NASCAR Death Metallers Restrictor Plate on Raisin' Hell and Praisin' Dale
The mysterious NASCAR-themed death metal band goes on record about drivin' fast, beatin' ass, and the slam revival.
Note from the editor: Please accept my apologies for the delay in publishing new content; I was dealing with a death in the family. Welcome back to Salvo.
Love it or hate it, NASCAR as American as moonshine and hating the government. I grew up in the kind of family who held Sundays sacred— not for church, but for the race. The squeal of burning rubber was our liturgy, my Dad's silver bullets of Coors Light served as communion wine, and the occasional fiery crashes were a gruesome reward for patiently sitting through lap after lap of high-octane roundabouts.
While my mother reliably swooned over Tony "Smoke" Stewart whenever he skidded into the winners' circle and "Wonder Boy" Jeff Gordon eventually won my Dad's grudging respect, it was understood that no one else on the track could truly measure up to our family favorite: Number 3. The Intimidator. Ironhead. North Carolina's most favored son, Dale Goddamn Earnhardt. His son, Dale Jr. was a close second, but as far as the Kelly household was concerned, nothing on four wheels beat his daddy—until, of course, it did, in 2001.
The man's legend has lived on long after his tragic death at age 49. Tributes poured in once the news of the fatal crash broke, and his legacy looms large over the sport itself. Dale's influence has popped up in all sorts of unexpected places since then, too, from an episode of The Simpsons to a full-throated theme song from the Charlie Daniels Band. In March 2024, two more entries into the Dale-centric pop culture pantheon reared their gleefully ugly heads: I Am the Intimidator, and Restrictor Plate.
Believe it or not, the two projects developed totally independently of one another. Portland, OR's I Am the Intimidator's self-titled debut is a fantastical speed metal concept album that focuses on Earnhardt's final day, and comes courtesy of Andrew Stromstad of Atriarch and Poison Idea renown. He told Maddie at Beaver Mosh that it started out as a joke, but he is a lifelong Earnhardt fan and his mother used to race stock cars. As he said, "I'm really serious about being funny."
Meanwhile, out in Richmond, VA, an even more feral group of NASCAR devotees were cooking up something even heavier. Racetrack maniacs Restrictor Plate (named for a safety mechanism used to reduce speed and horsepower) roared onto the scene with their Slamtona 500 EP. Songs like "Beaten With a Monkeywrench" and "Earnhardt Stomp" made it clear that this was no somber homage; rather, the Virginia quartet harness their gruesome sense of humor and deep love of Dale to create something overwhelmingly brutal.
Salvo readers already know how I feel about slam (you can refresh your memory in our epic conversation with Torture). Restrictor Plate's take on the genre holds onto its trademark gory humor and general air of derangement, but focuses squarely on life—and death—on the racetrack, as well as Earnhardt Sr.'s epoch-defining coolness. (Also, "Truck Nutz" says what we're all thinking whenever we see those supremely cringe tchoctchkes swangin from the back of an overloaded SUV).
I recently tracked down Restrictor Plate guitarist Troy James and got the scoop on the band's genesis, his own NASCAR fandom, and why rednecks love heavy metal so dang much. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed. Grab your earplugs and start your engines!
SALVO: I am so excited to learn about your mysterious NASCAR-themed slam death metal band. Was this something you guys just put together for fun? It feels like you kind of exploded onto the internet out of nowhere, but I know there's always a story behind these things.
RESTRICTOR PLATE: Right, so I'll just start at the beginning. I'm Troy, I play guitar, and Mark is the drummer. So Mark is also in this band, Vigil, a thrash metal band, and I'm friends with their guitarist Mike. Now Mike and Mark found each other on Craigslist and they started jamming; that would eventually would turn into Vigil. But while they were jamming, Mike knew that I wanted to play some kind of death Metal, breakdown-y, slam, something ignorant and heavy, and he knew that Mark was also really into that style.
I sent Mark a video of me playing a riff that I wrote, which is actually the "Slamtona 500" intro—I had already written some of these songs beforehand, at least on guitar—and he sent me back a video of him playing the drums dubbed over it and it was immediate chemistry, immediately like, let's do this. The first time we jammed, we came up with “Slamtona 500” and “Beaten With a Monkey Wrench” in maybe two hours. Obviously it's been tweaked since then, but the basis was there within the first hour or two of meeting each other.
That's like Dolly Parton-level quickness.
