We’ve splashed our admiration for Navene Koperweis across these pages enough times that it’s verging on stalkerish. If somehow you missed one of our many posts in which we dropped his name, he’s a self-taught drummer from California who’s also strikingly adept at playing all sorts of other instruments, too.
He used to blast the skins for deathcore band Animosity. Now, he plays with Tosin Abasi in the stunningly good Animals As Leaders, and he’s the creative and instrumental force behind Fleshwrought (with Job For A Cowboy’s Jonny Davy on vocals).
It’s not like we think about him all the time, which would be kind of creepy. But a few days ago, we saw a Facebook post by one of the dudes in FXZero that linked to a four-year old video of an Animosity song called “The Black Page” that we’d never seen.
And there was Navene Koperweis, pummeling the crap out of his drums and looking much younger than when we saw him with AAL on the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour a few weeks ago (see our photo above).
So, we thought, what the fuck — let’s put together a little audio-video montage of this dude, then and now. You can see how he’s grown in his playing and his musical interests, and all the songs happen to be fucking great, too. (after the jump . . .)
ANIMOSITY
First up is the video for that Animosity song. It’s fun to watch, and not just because it includes lots of cuts of Koperweis. Check it out:
Not bad, huh? Damn, but I miss Animosity.
ANIMALS AS LEADERS
Next, we’ve got an Animals As Leaders song. AAL doesn’t have any “official” videos out, and we had a tough time finding a live performance vid where the sound was worth a shit. This one is the best we could do. It’s AAL performing “CAFO” in Ft. Worth, Texas, during the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour.
ANIMALS AS LEADERS (AGAIN, SORT OF)
This next video shows Koperweis playing the drum track to another AAL song, the amazing “Tempting Time”. It’s not the best way to hear the song, because the rest of the instrumentals are submerged in the background, but it’s nice footage of Koperweis’ playing.
FLESHWROUGHT
And finally, here’s a song called “Mental Illness” from the new Fleshwrought album. This isn’t a music video; the images are just a running Metal Blade ad for the album. But you can hear the song, which kicks ass.
As one of the commenters said at the YouTube page where we found this thing, “When I heard this, tears ran down my face. Then my face ran down my face.” Pretty much says it all, right there.
Alright then.
I suppose we could stop here. But, what the hell, one more.
FLESHWROUGHT (AGAIN, SORT OF)
We’ve put up this video before. But one good turn deserves another. This is a video of Koperweis playing the instrumentals for a Fleshwrought song called “Inner Thoughts” with Alex Rudinger, who’s a Maryland-based session musician and drummer for an unsigned band called Ordinance.
Except Koperweis isn’t playing the drums this time. It’s Rudinger behind the kit. As we said the first time we put this up in a MISCELLANY post, it’s a stunner of a video. It uses a split-screen technique to show these two accomplished performers jamming this technical instrumental.
It’s a blast to watch, and to hear. And of course it’s humbling to see that Koperweis is this good on guitar, when he’s already so fucking good as a drummer. More humbling really isn’t what we need here at NCS, but that’s the way it is.
Enjoy this shit if you didn’t see it the first time, and have a wonderful fucking day.