Lead guitarist Carmine Vincent Matteliano, the doom riff messiah responsible for co-writing and giving direction to hard-core legend BIOHAZARD’s most brutal release to date: KILL OR BE KILLED, voted by Kerrang “Best Album of their Career”. He wrote, performed, and toured with BIOHAZARD, including a performance on the David Letterman Show that featured rap icon XIBIT. After becoming ill on tour, he had to call it quits for a while to regain his health. No stranger to the scene, Carmine’s career in hardcore goes back twenty years, playing in various bands with lineups featuring members of hardcore heavyweights, the likes of: SHEER TERROR, MERAUDER, WARZONE, CARNIVORE, ANTIDOTE, HOGAN’S HEROES, and of course, BIOHAZARD. Enter GUTWRENCH. Probably one of the greatest, most innovative hardcore acts – a super-group, if you will, with all new members. Carmine puts down the guitar to concentrate on vocals and writing. Backed by a furious lineup, Keith Rooney on drums, Jeff Bonomo on guitar, and John Egan on bass, ferocious and rabid in their every approach, the group was the most extreme in violent subject matter. Like a bloodthirsty street gang with instruments, the name GUTWRENCH still invokes fear. They release SLAP OF REALITY and VIOLENT BY CHOICE on their own label and took the entire scene by the throat, opening for every major hardcore act in the area. The 90’s are coming to a close and Carmine meets up with BIOHAZARD road manager/video director DREW STONE, he manages a band that Carmine is pulling double-duty with on guitar. Reuniting with old pals, BIOHAZARD, he goes out on the road with them as a tech. Carmine becomes fast friends with Danny Shuler, who was engineering a record Carmine played guitar on, and they find that they have plenty of musical tastes in common. At this time, Carmine is planning the proto-type to GODZERO called NUCLEUS. Carmine and Drew Stone get the ball rolling by demoing a bunch of doomy blues rock/stoner songs Carmine has written. They go out to LA for a while to hone the band and land a tour of Europe in 2000 supporting BIOHAZARD. NUCLEUS release an EP on Century Media/People Like You called FTW. They bring in GUTWRENCH drummer extraordinaire Keith Rooney. The whole time, BIOHAZARD is having problems with their lead guitarists and start courting Carmine to join; it makes perfect sense since he is the original guitarist for the prototype band that he and Evan played in prior to BIOHAZARD. Due to some members of NUCLEUS having drug problems and another member’s incarceration, NUCLEUS disbands, and Carmine joins BIOHAZARD. Danny and Carmine lock themselves in a basement studio in a Brooklyn slum called Rat Piss and collaborate on the most brutally vicious record they could possibly dredge up: KILL OR BE KILLED. After doing the sickest festival tour of Europe, Carmine gets ill and has to leave the band. He is replaced by x-SPUD MONSTERS and AMONG THIEVES’ guitarist Scott Roberts. After a two year hiatus, Carmine calls upon old friend Joe Inga to reinvent a more brutal version of NUCLEUS. With classic rock sensibilities, heavy blues roots, and all the other great music missing from our world today; enter GODZERO. They record BLOOD OF KINGS, twelve tracks of pure brutal rock, and release it on their own label once again. If you want something done right, do it yourself. “Our final destination with no compromise, coming full circle back to the roots, we have arrived. It is our life’s blood, our reason to exist. See you out there.” -Carmine, Joe, and Jake…GODZERO