and he had not played a show in over a year and half. Eventually with Wolverton going to Matt Mayhem and The Murdercats, Steve Stigmatic would oped for the band on May 15th, 2006 with a band called The A.I.D.S, featuring Plaid Lad, Tyler Wolverton on drums, Steve Stigmatic on guitar, and Jarre Owens on bass. The group did a jam on which Stigmatic mostly improvised his solos and a few improved punk songs, it was a great performance, but it was only a jam. During this time Steve Stigmatic rejoined his long time friend Zakk Robbins(drums) and Jarre Owens(vocals), and was reunited with Kevin Frees(bass)to form a hip hop influenced rock band called NrN. The four of them quickly made four songs and exploded on the scene with a three track demo. Soon they would played Kentwood's Variety show but would be the center of attention. This was posted on Steve Stigmatic's myspace after the show. Gaining In Popularity After the Variety Show, the band would start making more heavier riffs and debut in front of an audience with Kevin on July 12th, 2006 with their performance at Studio Seven opening up for Lick Like A Lion. The band is set to play their last show on July 30th, 2006 at Hell's Kitchen, as both Steve Stigmatic and Zakk Robbins are taking their career to Olympia, Washington for college. The band will release a live album and a seven track EP before the break up. IndieTronic Demos Steve Stigmatic stopped playing guitar for the rap/punk NrN Music, when Zack(drummer) and Steve left to pursure their education in Olympia. It was here in Olympia during the summer of 07' that Steve started making a handful of demos for a revived, more stripped down version of CoDec. The new CoDec demos were slightly goth inspired and marked an end to the grindcore sound that the orginial CoDec demos had. A release date was set for April 27th, 2007 and titled "The Ghost of Frankenstien", but the album was never leaked nor officially released. This meant an end to The CoDec era. Although it is still rumored that one day all the demos and songs will be released free of cost on his myspace. After a few experimental demos mixed with horror film samples and different guitar techniques, he would soon embark on the folk genre. Hammers for Hands was Tyler Gibson on guitar and Steve on vocals making two folk, acoustic demos. Although the project was short lived it gained much attention and praise from his peers. Lyrically it was the best Stigmatic had written in a while. With his progression in the drum programming, experience in drum machines, and his indie influences be showed he decided to move back to Seattle and started working on his solo album. Soon on his myspace he would post two instrumentals titled indietronic and indietronic part two. The titles coming from the indie guitar sound the songs have and the electronic beats and samples. Although not much is known on the release date of the album, it is rumored to be released sometime in the winter of 2007.
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