Yeah, it was very, very wild. We immediately knew that something was gonna happen with this. So, the NASCAR part, that's a complete joke—or it started as a joke. Growing up, my dad raced, my granddad raced, I was raised around the racetrack. The guys in the rest of the band, they like racing, but they knew I was really, really into it. We all grew up around redneck shit, that's just part of where we're from. But our original lineup was going to be with Cody Mays, who's from Watchdogs, Red Vision, just to name a couple bands he's been in. And so me and him worked together and we were talking about names and he came up with Restrictor Plate.
We were in the van and it got silent when he said that; I looked at him and I was like, “You know, NASCAR theme or not, that's just a good ass band name.” It took a little convincing for the rest of the guys. It was kind of like every other practice, I'd be like, “Haha, what if we did NASCAR?” Like, poke poke. “What if we did it?” and then eventually we had more songs written, we had a full lineup, and the thought was, well, if we're going to do it, let's go all in. Let's make the gimmick ours—and let's make the music enjoyable as well. Let's not just focus all the energy on what we look like. The idea is, really, that the gimmick gets your attention and the music keeps it.
It seems like it's worked. As soon as the EP dropped, you blew up all over social media. Has that changed your plans for the band?
We were all pretty on board with taking it seriously, and touring and stuff like that, so nothing's really changed that way. I think it's more we're taking it a lot more seriously a lot quicker. We were expecting, maybe by the end of the year, we'll go on a weekend or a week tour.
Meanwhile, you just wrapped up a weeklong tour with Bodybox earlier this month!
We're good friends with Harry and Bodybox, and he was mentioning it last year, before we had any music out, during the middle of recording. And as soon as we released it, he was like, “Alright, we’re taking you out,” and because we’re taking it seriously, obviously we are gonna agree to that! We've been playing shows for over half a year, I wouldn't say necessarily a year yet, but we had a little bit of local buzz ,and that was about it. We did have our first set go viral, I guess, mildly viral. The buzz was there, we knew we were going to be playing shows a lot, we just didn't know it was going to take off that quickly. Very surprising.
It seems like it was this really fortuitous moment because I am the Intimidator had just popped up too. So all of a sudden there's these two legitimately sick, NASCAR-themed, pro-Dale metal bands,
It was all organic too, we don't have any connections with them. We obviously listened to it when it came out and were like, “Whoa, this is this is crazy!” We were done with recording obviously at that point and trying to figure out a release date. And there’s a few others that are worth mentioning as well, like Intimidator from Tennessee and there's also a hardcore band called Dale Earnhardt; I don't know much about them, but I think it's just rotating lineup of like 20 guys that just play live shows, which I think is awesome. [Editor’s note: Apparently they’ve had over 30 now!]
I love that. It makes sense that we would have more than one NASCAR band; this is heavy metal, after all.
I’m surprised it took this long! And on top of them coming out too is, you know, we went through Distrokid to put the music out, and they put it out on the race weekend here in Richmond. So that was complete fate to us; we were like, “Okay, that works!” I wish I could claim that we planned that, but no, that was just a happy accident. I think that had a lot to do with it as well. You know, layers and layers of just everything working out in our favor for whatever reason.
Richmond being one of the centers of the heavy metal universe probably hasn't hurt either.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
You know, I've always really loved slam and sought out the most ignorant death metal possible since I was really young, but also, I'm a woman, and violent misogyny is still so prevalent within the genre. I just have to say how excited I was to see you guys pop off and see the music I like and a cultural thing I like wedded together in a way that doesn’t make my skin crawl.
I mean, we definitely love all these bands from back then, but they were super edgy on purpose and were very, very anti woman. It was part of the culture for so long. Seeing all of these new bands coming out in the genre who are straying away from that, I think it's a positive movement for all of this genre and the surrounding ones. That was something that definitely deterred us as kids from going to the shows because we knew those kids were into some weird stuff.
Right, and that’s why it felt so nice to find your band. Being into death metal when you have actual politics can be exhausting sometimes.
This is a kind of band that doesn't need any of that. NASCAR and any kind of racing should never have any kind of politics in it. It should just be cars going fast. We want to have heavy breakdowns and we want to go fast and that's all we need for this project.
Does it feel like we're in the midst of a slam revival? Or are people just paying more attention right now?
I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, the internet is insane. Anything that comes out now, you can find with one click. So that definitely has everything to do with our success and all these other bands coming out now. I mean, Sanguisugabogg were just out on a headline tour with PeelingFlesh, one of the biggest slam bands out right now. Soto, their guitarist, actually mastered our album, so shout out to him and shout out to the band. They sold out almost every show on that tour, and that speaks huge volumes. Slam used to be played in the little dive bars where you could still smoke cigs inside, you know, and it would be 10, 15 people and now they're selling out huge venues.
