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Mid-Evil Bio

Mid-Evil
Band members
Dave Kite - lead vocals & lead guitars Chad Pitcher - bass,drums & back up vocals

Genres
thrash

Mid-Evil formed in 1990 in Allentown Pennsylvania with Dave Kite as lead vocalist and guitarist, Steve Tirpak as rhythm guitarist, Doug Walbert as bassist and keyboardist and Bruce ___ as drummer. Previous to that, Dave Kite had been in a band Deadly Force with Chris ___ as vocalist, Corey Costa as drummer and Don ____ as bassist. Deadly Force only played one battle of the bands before breaking up. Dave then formed Outraged with his step-brother Chad Pitcher on drums and Brian Anthony as lead vocalist and bassist. Outraged played one show in a local bar and Dave and Chad's high school talent show. They eventually broke up. All the various musicians of all the bands had jammed with different people, but never really settled down in another band until 1990. Chad Pitcher answered an ad in the newspaper of a band seeking a drummer. The band was Totentanz and consisted of Chris Kravatz as guitarist and Terry ___ as bassist. Chad was accepted as the band's drummer and convinced Dave to join him in the band as second guitarist. Bothe Dave and Chad then convinced their friend Doug to join as keyboardist/2nd bassist. Totentanz was an extremely progressive/horror metal band that featured strange off-time aggressive riffs, very technical yet thrashy drums, and creepy keyboards. With the addition of Mike ____ they added clean vocals on top of the music. Eventually Dave became disintrested with Totentanz and sought to put together a band of his own. He began jamming with Steve Tirpak. The two then convinced Doug to also leave Totentanz to play bass with them. They found Bruce ___ and formed Mid-Evil. They quickly wrote songs and practiced covers and were playing out almost immediately. Meanwhile Totentanz was still only practicing. Bruce was finding that he didn't quite have the interest to stay in Mid-Evil. This news got back to Chad, who eventually also left Totentanz to play for Mid-Evil. Mid-Evil began playing many shows featuring some of their originals, but mostly covers of late 80s metal bands such as Metallica and Saxon and even a thrashy version of "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, which was met with much praise. Doug's college friend Bill Willenbrock would sit in on practices when he was able and came to enjoy the band. Bill would become a huge part of Mid-Evil's future. Mid-Evil recorded their first self-titled demo at Valley Productions in Allentown. They sent copies to friends and began to try to sell them. Bill Willenbrock who was living in Plano TX, suggested that the band come out to Dallas TX, that their style of music was getting bigger in that area. Chad's mother lived in Tyler TX at the time, 2 hours from Dallas. Chad organized his visit with his mother with the band driving down to TX with their equipment to see how the scene was. The band had a show booked, but unfortunately the show was cancelled due to problems that the venue had. They tried booking another, but weren't able to land anything within the time they were down. This allowed them to see the various venues and the types of bands in Dallas. The band decided that it was worth a move to the Dallas area to see if they could make something of themselves. The decision was based mainly on the quality and quantitiy of venues that played their style of music as well as the fact that many of these venues also accepted all-original bands, something that Mid-Evil desperately wanted to become. They moved to Plano TX soon after their initial visit and stayed there for two years. While in Texas the Willenbrock family and their freinds came to the support of this talented group of musicians. Bill's little brother Jimmy took on the role of band freak, booking shows and helping to start the pit. They removed all cover songs from their sets. Due to Dave's and Chad's interest in complex and lengthy music, Mid-Evil became known as a "musician's band". Many songs were well over 6 minutes, one even reached 13 minutes. All songs included many parts and tempo changes including "moshy parts". The band had limited success, mostly because of the length and complexity of their songs, however the fans of the band's music were true die-hard fans. Steve Tirpak eventually became less and less interested in the band due to it's complexity. Steve moved back to Pennsylvania roughly 6 months after the band arrived to Texas. Mid-Evil continued as a 3-piece for the rest of it's time. The band played two showcases among their MANY shows. They had over 100 people on their mailing list...which was a REAL mailing list being that there was no email or myspace or internet at that time. The band recorded an EP titled "The Black in your Nightmares" shortly followed up with a full-length tape called "Faceless Horrors". Although the band didn't sell a lot of tapes, they enabled the band to play many more shows. At the end of the two-year period, Dave began making a case to go back to Pennsylvania...taking what was learned in Texas and applying it to their home town in Allentown. Finally Chad and Doug agreed and the band relocated to Pennsylvania. Soon after relocating to Pennsylvania Doug moved back to Plano to live with his girlfriend and eventual wife. Chad and Dave, although initially devastated by the loss of Doug, decided to continue and find a replacement. Through many auditions, they finally accepted Dave Klucar as the new bassist. Klucar was a bit younger and had a lot of energy that he brought to the band. Mid-Evil got away from the long, many-parted songs and settled for songs that were straight to the point, yet still had the sound of Mid-Evil. As an all-original band it was difficult to get shows in Allentown. Mid-Evil played at an all-age venue a few times in Bethlehem PA and even landed a spot in WZZO's battle of the bands competition at the Allentown Fair Grounds. Mid-Evil won a spot after many bands throughout the Lehigh Valley sent in tapes to be voted on by the audience. After giving it's best performance ever, Mid-Evil took second place in the competition. Over time it seemed to become harder for the band to land other gigs. Dave Klucar decided to pursue a career in karate, something he'd always been passionate about. With the loss of Dave Klucar, Dave Kite and Chad pitcher were hard pressed to make a decision. Through Klucar, they met Travis ____ who was a drummer. Chad made the hard decision to switch to bass, being that it would be easier to grab a friend as a drummer, than try to find someone to play bass. Travis tried to play with the band, but just wasn't into the direction of Mid-Evil. Chad and Dave had another friend that they met at their current practice place who was a drummer, Kevin Vasquez. Kevin joined and fit right in. He learned the parts quickly and the band went into the studio to record their first CD and final album, Hate Machine. This consited of songs that were quite heavy with breakdowns. They still had a difficult time finding places to play, but did play a few times with this final lineup. After months of being frustated at the inability of finding shows, the band eventually stopped practicing very often, if at all. One day a very frustrated Dave Kite called up Chad and Kevin and suggested that the band disband due to inactivity. This was VERY difficult for Chad and Dave being that around 10 years of their life had gone to the band. The band officially ended in 2000. Dave went on to excel at auto restoration, and is currently a car photographer. Chad went on to join Time Of Need as their bassist and stayed there for 4 years until leaving due to personal reasons. 2 years later he joined Absolution as their vocalist and played with them for 2 years. He left Absolution after disgust of the music scene in general but is still great friends with the band. It is unknown if Dave or Chad will ever be directly involved in music again. The fate of Mid-Evil seemed to have passed with the transformation of a more mainstream style of newer Metal. With the rebirth of Thrash Metal and with the addition of tools such as myspace don’t be surprised to hear of something big becoming of Mid-Evil or their extremely talented musicians.



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