Hometown Tales with Thanatopsis's David A. Couch

Right now, Oakland's Thanatopsis is sitting on their new record, Initiation. It's some prog metal you're not going to want to sleep on.

In the meantime though, you can check out their YOUTUBE channel to get all the thunder. 

Let's find out about David A. Couch's hometown though shall we?

1. St. Louis City is my hometown. I've lived here for most of my life in and around the city. Where are you from? 

I was born in Boston but I grew up in Cleveland. I lived in Oakland for 14 years, which is where Thanatopsis was formed. 

Then I lived in Portland, OR for 8 years. Currently, I live in Denver, CO. I have been here for about 8 years. 

2.We have three things that don't really exist anywhere else: the slinger, the gooey butter cake, and toasted ravioli. Tell me about your hometown delicacy.

I don’t know what I would call a hometown delicacy here in Denver, but I did learn about doing shots of whiskey with a back of pickle juice here. 

Also, there is a Heavy Metal Themed bar here called the Brutal Poodle, and also two Heavy Metal Themed Breweries here, Black Sky and Trve. 

It is cool to live in a town where metal is big enough to have metal themed establishments! 

3. In St. Louis, though there have been others. Our biggest hometown team is the St. Louis Cardinals (formerly the St. Louis Perfectos, nee: the St. Louis Browns, not the AL team that moved to Baltimore.) There is nowhere you can go to escape it. I'm a hockey fan, not a baseball fan, so it's a bit weird to me. Tell me about your hometown's big team.

I don’t really follow sports too closely myself, just more of a music guy – our singer John is a San Jose Sharks fan 

4. St. Louis isn't really known for any one type of music scene. The biggest acts I can think of to get out of here alive were Gravity Kills, Nelly and the St. Lunatics, and Sheryl Crow. There's always been a vibrant concert scene though. What about where you are?

Denver has great venues. It gets a lot of great shows and has a killer local metal scene. Hopefully, that will still be the case when they start having shows again. 

5. 20 years ago, St. Louis had about 300 murders each year, floods, and all sorts of other fun things. You might have heard about us being named the Murder Capital of the USA. Nowadays, a lot here is 150. But there are lots of parts of the city that are returning to former glory. On the whole, St. Louis is a better place to live today than before. 

Is there anything like that where you're from? 

Well like I said I live in the Denver area now, after living in Oakland and Portland. I think there is probably less crime here than there was in Oakland, and more crime here than there was in Portland – 

Really I liked living in all three places… 

6. Are you still there? 

Check out our album – “Initiation” – thank you!