Just that is enough to say yes, it's absolutely a new revival and it's blowing up bigger than ever. I wouldn't necessarily say that that is going to be the next wave that everyone attaches themselves to, though, because it is still pretty abrasive, for most people at least. I love slam, and I'm excited to see where it goes.
Kim Kelly
So why do you think so many people have responded so strongly to your band specifically? Metal has a very long history of gimmick bands; some of them have been great and some of them have been garbage.It almost seems like people are shocked that you guys are so good.
I've noticed that actually. I think, like you said, a good portion of themed and gimmick bands definitely didn't do it the right way or didn't take themselves seriously enough to do something with it. Also, to be fair, the point of some of those bands is not to take it seriously. But I don't know, I think it's just something new. I think a lot more people are secretly into racing and cars, or want to be and don't know where to start, and they never had something that aligns their music tastes with that interest.
I mean, I can attest to that. I've always liked racing, I've always liked music, but they've always been separate for me with my friend groups and my activities that I like to do. In our heads, it was just like, “Well, let's mash them up and see what happens.” And I think everyone just agreed that “Yes, this is exactly what we've been looking for.” At least I hope so.
What are your racing friends into music-wise?
Most of my friends here are into metal. You know, a lot of people into racing are into hip-hop, and classic rock will always be part of racing culture, too. That's what I grew up on as well as ‘80s hair metal and heavy metal, classic rock and all that so I would say mostly that. It’s not necessarily the biggest jump in the world to listen to the most extreme metal that you can.
But enough that you guys had to build that bridge.
Absolutely.
It makes sense to me that metalheads would be so drawn to this stuff. Like you said, I grew up on redneck shit, too. I think there's such an inherently working class ethos to so many of these art forms and sports, from metal to pro wrestling to racing to Monster Jam.
I agree with that. 100% Actually, yes, it does feel a lot more blue collar, the kind of style that we're in. And it’s funny you mentioned pro wrestling; our vocalist Hunter actually wants to be a professional wrestler. If you watch him perform in our project, and he has another electronic industrial project called Parricide Sentence, you can see it.
But yeah, wrestling, monster trucks, redneck shit as most people would call it. I think it was just the cool stuff that we got raised on.
Restrictor Plate is workin’ man slam. Put that on the next t-shirt.
That’s not a bad idea, we might do it!
I love seeing more rednecks in metal. For a long time, it seems like we had to cede space that to the chuds, you know, the Five Finger Death Punches of the world.
Also, I feel like it was the fear of not being cool enough. If you looked like you were lower class, quotation marks there. I experienced that for sure living in this city. And also I watched it grow; I see camo print everywhere here. NASCAR shirts are streetwear now. There's pros and cons to that, I think, but I'm glad that the names are getting out there and more people are paying attention. Racing was dwindling for a long time.
Now, I guess we’ve got to figure out how to get you to play a halftime show at one of these events.
I would love to play at a racetrack! That is kind of a little goal of mine personally. I don't know about the rest of the guys but hopefully, sooner or later, we'll end up working something like that out.
Bringing slam to the people!
We'll just force it on ‘em.
Slam really is for everybody, even if they don't know it yet.
Funny enough, I've had a bunch of friends show this project to their dads and their extended families that aren't in the metal at all, and they all love it. It's very, very, very interesting. Hopefully we can bridge that divide in more ways than one.
I was reading through some of the lyrics, and they really are just such a delight. "Raise Hell, praise Dale" whips so much ass.
That's been my Instagram handle for maybe seven years, it was one that just happened to be available and I was like, “Well, obviously this is the best one ever.” That's one of the first lyrics I wrote, was “Earnhardt Stomp,” and I just thought it was gonna be a good pile-on part and then of course it turned into the best pile-on one part in our whole set.
And then “drive fast, beat ass” is just so fucking good… Man, for a first effort from a brand-new project, this all really is so well done.
I really appreciate it. Originally going into it we were like, “Yeah, we'll make it a demo, it won't sound too crazy, we're gonna go after that slam sound.” We went through my friend Jordi at SoulCraft Audio, and he just recorded us better than we expected. Halfway through, he said, “I don't think this is a demo anymore, I think it’s a record.’ So we were like, okay, let's make it a record then. He blew it out of the water. We're very, very happy with how it sounds, how it came out. It literally exceeded our expectations.
Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the project or about you guys?
We started this on a mysterious note, so I do want everyone to know that we're not unapproachable and we're very happy to talk to anybody and everybody about racing, about music. At our record release show, we had so many people come up just to talk about stories of them growing up around the track, and that's part of this band.
That is what we want this band to be, so we love that energy. Make sure you come see us on tour, we’d love to have you.
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