D'yer Mak'er 

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The band Making Fuck began, as you might imagine, as a joke. It was prompted by a line from the movie Clerks, in which Silent Bob's Russian cousin, Olaf, bellows the misbegotten pickup lines/song lyrics, "My love for you is like a truck/ Berserker!/ Would you like some making fuck?/ Berserker!"

Singer/guitarist Kory Quist recalls, "The bad grammar seemed comparable to the way we played—not sticking to normal time signatures or keys or scales. And as abrasive as it is, I thought that described our music as well; we were trying to be abrasive, in your face." People said it was a bad move, because the band wouldn't be able to get any press.

Quist had an interest in music since growing up on his parents' favorites, but in his early teens discovered hardcore/post-hardcore metal bands like Refused. "I'd never heard anything like that, never heard anybody scream like that," he marvels. The genre made him want to be a musician, and shaped the style of music he would play.

At the same time, his background, growing up in Utah County, had an influence as well. "I've seen what religion does to people," he says. Finding that "what religion does" was not for the better, he soon adopted an atheism that encompasses a social critique of what he calls "the 9-to-5," expressed on "A Slave to the Lazy Boy," a song on the band's 2013 self-released, self-titled EP.

Starting in 2006, Making Fuck was just a side project for Quist's band Nine Worlds until 2012, when cellist Jessica Bundy joined. After several personnel changes, the band is now made up of Quist, Bundy, bassist Levi Hanna, cellist Scott Wasilewski and drummer Jamison Garrido. Kim Pack, violinist for SubRosa, guests on the title track of their new album, A Harrowing End.

Released by local Exigent Records and Gypsy Blood Records, it's a double-album of eight songs that expands on the ideas of the EP. "The title track talks about working that bitter 9-to-5 and coming out with nothing," Quist explains. "Jesus Christ Incorporated" is an indictment of corporate religion. Other songs include "Mormon Guilt," "Rats Get Fat," and "Rich Man's Son," so you get the point. Andy Patterson's engineering has something to do with the sheer density of the onslaught of sound, and he offered to drum on an interim basis, but his schedule wouldn't permit it.

The band uses some of the "heavy" sonic techniques of doom metal, slight rhythmic variations and sludgy guitars, to different ends. Quist says the band endeavors to avoid the usual cartoonish tropes of the doom/sludge/stoner genres. "My issue with doom metal," Quist says, "is you can only follow the smoky cloud to the purple mountain to seek the wizard so many times before the voyage doesn't mean anything anymore. I'm trying to touch on real issues." For him, all the social criticism isn't just an intellectual exercise; it's personal. "I found out I can be hopeful and happy without God, or the idea of God," he says.

And perhaps that's the paradox of dark metal, in its multiple guises: producing angry music—the aural equivalent of "making" a sonic expletive—produces pleasure, and makes these musicians happy. With cello and occasional violin, there's also a classical beauty balancing out the sludge. Making Fuck's album release show at Diabolical Records on March 11 launches a regional tour, They hope to write more songs later in the year.

With the recording of the new album came another controversy about the band's name, this time from an unlikely source: the album artwork includes exquisitely executed lettering by professional calligrapher Skyler Chubak. "Some of the old guys in the calligraphy community who saw it online said you shouldn't use it to write profanity," Quist chuckles. "But then the calligrapher from the White House also saw it online and approved. He said it was beautiful work."