Electro-Industrial Legends Mentallo And The Fixer announce 30th anniversary reissue of debut album “No Rest For The Wicked”
Legendary electro-industrial sibling duo Mentallo And The Fixer have announced that they will be reissuing their debut album “No Rest For The Wicked” via Re:Mission Entertainment. Originally released in 1992, this reissue contains the original seven tracks remastered by JM Mastering. The vinyl version is a fan’s dream containing not only the restored original artwork, but also a folded poster autographed by Gary and Dwayne Dassing. This limited-edition press will be available in 180g black or silver formats, with both limited to one-hundred copies each. The digital version will contain all twelve tracks from the original CD plus four additional songs from the 1991 “Wreckage + Ruin + & + Regrests + [Redemption]” GPC cassette tape. T-shirts, bundles, and autographed copies will be available for purchase, as well. You can stream / pre-order your copy below.
Music has always been our passion. Buying equipment became an addiction and regardless of getting released by a record label, we would still be doing music. Thirty years have passed since our first release, “No Rest For The Wicked”. Dwayne and I have been fortunate to have kept this band going in some capacity after all these years. Mentallo And The Fixer came about after our first band Benestrophe disbanded due to a number of reasons. Dwayne moved from San Antonio to Austin for better job prospects in the electronics industry. Rich Mendez had other priorities being school and computer programming.
I was left to my own devices and began recording tracks on my own, continuing to work on music in the privacy of my home studio, which I dubbed The Churchyard. I had no interest in being a vocalist much less a front man. I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot. I had nothing to lose and figured the only ones hearing my music, and having to put up with my nonsensical garbling gibberish at the time would be my close friends and parents.
Back in the day, technology was a far cry from what it is today. Our recording methods were quite archaic. Everything was recorded on a standard Teac tape deck. I was monitoring the mix using a Panasonic jambox, and Commodore 64 as our sequencer, taking 15 to 20 minutes to load the program off a floppy disk, a 12 channel Ross mixer which was intended for live sound, load in a 90-minute cassette and hit record.
For these tracks, nothing was structured and everything was recorded on the fly, even the vocals. I would randomly change drum patterns, effects, muting and unmuting synth sounds and levels, etc. The sequencing program would run on a loop, repeating, until I hit the spacebar to stop the song. It was a bit of unwavering controlled chaos. Half of what I was recording vocally was completely improvised. I was trying to capture a feeling, filling up one side of the cassette and selecting the best version.
A bit on how “No Rest For The Wicked” came about. I made various mix tapes of these songs for close friends and a few people in the scene in San Antonio when one of my tapes got into the hands of a DJ in California who sent it to an industrial electronic music fanzine called Technology Works to be reviewed. It listed my address and a cost of $5 for a cassette tape, and out of nowhere, started having people writing to me from around the US asking for these recordings. I was shocked.
From there I had a few small independent labels contact me from that review alone. It was later released on 2 compilation CDs, the first being the “Cyberflesh Conspiracy” on the If it Moves Reconstriction Records label based out of San Diego. The second compilation was the “Cybernetic Biodread Transmission” CD on Simbiose Records based out of Portugal. From there, Luis Carlos at Simbiose asked if I would like to release a full-length vinyl & CD. Since I hadn’t sent out demo tapes, I felt I had nothing to lose. Simbiose pressed 500 vinyl and 1000 CDs. The CD version contained a few additional tracks, one being an instrumental remix of the song “Ritual” by our first band Benestrophe.
By the time “No Rest For The Wicked” was released in 1992 I had relocated to Austin to live with Dwayne. Later in 1997, Metropolis Records released a double CD of “No Rest…”, containing additional songs and remixes from those early sessions from 1990/91 while living in San Antonio. More information on this release can be found HERE.
I came up with the title while still living in San Antonio working at a fast-food joint. I was on a lunch break with a coworker. She was telling me about family problems she was having and ended the conversation with this line. “It just goes to show there is No Rest For The Wicked.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted it down and put it in my back pocket. Little did I realize at the time this conversation would come full circle 30 years later.
So with all that being said, Re:Mission Entertainment will be commemorating Mentallo And The Fixer by reissuing a special 30th year anniversary release in various limited edition formats. This is for the diehard fans, the old-school EBM DJs, and those who want to keep the scene alive and relevant. I want to thank you for all the support throughout the years. I am very grateful.
With love and light,
Gary Dassing
Mentallo And The Fixer was born from the minds of brothers Gary and Dwayne Dassing in 1988. The duo began their career earlier by experimenting with traditional rock instruments such as guitar and drums, but made their focus synthesizers and samplers with their first band Benestrophe with vocalist Richard Mendez. From that project spouted two tapes worth of material released via Ras Dva Records as “Sensory Deprivation” and “Auric Fires”. Mentallo And The Fixer soon formed after Benestrophe went dormant.
Their debut album “No Rest For The Wicked” saw released on Portuguese label Simbiose Records, whilst also gaining the attention of Zoth Ommog records, who went onto release Mentallo’s next two albums “Revelations 23” and “Where Angels Fear to Tread”. The American band would next start a long-term partnership with record label Metropolis Records, who immediately got to work on re-releasing their second and third albums as well as a catalogue of unreleased material titled “Continuum”.
In the years that followed in the mid-90s, the brothers formed a side-project with Michael Greene (who subsequently joined Mentallo And The Fixer on their first US tour) called Mainesthai, toured the US twice, Europe for the first time, and released their album “Burnt Beyond Recognition”, and their next two EPs, “Centuries” and “False Prophets”.
In 1999 the brothers split to pursue their own musical directions, with Gary continuing under the Mentallo And The Fixer name. He subsequently released several albums such as “Algorythum”, “Love Is the Law”, “Return to Grimpen Ward”, and “Vengeance is Mine”, “Enlightenment Through a Chemical Catalyst”, “Music From the Eather”, and the EP “Systematik Ruin”. Following a break that occurred after Gary’s computer crashed, he came back and released a new album titled “Arrange the Molecule”.
