Pajo reborn as Dead Child

"I was really into metal as a little kid," enthuses David Pajo - evidently no stranger to a good slam dance and 20 pints of snakebite on a Saturday night. "My idea of metal was Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath. I started getting into Metallica when Kill 'Em All came out, then I wanted more aggressive music that was faster."

So far, so metal, but a brush with a gang of Hell's Angels and an early love affair with the philosopher's blend would soon alter the course of young Pajo's rock 'n' roll pilgrimage. "I was 14 or 15 and totally got beat up by a bunch of bikers. I just made the mistake of bumping into them and spilling this guy's beer all over him. It was straight out of a movie. I missed most of Iron Maiden that night. I think, after that, I still loved all that music but I was turned off of going to shows. Pretty soon I started smoking pot and got into weird music, it seemed that hardcore had gotten as fast as it could by then. That's when Slint started happening for me; we wanted to do something that was completely different. I kept some of the attitudes from the hardcore and metal scene, but not so much the style."

Slint - the legendary Louisville outfit that spawned something of a sleeper hit in post-rock circles when they committed the influential Spiderland to wax back in 1990 - would set Pajo off on a path that disassociated him from the realm of metal almost altogether, but a combination of recent events have lead to the prodigious player's career coming full circle. Pajo takes up the story: "I'd had my eye on doing a metal band for a while, whenever I'd go to New York I'd hassle my friend Matt [Sweeney, ex-Zwan bandmate] if he could hook me up. When I finally moved there I started playing with Earlyman and that was perfect; it was what I'd wanted to do for a long time, just to play really straightforward old school metal riffs. Then the Slint reunion happened and it put a stop to everything else."

However, good fortune would send players Todd Cook and Michael (brother of Slint vocalist Brian) McMahan in Pajo's direction when the reunited Kentucky outfit decided to flesh out their live band. Pretty soon, the chat in the back of the tour van would steer the trio towards another common objective. "We'd discuss our musical tastes, and realised that we all craved doing a band that was more aggressive and in a metal tradition. We all got along really well; we've all been in enough bands that we wouldn't want to do it otherwise. Slint reaffirmed that for me too: playing with these guys that I grew up with made me realise that I shouldn't mess around and play in these weird situations like Zwan. I should just stick to playing with people that I like first and foremost."

With a quartet of like-minded friends in tow, Dead Child are ready to snap some necks "with big thrash breakdowns." But the question remains: why, having already forged a successful niche as a well-respected original solo artist, has Pajo opted for such a dramatic change of scenery? "I think my solo stuff was too emotionally revealing," he confesses. "It started to become too heavy for me to play it. I just never look forward to playing these sad songs. With metal it's easier, like 'fuck it; we don't have to show emotions, let's just sing about our favourite horror movies.' It's not meant to be poetic music, it's just supposed to be dark, but we're not like Carcass or something. We're dark but we're not, like, disgusting."