 Interview and intro by: Matthew Parrish / Photograph by: Matthew Parrish Arise And Ruin: "Rope Burn Across My..."One thing I miss from my high school days is going to field parties. Even just spending time in the country was pretty amazing. Now it's all big city stuff, clubs and the odd house party. But man! Those field parties were wild! Fires, music, fights, drinking, fresh air, forest take downs and a ton of goofing around! --
Ben Alexis: Alright, so I'm going to go way back to this annual bush party in 2004.
Truth.Explosion.Magazine: Oh man! Bush parties rule – I miss them!
BA: They do rule, you know what else rules? Drinking Busch Beer in the bush, that fucking rules!
TEM: Haha! Yeah I guess that would rule too! So where do we start?
BA: The party involved all my friends from high school. Our friend had a huge property out in the country where we would all gather with way too much beer and a generator so we could blast tunes while we partied.
TEM: Those are the best ones! Did anything crazy happen?
BA: I had this phase in my life where almost every time I got drunk I would end up naked in one way or another.
TEM: Haha! Wowzers!
BA: So on this occasion my friend Eric and I decided to get naked and tackle our friend Coneez when he got to the party, so we did just that!
TEM: Haha! Man that is pretty wild!
BA: Then an hour later did it again.
TEM: Did he think it was funny?
BA: He was laughing about it. I guess all our friends thought it was pretty funny too; anyway the best part was while I was running back into the bush I ran into a fuckin rope!
TEM: Oh no – what was the rope doing there?
BA: It was tying down a tarp.
TEM: Shitty! Were you ok?
BA: I got a 45 degree angle rope burn across my entire body, including my junk!
TEM: Fuck dude! That sucks…how bad did that hurt?
BA: At the time I had no idea thanks to the beer, but I can only assume it burned like hell, I was definitely feeling it in the morning and it looked like the worst STD ever!
TEM: Ouch! So gross! Did Coneez ever get you back?
BA: The next year at the same bush party I showed up late and Coneez hit me in the face with a wine bottle.
TEM: Uhhhh! What?!
BA: Yeah, when I went to hug him!
TEM: Fuck!
BA: He took off a good portion of my front tooth, I wasn’t even drunk yet, I’d just got there.
TEM: That’s mental!
BA: Oh and a few months later I tackled him naked again in our van and I got my head stuck between a bunch of shit on the floor and the front seat, so try and picture this naked ass sticking up from between the seats, so Coneez proceeded to jam a half eaten bagel with peanut butter in my butt!
TEM: Wait! Now that’s mental!
BA: I guess I was asking for it, I'm pretty sure some other guy did a bunch of mushrooms and woke up in a creek naked that year as well.
TEM: So much drunken male nudity! Haha! I have one final question – what is the “truth” about Ben Alexis?
BA: I love Cannibal Corpse, I have Ace Venture Pet Detective to thank for introducing me to such a great band. Actually I went to go see that in theatres for my mom, so I thank my mom for indirectly introducing me to Cannibal Corpse!
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