Put You Through the Blasting Hell
The Making of Excel’s Split Image
Before changing their moniker and becoming Excel, southern Californian dudes Dan Clements and Adam Siegel, along with a rotating rhythm section, were blasting through hardcore punk anthems like “You Don’t Mean a Thing,” “My Neighbor Sucks” and “Operation Rip Off” as Chaotic Noise, alongside their peers in bands like Ill Repute and Neighborhood Watch. As the members got deeper into their teen years, they did what artistic teenagers looking for a voice and means of expression do: absorb all the attractive and available proximal cultural guideposts and spit out their own version of it.
Life in Los Angeles in the early/mid-’80s was a combination of sun, smog, skateboarding, and a constant stream of hardcore punk records and shows. Soon, speed metal, sociopolitics, gangs and graffiti got stirred into the mix. Vocalist Clements and guitarist Siegel (soon to be joined by bassist Shaun Ross and drummer Greg Saenz) quickly divulged themselves from living up to their Chaotic Noise moniker to become Excel, the band who admirably held their own—some say stole the show—on the Welcome to Venice compilation that also featured prominent local crossover thrashers Beowülf, Los Cycos, No Mercy and Suicidal Tendencies, who by 1985 were already L.A. scene elder statesmen.
Before Split Image, the band’s debut full-length, was issued in the summer of 1987, Excel had taken the both the local scene and worldwide tape-trader lists by storm with three demos: Sonic Decapitation, Personal Onslaught (both from 1985) and 1986’s Refuse to Quit. Each recording demonstrated the band expanding upon their hardcore punk roots and embracing metal in its many forms (speed/thrash, doom, first wave of black, traditional). The result had its fingers in many pots, but still sounded unique and instantly recognizable given the throaty, adenoidal rasp of Clements’ voice, Siegel and Ross’s prodigious slingshots between hardcore tempos, thrash metal tritones and deliriously locked-in half-time grooves, Saenz’s powerhouse drumming and a collectively developed songwriting muscle.
Still, at the time—and this part often gets forgotten—Excel were just kids barely living on the precipice of their 20s. This was evident in lyrics like, “I’m treated like a number / What a waste of my summer! / Good morning, sir / Here is your change / Have a good day / This is a pain!” from “Social Security”; and “Success to life, isn’t a suit or tie / But to you it is the bottom line / Stand back and take a good look at yourself / The friend I once knew is now on the shelf,” from “Your Life, My Life.”
But it was their youthful, indefatigable energy and drive to create that caught the ears of both Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir and Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel. Both expressed the desire to bring Excel from the streets of Venice and West Los Angeles to the world. And while that didn’t fully happen until the band’s second album, 1989’s The Joke’s on You, Split Image is a definitive work of top-shelf crossover thrash that seamlessly combines emerging sounds and culture into an album we’re pleased to welcome into the Hall of Fame (and glad we don’t have to land a nollie inward heelflip to do so).
Need more classic Excel? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on Split Image, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.
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