Word came down this week of the passing of former The Obsessed vocalist Vance Bockis, who died Sept. 1 of a blood clot following rotator-cuff surgery. Bockis, 50, was a member of Pentagram, 9353, Overlord and The Factory in addition to contributing to The Obsessed, and had a long history of drug abuse, but had reportedly been clean for more than half a decade.

To honor Bockis, this week’s Wino Wednesday turns to the early days of The Obsessed. I don’t know the date of when the clip below was recorded, or much else about it than it exists, but Bockis was only in The Obsessed for a few years (1980-’83), so it’s got to be from around that time. The song “Feelings” was put to tape for the album The Obsessed recorded for Metal Blade in 1985 that was never issued, but unlike many of the tracks, never surfaced on any official subsequent releases.

Condolences to Bockis‘ family and anyone who may have known him either personally or through his work. You’ll find “Feelings” on the player below.

Please enjoy:

Hard to believe, but this week marks the one-year anniversary of the very first Wino Wednesday post. It was a Premonition 13 video for the song “La Hechicera de la Jeringa,” and I said when I put it up that I’d probably be able to get a year’s worth of clips out of it easily, since Scott “Wino” Weinrich always had so much going on. Well, in that time, The Obsessed reunited, Wino put out a collaboration acoustic album with Conny Ochs, a Townes Van Zandt tribute with Steve Von Till and the recently-interviewed Scott Kelly, the first Saint Vitus album with him in the band in 22 years, also hitting Roadburn and Maryland Deathfest, and touring both Europe and the US. As a matter of awesome coincidence, I’m going to see him play tonight in Brooklyn.

It’s been a lot of fun bringing you these Wino Wednesday posts, and to celebrate the first birthday of this weekly landmark, I thought we’d turn to one of the most pivotal of all Saint Vitus‘ tracks: “Angry Man” from 1990’s V. Arguably it was the 2004 Southern Lord reissue of V that kicked off Vitus‘ resurgence — kind of a chicken and the egg thing there, I guess — but either way, “Angry Man” boasts one of the best Mark Adams basslines ever and the kind of stripped down Dave Chandler lyric that’s anthemic almost in spite of itself. To wit, the chorus:

All I want it to live my life
Easy and free
I don’t need
No human bullshit
Prejudice, down on me

Doesn’t get much more Vitus than that. “Angry Man” gets kind of overshadowed by the likes of “Born too Late” and the title-track of their 1984 self-titled debut, but its sensibility is among the band’s most vitriolic. Freedom through doom, doom through freedom. Fucking a right.

Happy Wino Wednesday, and here’s to the next year to come:

Very subtly, it’s been a while since we last had a track by The Obsessed for a Wino Wednesday. I guess I didn’t want to overdo it after seeing them in April, but anyway, time to rectify the issue. I could find no better way to do so than this version of “Endless Circles” taken from the band’s full-length 1982 demo. I don’t know who was in the band at this point, but that certainly sounds like Wino on vocals — as opposed to former Pentagram bassist Vance Bockis, who was singing with them in this era — and even in the rawer demo quality, he’s pretty distinct. Good enough for me.

“Endless Circles” would later show up toward the end of 1991’s sophomore album, Lunar Womb — by then the band was Wino on guitar/vocals, Scott Reeder on bass and Greg Rogers on drums (they’d both later go on to join Goatsnake, and in the case of Reeder, more immediately Kyuss) — and it seems to have come later on the demo as well. While that might lead one to think it’s a deeper cut not necessarily something the band really cared about, having buried it twice, consider the nine years between the demo and Lunar Womb and that the 2012 incarnation of The Obsessed played it at this year’s Roadburn. Sometimes a song just works better toward the end of a record.

As we start to close in on a full year of this feature, enjoy this obscure gem from the still-vast catalog, and as always, have a happy Wino Wednesday: