Mr. Pod doesn’t say much about his youth. “The truth is, I just don’t remember anything.” It’s known that his parents worked as a husband-wife circus act. “They did this thing where she would supposedly drive a nail through his tongue after he ‘talked back’ to the ringmaster. He would spit blood and then as an encore, pull a dachshund out of his pants. It was all a trick, they wanted me to join the act but I thought, ‘this is stupid.’ So I left for the city.”

“Things are never as romantic as you imagine they will be. I took a lot of drugs and hustled a lot of senior citizens, but it was a simple matter of survival. One night I ripped off this fellow’s apartment for dope money and found a bass guitar. I was going to sell it, but something stopped me.”

Hanging out in nightclubs around Essen, Pod eventually saw Lesion play live. “They were horrible then. Gustave was drunk and could only mumble, and piss had broken his hand on someone’s jaw, so he sounded abominable. Of course, Venison couldn’t speak, so that just made things stranger. I thought, ‘I need to be part of this.’” Pod taught himself to play the bass and joined Lesion the following week.

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Dr. Gustave Hurtz | Venison | Piss Promise