Zane Steckler, known professionally as Sematary and by other pseudonyms such as Graveman, Sematary Graveman, Johnny Cutter, and DJ SORROW, is a California genre-bending rapper. With his music, he mixes black metal samples with trap drums, similar to the producing style of Chief Keef. He stated in a 2020 interview with Ben Mangelsdorf of undergroundunderdogs.com that his musical style is a mix between, “Chief Keef and Witch House”. Sematary has also noted that his producing talents and lyrical abilities are inspired by the likes of Yung Lean and Black Kray, saying “If these guys can do it, I can do it”. In this article, I will be looking at my favorite era of Sematary, from 2018 to 2019.
A photo taken from Sematarys Tumblr, featuring him holding a scream mask.
From a young age, Sematary had always been interested in music production. His dad, Brian Steckler, was a producer on the Pokémon: The First Movie soundtrack. He is specifically listed as Composer, Engineer, Musician, Producer, and adding additional vocals and claps. This connection helped Sematary get a foot in the music industry and be able to work on his own music more. Production for his first album started in February 2019, alongside long-term friend and music producer Ghost Mountain.
Only a little is known about Sematary and Ghost Mountain before their first project. Ghost had released a semi-popular track before collaborating with Graveman. A slow, melancholy track titled, Your Face in the Window, was posted on the popular music-sharing site, Soundcloud, on December 26, 2018. Sematary has had a few songs before this, such as Mordor, an early version of the track Orbs, appearing on the mixtape. He also released a compilation called Only For Real Emos (2017) which contained songs like XO Tour Lif3 by Lil Uzi Vert and Adam’s Song by Blink-182.
GRAVE HOUSE
As the release date of Grave House crept up, Ghost and Sematary dropped some of their most popular singles, such as Fury Road, named after the popular movie, Mad Max: Fury Road. As well as this, they released Nevada and New Rocks, both being fan-favorite tracks. New Rocks is named after the popular shoe brand of the same name, producing large, chunky gothic shoes, worn by Sematary quite often.
The thumbnail for the Sematary (left) and Ghost Mountains (right) track, New Rocks, featuring a pair of New Rock shoes in the center.
After the release of Grave House on August 16, 2019, they found minor success, picking up a cult following on the way. Some of the more popular tracks, minus the singles consist of, Dead by Dawn, Skin Mask, and Broken Angel Hospital. Right after the tape dropped, Sematary began work on the first mixtape of a trilogy, entitled Rainbow Bridge.
Rainbow Bridge
No singles were released for this LP, and barely any demo tracks have leaked on the internet. A few songs that were meant to be on the album are Cop Killer featuring Ghost, and Disorder, a cover of Joy Division’s track. Without listening to the album, the cover tells quite the story. Almost fully consisting of stock images, Sematary sits on the “Rainbow Bridge”, Fully decked out in True Religion and New Rocks attire. On each side, badly cropped photos of Sematarys dogs lay.
Sematarys Rainbow Bridge mixtape cover, with him dressed in a True Religion jacket and pants.
Rainbow Bridge released on November 8, 2019, unlike Grave House, this mixtape reached major success for an underground artist like Sematary. The first three tracks, Slaughter House, Reverence, and Bunny Suit all have well over 1,000,000 streams and music videos alongside them. These tracks have stayed Sematarys most popular throughout his music career.
In the music video for Bunny Suit, Sematary, and Ghost Mountain dance around in, well, bunny suits. These suits are from the movie, A Christmas Story. After searching around for a long time, I found the exact bunny suit and bought it, even though I’ve never watched A Christmas Story.
Although these tracks were very successful, there is one more prevalent track from this album, Pain. If you look through the LP on Spotify, it’s nowhere to be found. Sematary himself took this track off of all streaming platforms because he felt “it didn’t match the vibe of the album”. This was formerly the lead single of Rainbow Bridge, with the song featuring frequent collaborator Ghost Mountain. It samples I Luv the Valley OH! By Xiu Xiu, which was more put out there by the Sematary track. If this song was still on streaming, it might as well have been his most popular track, which is unfortunate. Another reason why it could’ve been removed is because of sample clearance issues.
Sources:
The Bone Crushing World of SEMATARY
https://en.everybodywiki.com/Sematary_(rapper)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon:_The_First_Movie
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1GLnyPuL45vOsZPs5iANcC
https://genius.com/albums/Sematary-and-ghost-mountain/Grave-house
https://genius.com/albums/Sematary/Rainbow-bridge